Less than one in Matsue, three in Kumamoto City, less than two in Kōbe, and eight here in Tokyo. A garden pavilion and then a house in the shadows of Matsue Castle, two houses in Kumamoto, three in Kōbe, and two in Tokyo. The only one that you owned is this one, and you left it just two and a half years after entering its garden gate. Tallied, these numbers suggest a brief, nomadic life, sheltering under rented eaves, lacking in land, weak in roots.

Numbers are poor storytellers.

Every city and every house was a home, Yakumo, because we were each other’s country. You thought it was called “Japan,” but that was the country outside. The country inside was founded by two unlikely travelers. In Kumamoto City, that country added to its populace, sending for foster Grandfather, foster Father, and foster Mother. Then Kazuo arrived to become its first native-born. The other three children claimed their citizenships in Tokyo. When you departed, I was left an exile in the country outside. I miss what was once under the eaves of this house, Yakumo.

At first, the garden pavilion was the foreign land, as far from Matsue as I had ever been. I, as novice travelers tend to do, located and clung to what was familiar there. On the morning of the introduction, I was consoled by a bush warbler in a large hinoki cage. A gift from the daughter of the prefectural Governor, Tsune had told me. The bush warbler was singing a mating song because the little fellow had been duped by the warmth of the pavilion into believing that spring was already here.

I knew what I would do first, if I were to stay. I would slide open a shōji window, the one nearest to the little fellow’s cage, and allow in a thread of cold so that he would know that winter was still in Matsue.

Yakumo, you needed no reminder. You had on an overcoat, a “seaman’s” because of its double row of buttons as I would later learn. Underneath it, you wore a padded kimono, a pair of Western suit trousers, white tabi on your feet, leather gloves on your hands, a knitted scarf around your neck, and on your head a hat—national origin indeterminate—with a wide soft brim the color of a maitake. I would have thought you addled if I had not known of your sensitivity to the cold.