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.

I had never considered, Kazuo, how daunting it could be to name oneself until Papa was faced with it. We were all born to a name, our first gift and not our last if we were lucky. Though you did not ask—as Papa never did—I will share with you, Kazuo, that if I were faced with the choice, I would give to myself the “Setsu” of a node of bamboo. The other meanings are heavier stones to carry.

Papa was hesitant to come to a decision, which was a trait that I did not know that he had. Foster Grandfather’s “Yakumo,” sent from the very province that it honors, was so fitting that Papa could not stop saying it aloud. “Yakumo is a poem in and of itself,” Papa marveled. He took you from Mama’s arms and paraded you in his own, going through the rooms of the Kōbe house, singing in Herun-san’s language and then in English, “Koizumi Kazuo Leopoldo meet Koizumi Yakumo! Koizumi Kazuo Leopoldo meet Koizumi Yakumo!”