is a great loss of energy, the breaking up begins."
With intense longing did his thoughts these days revert to the Western
lands from which he had voluntarily expatriated himself. "I have been so
isolated that I must acknowledge the weakness of wishing to be amongst
Englishmen again ... with all their prejudices and conventions."

The Race Problem! one of the most perplexing on earth. A man thinks he
has wholly and finally given up his country, sloughed off inherited
civilisation, discarded former habits and cast of thought; but--such a
stubborn thing is human nature--sooner or later, the oft-repeated cry of
the wanderer, surrounded by alien hearts and alien faces, arises to that
Power that made him what he is. "Give back the land where I was born,
let me fight for what my own people fight for, let me love as they love,
worship as they worship."

At the time of Kazuo's birth Hearn had expressed a hope "that he might
wear sandals and kimono, and become a good little Buddhist." This was
during the period of his enthusiasm for "things Japanese." When he came
to issue with the officials at Kumamoto, and later at Tokyo, a change
was effected in his view, and he longed earnestly to make him an
occidental--one of his own people.

All the expansion of communion and understanding denied him in the life
he had passed amongst those who viewed things from an entirely different
standpoint, seemed centred on the boy. He hoped to educate him abroad,
to make an Englishman of him, to put him into a profession, either in
the army or navy, so that he might serve the country his father had
forsworn. In this desire Hearn reckoned without his host. By his action
in nationalising himself a Japanese, when he married Setsu Koizumi, his
son is a Japanese, born in Japan under Japanese conditions, and unless
he throws off all family ties and responsibilities, which, being the
eldest son, are--according to communal law in Japan--considerable, he
must submit to this inexorable destiny. In his father's adopted country
the military or naval profession is closed to him, however, in
consequence of his defective eyesight, and both would have been closed
to him also in England.

Mrs. Atkinson, anxious to carry out the wishes her half-brother had
expressed in his letters, with regard to the future of his eldest son,
made inquiries on the subject of various people at Tokyo. The same
answer was given on every side. He is a Japanese, and must conform to