Chapter Text

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. — unknown

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. — 1 Corinthians 13:7

Sticks and Stones

“They are disgusting.”

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“All she wants from you is a green card.”

…

“You sellout. You married a white dog.”

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“Wouldn't you rather date someone of your own race?”

…

Satoru took his time reading the insults underneath the enlarged black and white photographs, snorting at one couple’s caption, “Let me know if you need a bigger dick.” The portrait showed an asian man and a white woman holding hands, their faces unsmiling. How absurd. Only an insecure loser with a tiny penis would say something that stupid. He then looked to his right to see another photograph of a white woman wearing a sari next to her husband, maybe Indian or Bangladeshi, with their young son. “I hope he is born with a turban on” it read “I hope he is born with STD's.” Okay, that one had him cringing. Yikes.

Donna Pinckley was an American photographer whose work mainly focused on racial issues in the American South. Her most famous project “Sticks and Stones” had garnered worldwide attention and had officially made its Japanese debut in Tokyo. In each photograph she would have an interracial couple stand in the center and underneath would have them write disparaging comments they had received from someone in real life. “I want the viewer to look at the portrait first and then look down and see the writing,” Pinckley explained. “I want them to see how beautiful and how much they love each other first.”

Kumari and Ichiro already toured the gallery earlier that week and gushed to Hannah all about it, insisting she go. So for the last few days his wife had been begging him to take her. “It’s important we see it, Satoru,” were her exact words. “Please?”

Important? Well, how could he argue with that? Happy wife, happy life, right? He decided to take her on St. Valentine's Day, fittingly enough, but apparently they weren’t the only ones.

Satoru looked around the gallery to see the many newcomers; an Iranian man linked arm-in-arm with a Korean women, speaking to her in a mix between English and Persian; A Chinese woman and her Vietnamese girlfriend snapping a cute pic together on a bench near the drinking fountain; An elderly Japanese husband lovingly zipping his French wife’s coat, her hands painfully bent with arthritis, before they both journeyed back outside in the cold. All of them had come to see Pinckley’s work. Perhaps as a mark of solidarity.

As it were, Japan was a largely homogenous country, meaning most people formed friendships, worked with, and married other Japanese. In Tokyo the chances of running into a foreigner were higher than most, but slim. Satoru could recall on multiple occasions when he’d been mistaken for a foreigner, with his striking blue eyes and snow white hair. That’s usually how people envisioned gaijin; someone of Caucasian or European descent; fair skin, blue eyes, light colored hair. Anyone a shade darker, a kokujin, might (but very seldom) be met with suspicion or open hostility. The subject made Satoru curious and not long after he was married, he had begun reading about gaijin baseball players and what it was like playing in Japan during the 80’s and early 90’s.

Their experiences were not always positive.

Leron Lee was a gifted baseball prodigy from sunny Sacramento, California. Shortly after high school, he was scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals, later making his Major League debut with the Redbirds at age 21. Things seemed great at the start. The Major Leagues were the epitome of baseball, except Lee was confronted with an unexpected problem. He kept getting traded and the coaches continuously benched him. Why? Because there was always someone better, faster, or stronger to place in the starting lineup, and as a result Lee got kicked to the curb where he was receiving little to no playing time. And make no mistake, Lee wanted to play. So the man took a gamble, and after eight arduous seasons playing baseball in the U.S, 29 year old Lee grabbed his passport and boarded a plane for Kawasaki to join the Lotte Orions’ organization.

His debut season in 1977 as an Orion was met with staggering success, leading the entire league with 34 home runs and 109 RBIs, but Lee would soon face a second problem. The Nippon Professional Baseball league did not want their star player to be a black man. So as to maintain the “Japaneseness” of the league, as they put it. After winning the batting title in 1980. “Only five people in the Lotte organization congratulated me, “ Lee would go on to say. “The following spring when they gave me my silver bat for being the batting champion, they did it in the clubhouse. No presentation at home plate in front of the fans. They just handed it to me. They seemed ashamed.” This, and the hurl of racial epithets the drunken crowds would fling at him whenever Lee struck out or made a bad play. Any sense of complaining was taken as a show of weakness. In all his years donning the Orion’s uniform, Lee would receive no brand endorsements and had to pay for his own equipment out of pocket. Nevermind that he was one of the few gaijin players who bothered to master the Japanese language while taking considerable salary cuts. Not even his white teammates did that.

