Midnight and the Meaning of Love (43 page)

I was intrigued by the opening lines of the chapter.

Naoko Nakamura chose his wife without ever meeting her in person. Nor did he do any of the traditional Japanese prewedding procedures. Perhaps because his biological father was deceased and he had become estranged from his own mother, he didn’t see a need to do so. However, upon further investigation, the marriage of Naoko Nakamura becomes more and more murky. None of Nakamura’s closest relatives, friends, or allies participated in any part of the Nakamura marital ceremony. There were no wedding invitations, nor was any party given an opportunity to offer congratulations or gifts of good fortune. Because Naoko Nakamura by this time had become a prominent businessman and political force, as well as a high-profile agitator in Japan. This clandestine wedding was viewed with great suspicion. One source, who asked to remain anonymous, said about Naoko Nakamura’s new bride, “Shiori Nakamura appeared out of nowhere like a sudden breeze.”

Folding back the top of the page, I closed the book for a minute. That one paragraph got my mind racing. I knew that Akemi’s cousin from New Jersey had once said to me that Akemi’s mother was Korean, not Japanese. I knew that the name of Akemi’s mother was printed in the program that I had gotten from Akemi’s art show in Manhattan at the Museum of Modern Art. It was the same program that said that Akemi was a student at Kyoto Girls’ High. I’m good
at remembering both names and faces. I was sure that her mother’s name began with the letter
J
and was simple, like
Joo
. I snatched my Jansport, unzipped it, rifled through my papers, and pulled out the program. “Joo Eun Lee”! That was the name. And the program also said that Joo Eun Lee was a “celebrated North Korean author.” So who was Shiori Nakamura? Was she a first wife? Were there some other brothers and sisters that Akemi had that I didn’t know about and that she didn’t mention and that no one in her family had mentioned?

Not knowing the Japanese culture and beliefs, I was at a loss for answers about my wife’s family. So I picked the book up and read on.

“… Shiori Nakamura appeared out of nowhere like a sudden breeze.”

As an investigative author, I was certain that each human life has a definite history. I was determined to uncover the truth about the cold and calculating nemesis of America and American expansion. After several attempts to interview Naoko Nakamura’s relatives failed, I attempted to interview his closest friends, acquaintances, and business associates. When these avenues were also closed, with each of them refusing to meet to discuss, in person or over the phone, any aspect of Naoko Nakamura’s life, I turned to pursuing the truth by way of interviewing Naoko Nakamura’s enemies and disgruntled underlings. The following chapter represents the documented conclusions of seven years of tireless research and travel.

Naoko Nakamura, a die-hard nationalist, whose life efforts were toward building a self-sufficient, financially and politically independent Japan, free from American occupation and American military air bases and control, as well as a Japan with its own sovereignty protected by its own well-trained and militarily equipped army, was having difficulty convincing top Japanese business elites of his credibility and, furthermore, bankability. Existing major Japanese corporations and their CEOs and executives were already in both formal and informal financial working relationships and alliances with American corporations. Even some of the most conservative Japanese corporations were in “secretive subcontracting and consulting relationships” with American consultants, experts, managers, and companies. Japanese corporate giants and executives did not trust that Naoko’s philosophy and method
of “independence,” along with the elimination of the American corporate presence and inroads into Japan’s economy, would be fruitful.

Nakamura therefore began covertly courting business alliances and contracts with former enemies of Japan like China and North Korea. Under his new motto and banner of “Asian Solidarity,” Nakamura formed the Pan Asian Corporation, rumored as having been funded in part by monies obtained through his Yakuza connection. In the process of promoting his newly formed corporation’s business, he traveled throughout the Asian continent, representing himself
not
as the staunch Japanese-only, pro-Japanese military guy but with a new face of the Asian-friendly business tycoon who wanted to help all Asian countries to distance themselves from dependence on and domination by America and American businesses.

Naoko won big by brokering an exclusive car manufacturing deal with the government of Thailand, which gave Toyota the exclusive right to design cars for Thai citizens’ purchase. The Thai government gave Toyota, through a deal brokered by Nakamura, unfair trade advantages and in turn taxed American-manufactured cars at the rate of 300 percent, making the American vehicles unaffordable to the people of Thailand. As the nation of Thailand moved from bicycles to motorbikes and motorcycles to “tut-tuts” to cars, Naoko Nakamura’s Pan Asian Corporation won big confidence in the Asian business region, big benefits, incentives, and great wealth. It was this deal that won Naoko Nakamura acceptance by influencial CEOs, who then began to trust Nakamura at least as a broker of lucrative deals.

It was in North Korea, however, that Naoko Nakamura discovered his wife-to-be, Joo Eun Lee.

I put the book down, thankful that the author was about to get to the point. I was interested in the whole business-building thing though. I thought there was a real simple way for the author to break it down, if he really wanted the reader to understand it. Naoko wanted to make paper in his country and use his power to protect his nation and people and family. He wanted America to get the fuck out so he and his crew could be the heavyweights on the block. He wanted the old boys who had been running things to team up with him and run the enemy out. That’s how I understood it. I did have to, however,
look some words up in my dictionary. They were
clandestine, nationalist, conservative, sovereignty, covertly, staunch
, and
broker
. I looked them up, wrote the definitions down in my notebook, and continued reading about my wife’s parents.

Joo Eun Lee was the daughter of a North Korean government official who controlled printing and the North Korean propaganda machine. His business was printing North Korean–approved books, manuals, and pamphlets for the North Korean educational system. However, his reputation was tarnished when his wife suddenly defected to South Korea, leaving behind two daughters, one of whom was fourteen-year-old Joo Eun Lee.

