Lafcadio Hearn became Koizumi Yakumo for you, Kazuo.

Papa did not know that Iwao, Kiyoshi, and Suzuko would join us in the years to come. He knew only that he had a son now, a continuation of his line, an heir to carry on his name. But if you, Kazuo, became a “Hearn” and a British citizen and Mama along with you, we would no longer be subjects of the country of our births. We would become foreigners within our own land, unable to purchase even the smallest parcel of it or to choose within it where we could call home. We would live only within the open port cities, which Kumamoto City was not. This house of Koizumi, which was then the house of Hearn, was in Kumamoto City because of Papa’s position as a teacher within a prefectural-government-run school. Should his services no longer be required, he—and his British son and wife—would no longer have the right to remain there. What would become of that household of eleven, I know, was the question that kept Papa at his desk writing late into the Kumamoto night.

Mama at twenty-five did not know that there was another fear that can take hold of us in the later years of our lives. Papa at forty-three knew that the man he called “Father” had passed from this world at the age of forty-eight. Papa knew that if he, Lafcadio Hearn, were to die without settling this matter of citizenship, his marriage would remain outside the bounds of British and Japanese laws, and thus his estate would pass to his family overseas. The house of Koizumi—the house of his Japanese son and wife—would receive nothing but grief and loss.

It was your arrival, Kazuo, that prompted Papa to become a legal subject of Japan. This act spared you, your siblings to come, and Mama of the indignities of renouncing our own citizenships. The process of becoming a citizen, rarely pursued and questioned at every turn, was not completed until the fourteenth day of February, 1896, the 29th year of Meiji, when you were two years old, and Lafcadio Hearn at forty-five was reborn as “Koizumi Yakumo.” His new name, a required change, was added to the Koizumi family registry. Papa had followed the only legal path opened to him. He had become an adopted son of a Japanese family in order to become an adopted son of Japan.

This house of Koizumi was in Kōbe by then. We had moved to that open port city when you were almost one year old, so that Papa could write for an English-language newspaper. I had been sending weekly letters to foster Grandfather, who had chosen to return to Matsue to live out his final years, to keep him informed of household matters—though, in truth, it was because he missed Papa, whom he called “the Poet”—and it was foster Grandfather who settled the question of Papa’s true name.