Makoto Makimura (2024)

Makoto Tateyama (館山 マコト, Tateyama Makoto), née Makimura (マキムラ), born Xiao Qiao (筱喬, Xiǎo Qiáo/シャオチャオ, Shao Chao), is a major supporting character featured in Yakuza 0 and the Majima Saga of Yakuza Kiwami 2. She is a former masseuse at Hogushi Kaikan.

Profile[]

Appearance[]

Makoto wears her short brown hair in a bob that almost reaches her shoulders, with bangs that part to the right.

Attire[]

Makoto is commonly seen wearing a trench coat over her Hogushi Kaikan work uniform with a pair of cuffed blue jeans, black socks and white velcro shoes. She carries a cane with a hidden blade built into the handle.

During her time with Kazuma Kiryu, she wears a charcoal grey trench coat over a white button-up shirt and black pants. In the epilogue of Yakuza 0, Makoto is seen wearing a buttoned blue jacket over a white dress with a floral lace pattern, black leggings, and dress shoes. She wears a delicate gold chain necklace, as well as her newly repaired wristwatch.

Personality[]

Makoto is shown to be a frail but resourceful woman who is deeply traumatized by her past. Over the course of Yakuza 0, she gradually becomes braver and more self-reliant, refusing help from Goro Majima in an attempt to regain her own agency. However, she acts rather rash and silly when making decisions for herself, forcing Majima to save her many times. Despite her blindness, she is able to physically function relatively well on her own with the use of a cane^WP.

Background[]

Born to a Japanese mother in China as Xiao Qiao, Makoto and her mother went to Sotenbori around 1986 to search for her brother who ran away and joined a Chinese gang to escape the discrimination he experienced in China. They moved in with her grandfather, who did not speak Chinese. Makoto studied Japanese to be able to communicate with her grandfather and nearly forgot Chinese from how much she studied.

However, her mother committed suicide, and Makoto ran away from home. Makoto went through several jobs as a live-in hostess, and also began asking any Chinese people if they knew her brother. One day, she met Jun Oda, who claimed to know her brother. She followed him, but he kidnapped her and locked her in a cage. Suffering extreme trauma, Makoto went blind, Oda's bat tattoo being the last thing she saw, and was sold to the Seongyeon Mafia and subjected to sexual abuse. During this period, Makoto unknowingly inherited the Empty Lot following her grandfather's death.

Around June 1988, Makoto was rescued by Wen Hai Lee, and became an employee of his at Hogushi Kaikan. She was also diagnosed with post-traumatic psychogenic blindness.

Involvement[]

Yakuza 0: 1988-1989[]

Makoto enters Hogushi Kaikan, where Goro Majima has broken into to carry out the hit assigned to him by Tsukasa Sagawa. To quiet her down and avoid blowing his cover, Majima lies about being a client, and Makoto gives the reluctant Majima a massage, noting the poor health of his back. Lee returns to the parlor and sees what Makoto could not due to her blindness; Majima's tattoo, signifying his involvement with the yakuza. Correctly identifying his ill-intent, Lee sends Makoto off to run an errand while he and Majima fight.

Makoto returns and is kidnapped by a group of yakuza, and Majima saves her in Lee's stead. After losing their pursuers, Makoto holds onto Majima's leg while he, unbeknownst to her, contemplates killing her. Eventually, Majima is able to secure Makoto a safe-house in the form of a storage shed owned by Yamagata. Majima confesses to Makoto that he was sent to kill her, though he still is not entirely sure why that may be.

Makoto stays behind at the storage shed while Majima tracks down Lee. When Majima returns, the two swap stories about their pasts, and Majima admits that he too, is blind in one eye and can sympathize with her situation somewhat. Majima questions why she still wears a broken watch that she can't see due to her blindness, and Makoto tells him that it's a memento of when her life was normal. She takes off the watch, admitting that her sentimentality prevents her from facing reality. Majima pockets the watch.

Lee recovers enough to visit Makoto at the shed, where he and Majima plan to discuss their next course of action. In order to prevent Makoto from hearing what he plans to do, Lee puts drugs into her drink, causing her to fall unconscious. While Makoto is asleep, Lee reveals to Majima that he's been planning to kill a lookalike of Makoto, who was known to have a negative reputation with men, to throw the yakuza off her trail, though Majima angrily refuses, not wanting to take an innocent life regardless of how "bad" of a person she may be. Lee says that he can't let Majima leave now that he knows the plan, and the two fight once again. Majima leaves Makoto in Lee's care as he says he'll figure out a way to get them out of the situation without killing a woman unrelated to the incident.

After discovering that Homare Nish*tani has carried out their plan in their stead, Majima returns to the storage shed, concerned about the danger that Makoto may be in. As it turns out, Majima had been followed and they are betrayed by Lee's supposed allies, and Majima fights off both them and Sagawa's goons before escaping with Makoto. The two meet up with Lee outside of Hogushi Kaikan, but he is killed when their getaway van explodes, the resulting blast knocking both Majima and Makoto to the ground.

Sagawa approaches Majima and the unconscious Makoto, ready to kill them both, but Masaru Sera shoots and incapacitates him, knocking Majima out with the butt of his gun as he leaves with Makoto.

Makoto is taken outside of Sotenbori to safety, where Sera informs her that she owns the deed to the highly sought after Empty Lot, left to her when her grandfather passed away. The arrangement is made for her to be taken to Kamurocho by Jun Oda, accompanied by Kazuma Kiryu, with the intent of keeping her safe until she is able to meet with Tetsu Tachibana to discuss the acquisition of her land. As soon as she hears Oda's voice, Makoto is visibly on edge.

