After reading the author’s essay on Okinawa, a friend discusses the radical political shift of Governor Onaga and suggests that a young female lawyer may have exerted decisive psychological influence over him. Once a proponent of the Henoko relocation while serving in the LDP and as mayor of Naha, Onaga later made an extreme ideological reversal. The author and his friend now believe that this transformation—and his current anti-Japanese rhetoric—may be closely tied to the ideology of that lawyer, possibly even involving personal attachment. Both conclude that their intuition is highly likely to be correct.

My conjecture and my friend’s feeling of “Now it finally makes sense” are likely to be correct with a high degree of probability.
2017-01-29.
Today, I met a friend in Kyoto who had read the essay I had sent out about Okinawa.

“I had an almost certain thought the very first time I saw that young female lawyer in question. I wondered whether Onaga might be in a psychological honey-trap state with that lawyer. I have long pointed out that there are few political turncoats as extreme as he is. Onaga once served as secretary-general of the Okinawa Prefectural Federation of the LDP, and fifteen years ago, while he was a prefectural assemblyman, he played the leading role in pushing through the resolution to promote the relocation of the Futenma base to Henoko. When he was mayor of Naha, he was also in favor of the Henoko relocation. (From Wikipedia.) That very same man, even if it was for the sake of winning a gubernatorial election, underwent such an extreme political conversion that I have always found it suspicious. But the moment I saw that woman for the first time, I had that thought. Every one of his anti-Japanese statements—which could be said, without any exaggeration, to be on the same level as those of Korean or Chinese rulers—must be identical, down to the smallest detail, with the ideology of that female lawyer. Or perhaps it is a late-life romance. That is what I thought.”

My friend replied, “Ah, when you put it that way, it all makes sense. I had always thought that man was strangely too well-groomed in a fashion-conscious way. Including that blatantly obvious wig…”

My conjecture and my friend’s feeling of “Now it all makes sense” are likely to be correct with a high degree of probability.