Joo Eun was a fan of great books and authors from all around the world. She led a sheltered life in a protected environment. Her best friends were books that her father kept hidden and locked in the basement of his home as part of a private, secret collection of world literature. It is believed that the influence of these books spurred Joo Eun to take the uncommon and bold step in a Communist country of becoming a “free thinker.” She wrote her first book, which was more of a pamphlet, at age fourteen. It was titled
Omahnee,
which simply means “Mother” in the Korean language. Using her father’s privtate printing equipment, she and her best friend printed out the pamphlets and had them secretly circulated and distributed. The well-written, scholarly ten-page anonymous letter printed in the pamphlet caught on like wildfire. Some say it was because of the political argument that Joo Eun raised in her writing as she spoke to her anonymous mother about freedom, family, and national loyalty all being the same concept. Others say the pamphlets became popular because they were “forbidden fruits.” However, the most compelling reason for the popularity of the pamphlets among North Koreans young and old, male and female, military and civilian, was the provocative picture of a young, perhaps fourteen-year-old naked Korean girl on the cover, lying on the floor in the fetal position with her newly blossomed breasts and curves and a full flow of long, straight black hair concealing her face.

Omahnee
was only the first of Joo Eun’s famed underground writings. She went on to publish twelve pamphlets in total, all following the same format
of politically charged, passionate, and scholarly arguments enclosed in a cover displaying an attractive young teen, a long-haired girl naked and faceless, striking a highly seductive pose.

A pamphlet entitled
One Womb,
Joo Eun’s twelfth publication, is rumored to have landed in Naoko Nakamura’s far-reaching hands and moved him so passionately that he had to have the then fifteen-year-old anonymous girl for his own. In this, her final political pamphlet while living in North Korea, Joo Eun wrote and argued passionately that North and South Korea are born of the same womb, sisters of the same mother. She used the metaphor of two sisters, bound by blood and love and life, who got into a heated argument. One sister got married to an “outsider” (an American) and allowed the outsider to prevent the sisters from ever forgiving each other or making amends. The two sisters therefore became strangers to one another, forsaking their true blood relationship and one of them bonding only with the stranger instead. Joo Eun argued heatedly that no matter what, despite all arguments and disagreements, the depth of the sister’s relationship and sister’s destiny will forever be entangled and intertwined and inseparable because they share the same blood, the same language and culture, and because they emerged from the same womb. She argued convincingly that North Korea and South Korea on closer inspection also share the same enemy. Joo Eun accused the American stranger of augmenting a hatred between sisters and pursuing the complete isolation and elimination of one sister, namely North Korea.

It is the photo on the cover of
One Womb
that caused the rage, however, and led the free anonymous underground pamphlet to triple its printing. The attractive teen on the cover was photographed naked and sitting with her legs opened on the edge of a simple wooden chair. The young girl’s head was down, disguising her face. In Joo Eun’s signature style. Her long hair was hanging from her head and flowing down, finally intermingling and resting in her vaginal hairs.

Naoko Nakamura, according to an undisclosed source, paid 1 million yen ($100,000) to a North Korean agent to identify the girl on the cover. He then paid 1 million yen to another North Korean man to capture her.

Fifteen-year-old Joo Eun Lee arrived in Osaka, Japan, by sea on the dark waters of the dark night.

No source has confirmed or documented what happened between Naoko Nakamura and Joo Eun Lee once she arrived in Japan. However, on her sixteenth birthday, Naoko Nakamura married her at his Kyoto home. Sixteen is the legal age for females to marry in Japan.

On Joo Eun Lee’s first public sitting, she was presented by Naoko Nakamura as his new wife, a sixteen-year-old Japanese bride whom he introduced as Shiori Nakamura. Months later, the couple announced the birth of the daughter who would be their only child, Akemi Nakamura, born at midnight at their Kyoto home on December 31, 1970. Perhaps her entrance into the world was clouded by the Japanese New Year celebration, which is the most important holiday of their year. It marked a new beginning for the couple as well as ushering in the financial high point of the Pan Asian Corporation.

Both of my sources of the above information were murdered in Japan on separate dates and in separate places and by different means. Both of my source’s murders remain unsolved. This information, therefore, cannot be corroborated at the time of this book’s publication. However, as an author, I testify to these facts, which I obtained against a wall of cultural silence, and as an outsider, a
gaijin.
My written and secretly recorded interviews with both of my sources for the above information remain secured at the time of publishing. This first publishing makes those interviews a matter of record.

Mind-blowing, that’s how I felt about the unauthorized biography,
Never Surrender.
I looked up the words
nemesis
in my English dictionary and
gaijin
in my Japanese dictionary. The new words I was learning danced around in my mind.

“Captured at fifteen …” In what month of her fifteenth year was she captured? She was still in North Korea when she published her last pamphlet at fifteen, the book said. It had to take some time for it to be distributed, read, and discussed and for Nakamura to get hold of it as well. Then she was captured and brought to Japan but not married until sixteen. Did he go into her before their wedding? Joo Eun gave birth to my wife Akemi “months later.”
How many months later?
I asked myself.

Murder,
I thought to myself.
Men will murder to protect their land, women, beliefs, and profits.
However, Nakamura was not an honorable
man. He wasn’t driven by any true beliefs. He believed only in himself and what he wanted at the moment. He took by force, what should never be taken by force, a woman’s heart and a woman’s body. He was so far from the truth that he would not even allow his wife to keep her name. Why? In the Sudan a woman will always keep her name, the name of her father and the name of her father’s father. We are a country of fathers. We are all traced through our fathers, and no one will think of taking that away from a woman. Even after a Sudanese woman’s marriage, she is still identified through her father. I began considering,
What are the consequences in a nation of fathers when a person has a father who is corrupt, without faith or boundaries or limits?