The trip goes awry when their driver is killed and they are intercepted by Keiji Shibusawa and his men, who chase them to a construction site. Oda, finally getting the chance to remove his guilty conscience, decides to kill Makoto and Kiryu. He holds Makoto at gunpoint, but she stabs him in the leg with a knife hidden in her cane and escapes his hold. Kiryu takes his gun in the aftermath and demands he tell his story. After Oda explains everything, Makoto still offers to help him escape with them, but he declines, stating he would rather die being "useful to Tachibana." His gun returned to him, Oda stays behind to buy them time, and Makoto and Kiryu escape Shibusawa's men.

Kiryu takes Makoto to a love hotel, deeming it "discreet" enough to not attract any attention. Makoto eventually tells Kiryu everything about her past, starting from her childhood. Kiryu tells Makoto that everyone walks in the path of darkness and that since nobody knows what the destination is, they still have the freedom to either succumb to it or continue fighting. Encouraged, Makoto decides to go to Kamurocho to meet Tachibana, no matter what.

Kiryu leaves her back at the hotel as he goes to meet with Tachibana, who advises him to hide Makoto somewhere else. He and Makoto relocate to West Park, where they stay with a homeless man that Kiryu had befriended before he'd left for Sotenbori.

Makoto waits in the park until Akira Nishikiyama comes to get her and brings her to see her brother, Tachibana. By the time she arrives, he's already dead, having been hit in the head by a sledgehammer before Kiryu was able to save him. She breaks down crying, and tells her brother's lifeless corpse that she's finally home.

Miraculously, after the death of Tachibana, Makoto's vision begins to return, allowing her to see just enough to move around on her own. She manages to slip away from Kiryu and Nishiki, determined to regain some freedom to set her own plan in motion.

Makoto reunites with Majima back at the Empty Lot, and brashly bribes him with a million yen so that he could kill all three of Sohei Dojima's lieutenants, Daisaku Kuze, Hiroki Awano and Keiji Shibusawa, in order to avenge her brother's death at their hands. He refuses, begging Makoto not to act on vengeance, telling her that his boss no longer wants to kill her and will instead pay for the land fairly, but she is still determined to make the ones responsible for her misfortune pay and walks off. She trips, and Majima helps her up, offering to talk more over takoyaki, and she relents.

After the two order takoyaki, she manages to shake Majima off her trail yet again by sending him to buy more takoyaki. She leaves him a message saying to meet her at the Empty Lot the next day; though she instead plans to proceed with her own scheme instead, not wanting Majima to interfere.

Makoto meets with Sohei Dojima himself and asks for the lives of his lieutenants in exchange for the Empty Lot, but he refuses, saying that as long as she's silenced, their redevelopment can move forward as planned. She is shot by the hired hitman Lao Gui just as Majima bursts through the doors. He fights off Dojima's men and rushes to her side, and Makoto cries in frustration, upset that she wasn't able to do anything herself despite her best efforts. Majima brushes off her apology for the trouble she's caused him and she falls unconscious.

Sera reappears with his men, and Majima accompanies him as they escort Makoto to the hospital. Having suspected that these events would come to pass, Sera made sure that the Empty Lot was in his own name, preventing Dojima from gaining more power.

Makoto - comatose, but alive - is taken hostage by Shibusawa, who had discovered where she was being kept. While aboard Sera's ship, she is in the care of one of the surgeons that had operated on her.

Makoto does not appear again until the epilogue, where she and her surgeon, who she appears to have befriended, are being pressured to perform in a p*rnographic video without their consent by a couple of low-ranking yakuza. Makoto slaps them whilst her friends run off to get help. Majima walks up to them, and the two yakuza greet him as their boss, offering him "to take turns". Before either of them can speak his name, he knocks them to the ground. Makoto doesn't recognize Majima's face, and he refuses to speak aloud in case she is able to recognize his voice. Majima did this so that Makoto wouldn't come looking for him, thus placing herself in danger.

Her friend returns with Tateyama, Makoto's doctor who has been helping her to regain her vision. Majima takes him aside, and in a whisper he tells him to take care of Makoto for his sake as much as hers. Tateyama states that he loves her and will confess once Makoto has her bearings, and Majima walks off. Makoto watches him leave, thinking about the sadness that she saw within his eye.

Makoto travels back to Kamurocho to visit the Empty Lot where Tachibana died, and leaves flowers for him, but as she goes to leave, a music box chime starts to play. She digs at the earth and finds her watch buried there, fixed so that it will play music again. She cries happily and clutches the watch to her chest.

Yakuza Kiwami 2: 2006[]

Now married with a child, Makoto is the proprietor of Hogushi Kaikan, which she had reopened in hopes of finding the man who saved her many years ago so she can thank him. In February, Makoto is working her last week at the massage parlor, as her family will soon move overseas.

Makoto is called to serve a client. The client, Majima, tries to hide his face in case she recognizes him. Makoto catches Majima looking at her watch and explains that she had to replace the band after it wore out, though she still prefers the old brown leather instead. Still unaware of who he is, she recollects the story of how Majima saved her, then brings him up to speed on what has happened in her life since then, noting she is chattier than usual.

Before Majima leaves the parlor, Makoto asks if she has met him before, to which Majima shakes his head. She asks how the massage felt, to which Majima replies that she "worked out some knots [he's] had for 18 years".

Aboard a plane with her family, Makoto opens the gift that the receptionist at Hogushi Kaikan had given her before her departure. She opens the box to find replacement watch bands in the same style as her old ones, and realizes that the client was the same man who looked out for her in 1988. Now realizing she has thanked her savior, she tells her husband she has no regrets.

Gallery[]

Yakuza 0[]

Yakuza Kiwami 2[]

Ryu Ga Gotoku Online[]

Notes[]

References[]