The Japanese said I no longer had a son

Shortly after Graham's birth, Takezawa senior presented Brian with his own hanko - an engraved name stamp which in Japan is often used in place of a signature. "I thought it was a nice gesture and didn't think much more about it. Then I noticed one day that it had gone from my desk. I asked my wife and she said that my father-in-law wanted it. A few days later it reappeared and there was a document in Japanese. My hanko was on it, and my name, and I asked Mariko what it was. 'A sample,' she said. 'A sample adoption certificate.' The father wanted to adopt Graham for tax purposes, she said, and it wouldn't change anything, we would still be the parents. I told her I wasn't interested, I said that Graham didn't need an inheritance, tax or no tax. What he needed was love."

Graham Hajime was growing up, speaking English and Japanese, but relations between his parents were getting worse and worse. In November 1992, Brian came home from work and found a note from his wife. She had gone to her sister's and taken Graham. It was impossible for them to live together any more, the note said: they were to divorce.

Two weeks later they met in the office of Mikako's lawyer. Brian produced the Japanese legal document, the "sample" adoption paper which had caused so much trouble between them. "It was the first time I had shown it to anyone and I asked the lawyer what it was. He told me that it was a legally binding document, bearing my name and my hanko, which gave over guardianship of Graham to my parents-in-law. Under Japanese law I no longer had a son."

Brian hired his own lawyer and worked out an agreement which gave him access to Graham, but after three visits the Takezawas suspended them. He was still living in the family house, and still working, but one day he came home to find the gates closed and padlocked, with barbed wire over the top. The locks on the doors had been changed, and when he forced his way in he found that his possessions, including passport, clothes and photographs of his dead father, had been removed. A few weeks later, the water and electricity were cut off, and the telephone disconnected. Barbed wire was crammed into the box housing the mains water tap. Finally in November 1993, he came home to find a family delegation - wife, wife's brother and wife's brother-in-law - barring his entrance to the house. He spent the night sleeping rough in a nearby apartment building and caught the first train into Tokyo the next morning.

Brian put up with friends, and found himself a new lawyer, an English- speaking Japanese married to a Welsh woman. In a civil court, the fake adoption was annulled, and Graham Hajime became Brian's son once again. The local prosecutors considered a criminal prosecution for forging legal papers. But the Takezawas claimed that it had been a misunderstanding, that they believed they had Brian's consent. It was impossible, the prosecutors said, to prove their dishonest intent, and a case was never brought.