It wasn’t all bad of course. Despite these setbacks, Lee liked living in Japan and held no regrets about moving there. He even invited his younger brother to play in the NPB for a short time. (It’s worth noting that Lee also married outside his race; a Japanese woman who once served as his translator. They would go on to have two children together, both girls).

Since his retirement in 1987, a lot had changed in the NPB and how they treated their foreign players, but that same attitude couldn't be said about Japan’s views on foreigners as a whole (at least not yet).

In 2000, the disappearance and horrendous murder of Lucie Blackman would make front page news on practically every Japanese outlet and the world, bringing down one of the country’s most infamous serial rapist in the process. Lucie Blackman, an English national and former flight attendant, arrived in Tokyo during the summer of 2000. To make a little extra money, she and a friend got gigs working as hostesses for a Roppongi nightclub, a job that was similar to a modern day geisha, albeit with less elegance, but less degrading than stripping (or prostitution for that matter, which is still illegal). Many foreign women, most traveling on tourist visas, would take hostessing jobs. Ostensibly, they were hired to entice men inside the club and have them order as many rounds as possible. This also provided a not so subtle way for Japanese men to strike conversation and interact with foreign women, especially white women. A natural blonde with long legs and blue eyes, Lucie Blackman exotic beauty surely wetted many men’s appetites and caught the attention of unwanted admirers. One of whom would be her rapist and killer.

Under the law, it was illegal to work in Japan with only a tourist visa, leaving many foreign women vulnerable to exploitation and blackmail. Such was the case with Lucie Blackman, and because she was a foreigner, her disappearance wasn’t taken seriously at first, but when the British Embassy got word the story caused a considerable uproar back home in England. Where is Lucie? Who could've done this? Why aren’t the Japanese authorities doing more? Is she even alive?

It wouldn’t be until the following year, February 9, 2001, that her body would be recovered. Autopsy showed that Lucie had been drugged and repeatedly raped, before being viciously murdered. Once dead, her body had been hacked to pieces and left inside a cave encased in concrete. Obara Joji, a wealthy businessman, and frequent visitor of many foreigner-filled nightclubs, was charged for rape and manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, despite swaths of evidence, prosecutors could not prove without a reasonable doubt that Obara was Lucie’s killer. Investigators would later find that not only had Obara likely raped Lucie Blackman, but possibly a hundred other foreign women for almost a decade without being caught. All of them, hostesses. Most of them, white.

Lucie’s tragic murder brought to light many atrocities involving foreign women and the Japanese hostess industry. However, the real questions on everyone’s mind were these: Why was her disappearance not taken seriously from the beginning? And how did a man, who had been arrested previously on charges of sexual assault, manage to get away with drugging and raping innocent women for nearly ten years? Satoru didn’t have an answer. Thankfully, progress was being made. “Human trafficking” was now part of the Japanese lexicon and most people were very welcoming of foreigners regardless of race or nationality, especially ones like Hannah who knew the language and were respectful of the culture, but every now and then you’d encounter some right-wing kook who believed every outlandish conspiracy the Sankei Shimbun wrote, and brought it upon themselves to ruin life for everybody. Satoru wouldn’t forget the day he witnessed that reality for himself, and not at the hands of the jujutsu elite.

It was November, 2015. Hannah wanted to go for a late breakfast in Tokyo, and between teaching and missions, Satoru greatly favored the idea. It had been a while since he had spent time with his wife. So, he chose a restaurant neither of them had visited before, but unbeknownst to them, the restaurant was run by a certain…clientele.

“Sorry, your girlfriend can’t come in here.”

Satoru’s eyes narrowed at the wrinkly old man guarding the entrance. “She’s not my girlfriend, gramps. Mind telling me why my wife can’t come in?”

