Tsune said a storm cloud was inside your left eye, but your right one was clear. Your nose was typical of Westerners, large and high, and yours ended in a particularly sharp point. Your hair was not the color of straw or, worse, of a sea urchin’s inside. Charcoal black with the beginnings of gray, she said. Your facial hair was confined to your upper lip, which she admitted was difficult for her to look at, as it reminded her of a dusky caterpillar. Tsune glanced at this face, which as you know, Yakumo, never gave away my thoughts, and she must have decided that she was not presenting the New Foreign Teacher in the best light. So she added that you towered over the men in Matsue, but not all. Nishida Sentarō, the head teacher of the Middle School, for instance, was of equal height. Tsune’s comment was meant as a compliment to you both: Nishida Sentarō is as tall as a foreigner, and the New Foreign Teacher resembles, at least in stature, Matsue’s most esteemed young teacher and bachelor. The two are close friends, she whispered, as if it were a confidence that she alone knew.

I had read the articles in the San’in Shimbun and the city’s other newspapers announcing your arrival and the details of your life to date in Matsue. The city and I knew that you were brought there by the prefectural government to teach the English language to the boys at the Middle School and to the young men at the Normal School. Their previous teacher was a Christian missionary, whose years in Matsue did not generate nearly as much interest as yours would. We read that you arrived in Japan on the Abyssinia, which had docked at the eastern port of Yokohama on the fourth day of April, 1890, the 23rd year of Meiji, in time to celebrate the Sakura Matsuri. You traveled then to Tokyo to meet with other Western academics of renown at the Imperial University, according to the papers.

The cherry blossoms had opened for you.

I mouthed this to you as you departed on your final journey, Yakumo.

Late September at the outset of a Tokyo autumn, and yet the old cherry tree outside your writing room had burst into bloom. I have been called a woman with an oak heart, but even I knew that the sakura had shown themselves to you one last time. A fitting farewell, Yakumo. The poets of long ago would have been pleased by their gesture.