I wanted Lafcadio Hearn to be my teacher

I wanted Lafcadio Hearn to be my teacher, and I ended up falling into a forbidden, taboo romance with him. My father was a renowned Japanese educator and scholar who championed the Westernization movement. I was a brilliant, strikingly handsome boy. My father hired Lafcadio Hearn to come to our home to tutor me, and that’s when we became entangled in a forbidden love—the kind of youthful, homoerotic devotion you’d find in the writings of Taruho Inagaki.Through my studies with him, I learned about the great Buddhist scholar Senshō Murakami, and it inspired me to set my sights on entering his school. At seventeen, thanks to my exceptional talent, I was successfully admitted. But right around that time, Mr. Hearn passed away. I never got the chance to share the good news with him...Later, during the Taishō era, my father fell victim to political persecution. With my teacher gone and my family ruined, I found myself wandering the streets. To survive, I took to storytelling, writing, and working as a tutor. The very first story I ever wrote was about "an eye that could see the invisible world." Years later, a young Shigeru Mizuki happened to read it. He later said it was the only story he’d ever encountered that was so profoundly mystical, blending Japanese and Western sensibilities without carrying even a trace of cultural colonialism. It left an indelible mark on his heart. Even after he lost an arm in the war, the memory of that story gave him strength—and eventually inspired him to create GeGeGe no Kitaro, featuring the one-eyed protagonist.In my twilight years, I traveled to Finland and settled there for good.