The early Edo period is weird, Zeno decided. For example currently there was a massive population growth going on, since the Sengoku period ended along with the wars. And no wars meant it would be safer for to have children and raise them.

It would continue to be Edo period for something like two hundred and fifty years if he remembered correctly, then the Meiji would begin. After Meiji would be Taisho and that's the era the plot starts in.

Edo, the city that would be renamed Tokyo in Meiji isn't yet nearly as huge and brilliant as it would later become. And that just reminds him of the fact that yes, his family is very weird for current Japanese standards.

After all the country is supposed to be closed soon, and it would open only in around, 1850 or so. Maybe, Zeno doesn't remember the history book's completely. And Foreign marriage is still supposed to be illegal and practically impossible in Japan.

Tokugawa Ieyasu who would soon be retired had this year voiced intensions about closing the country. And his son who would soon step up to being Shogun would surely commit to his fathers intensions. Japan was going into the stage of being isolationist. All threats to the Tokugawa apart from outside world were gone with the siege that happened a while ago.

So how was Zeno's father, Denis, a blondie Greek man blending in Japan? And even if he had come to Japan before it would be closed, just how had the Greek man come here?

Zeno would like to pin the blame on him and the other deity's who were still adamant about the rule for him to look the exact same in every world. They probably saw that it was almost impossible to have two black haired Japanese people have a blondie blue eyed baby so they 'helped' the Greek man come to Japan.

As a result Denis was the only not born in Japan person that lived in Japan. After all the Dutch that traded didn't live here. But now that Zeno thought about it, wouldn't it have been easier for his father to be Dutchman?

Maybe his father ended up in Japan after traveling to the Netherlands and boarding the wrong ship back? It was an intriguing mystery for him to think about when he wasn't busy tending to Zeuxis. Or fussing over his soon to give birth mother.

At least all these events gave him an idea at what year he was born in. Since the siege of Osaka, according to the history book, happened in 1614 and he was soon five at the time. That means he was born in 1609, or so right?

Zeno isn't sure.
Math isn't his strong suit.