As a child back in the late 50’s I occasionally heard my mom say that we had a Samurai branch in our family tree. What that meant I didn’t understand, but it sounded cool. I didn’t hear it too often, and when I did, she couldn’t or wouldn’t elaborate on it. So, it was something cool, but mysterious and totally an unknown.

     About it being cool: the legends of the Samurai warrior were a vivid image in my mind, and while that was also pretty much obscure and without substance, it was intriguing to me. At times, it would come up in my memory traces, and sit there as something cool that I didn’t understand at all.

    Years later after we as a family had moved in a planned migration from our Northern California homes to the city of Eugene, Oregon, in a communication with a relative around our shared family heritage I received a couple of pages of his side of the family that proved to be mind-boggling in its contents. It was about the Sagawa family in Japan and outlined how this family line intersected with the Nagai family line and a vast number of questions suddenly were answered.

     It turns out that one generation back from my father’s generation, his parents, the Nagai family had only girls who when they became of age to marry the family was beset with the problem of the Nagai bloodline ending there with no one to carry on the Nagai family name and its bloodline.       

     These pages explained how in such situations it was not uncommon for the family to arrange a marriage with a suitable gentleman who would give up his family name and take on the Nagai name, marry the Nagai daughter, and together they would carry on the Nagai legacy with her carrying on the Nagai bloodline. And in a few paragraphs, it was explained that the son of the Sagawa family, one Tagoro Sagawa, married the Nagai daughter taking on her family name, and the problem was solved, the Nagai family name and more importantly the Nagai bloodline continued into the future through the daughter.

     Ahh, the best laid plans of man and mouse: Shortly after they were married the wife died, leaving her husband single again. Eventually, he remarried, and his new wife took on his name, the Nagai name, and the Nagai line continued—without the Nagai bloodline because it was really the Tagoro Sagawa bloodline.      This was a surprise to me as the pieces all fell together and filled out the picture of my family’s Samurai branch in the family tree. It turns out I am not really a Nagai, but a Sagawa. This explains why during holidays we visited with the Sagawa family in their home just southeast of Fresno–I never understood why we visited them so often…