The man drew a puff from his cigarette and tapped on a sign placed near the doorway.

NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED.

Satoru’s glare worsened. “What if she’s not a foreigner?”

The old man gave a chortling laugh and spat at the ground. “If she wasn’t born here, she’s a foreigner. Plain and simple.”

That riled Satoru’s anger.

“The hell? How is that even legal?”

“Hey, twerp. Don’t look at me,” the man said, showing him his hands. “I just do what I’m told. It’s not my job to make the rules. Only follow them.”

“What did you just call me, old man?”

Satoru took a threatening step forward, heatedly removing his glasses to reveal his glacial blue eyes.

Hannah, wishing to avoid conflict, quickly grabbed Satoru’s arm and got between him and the old man, bowing deeply.

“Please excuse my husband’s rudeness and for informing us of the rules. We will take our leave now. Have a nice day.”

Her Japanese was flawless. No accent or mispronunciation to be had. Absolute perfection. Even the old man seemed visibly impressed, but didn’t dare voice it out loud and breathed out another puff from his cigarette.

Satoru was still fuming about it as they walked hand in hand down the street.

“‘No foreigners allowed?’ That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. Why has no one notified their representative? If it were me, I would’ve taught that guy a lesson or phoned a lawyer. How’re you not mad?”

“He was simply doing his job, Satoru. I’m sure he’s not like that outside of work.”

Satoru abruptly stopped walking and tugged his wife’s hand, pulling her to him so they were facing each other. He hadn’t put his glasses back on.

“That’s not an excuse, Hannah.” He veered her off to the side and cupped her flushed cheeks, speaking tenderly. “The sun and moon cannot light up a crooked hole. This is your home — Heck, you voted in the election for cryin’ out loud, and your Japanese is better than most. You’re not an outsider.” His forehead connected to hers, tracing her lips with his thumb. “Not to me.”

Gojo Hannah offered him a sad smile. The kind that said, “I sympathize with you wholeheartedly, but I’ll say nothing more on the matter.” With deft fingers, she reached up to rewrap the tartan red scarf around his neck - a birthday present she had gifted him last year - and stood on her tippy toes to give him a reassuring kiss.

“Come on then, you big sod, let’s go to Jade5. I remember how much we liked their pancakes.”

Hannah was willing to forgive and forget the whole encounter ever happened.

Satoru, not so much.

That was the only time his wife had ever been denied access somewhere for being a foreigner, but the Six Eyes wielder was no fool. He knew his country was not a garden full of cherry trees. The old isolationist mindset had not dispersed from these shores. While it might not have profited off a global slave trade, or segregated whites from blacks, Japan was not without sins. She had committed heinous crimes in the past. Ask the Koreans how their women were treated in the midst of Japanese occupation. Or the Chinese when the Imperial Army laid siege upon Nanjing. Their contempt wasn't without cause. And with that came national and ethnic animosity on both sides. Still, to this day.

Satoru had learned much since becoming a married man. Although, that didn’t make him “colorblind” of the situation. Colorblind, he thought. What a half-baked idea. While it was likely drawn from good intent, Satoru saw nothing wrong with pointing out someone’s physical characteristics. It only became an issue when it was used as a vehicle for discrimination. Hannah was English-European. She had auburn hair, hazel eyes, fair skin, and a faint dusting of freckles. She was clearly foreign, anyone with eyes could see that, but it didn’t prompt Satoru to go up to people and say, “Sorry, folks. This is a decoy. I leave my Japanese wife at home to do the cleaning.” No. Hannah was his wife, his one and only. If people didn’t like it, then that was their problem. And to be perfectly clear, most held zero qualms about their relationship. They had more prescient matters on their minds like global warming, the suicide rate, or the aging population.

Having enough of his musings, Satoru stopped skimming the rows of photographs and looked around the art gallery for his wife. He saw her standing down the hall in front of a portrait; a white man and his Japanese fiance.

“They're like us, Satoru,” she said as he came to join her.

“Yeah.” He wrapped an arm around his bride and held her close. “They are.”

Those idiots could cast their sticks and stones all they liked.

But their love would be everlasting.