Dreamscape Anime

Dearest Rachel –

Another absurdly early morning, another series of very strange visuals as I found myself swimming towards the surface of consciousness. I’m not sure if it’s worth telling you about, since there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a coherent storyline to it all, but hey, you always used to ask about my dreams when you would relate yours, so here goes. I think this might be a little more than you would have bargained for, though.

As it so happened, this seemed to be amid the setting of a class trip to Japan. The hotel room we guys were put up in was roughly the size of our main bedroom, which, while more than ample for the two of us (and sometimes oppressively large for just myself – not that I’m looking forward to giving it up anytime soon), was decidedly confining for the eight or nine of us. It may also have been weird for me to be the last one to bed (eight o’clock – and no, I don’t know how I knew that it was that time – was ridiculously early, even for me. Like on the port stop in Yokohama, I was wanting to get out there and see the nightlife, but without willing chaperones, that was apparently out of the question), but after seeing all the other guys piled into a single bed, I decided to do what one other of our number had already attempted, and grab a chair to sleep in. That many guys piled into a king size bed – even an Alaskan king, which this clearly was not – was too close of quarters for comfort.

All I could do in the moment was to look longingly out at the city. I could see the neon of the distant downtown, as well as the street lights reflecting off of the more nearby canal. There was a sort of disorienting perspective about it, but at the same time, a vague familiarity, probably due to having been over there in each of the last couple of years. This moment, however, had me as a much younger person, probably in an attempt at mentally reconstructing the trip I took in college to the area. 

Since I wasn’t comfortable in the bed with nearly everybody else and, unlike them, I didn’t seem to be struggling with jet lag (although it may have been more a case of how I responded to jet lag, with hyperactivity rather than lethargy), I found myself watching cartoons on the television to occupy my mind and time. This being Japan in the late 80s, you can imagine that this was a challenging experience.

Look, I’ll not claim that these shows or episodes existed, but they were part of my dreamscape, so I might as well tell you about them, as you would have had me do. I’m guessing that they stemmed from my recent hearing about a mythical show called Saki Sanobashi (which you can hook up yourself if you’re so inclined; I’m not going into detail about that), so take this how you will. The first scene I remember was from a show that I think was referred to as Kanae; the only thing I can recall was a scene of female students kneeling in rows in a dirt field. Despite the raggedness of their clothes, each of them had before them a clean, sharp tanto, and even without subtitles (because he would think to include those in the middle of Japan in the middle of the 80s?), you could tell that these two or three dozen girls were about to commit hara-kiri. Despite their being aware of what they were about to do, none of them seemed to be terribly upset about it – no weeping, no fear of the pain involved or what they might confront in the aterlife. Indeed, they all seemed to have very serene looks on their faces – although the shot of one girl who bent down to lick the salt off of the ground was a distressing image. It was, as you might guess, a surreal sight; I didn’t linger on the rest of it, nor could I relate any more than that about it.

The other scene I recall seeing could have actually been from the same story, but I was led to believe that it was a separate one, entitled Ozaki (or some such; the fact that both titles are one word each seems a little out of character for an anime, even from back then). The scene had a group of maybe a dozen or so students captured in a net, suspended above a lake or river – it was narrow enough that you might see the other side of the body of water, but it wasn’t clear that it was running – and the net was being lowered into the water, just enough that they weren’t entirely submerged, but had to fight amongst themselves to keep their heads above water. This was, as you might guess, rather more chaotic than the first episode; less of that uncanny serenity (although there were still a few of the young captives who appeared to be preternaturally calm, but maybe that was due to the limitations of the media at the time; it’s too much effort to draw too many panicked and scrabbling characters, and to voice them in their state. It was still weird to notice, though).

I could easily believe that both scenes could’ve been dramatized as having happened during the Sengoku period, but without further context, I couldn’t vouch for that. Given these were entirely the product of my own mind (as best I can gather), I wouldn’t expect them to be historically accurate – either as actual anime or as scenes from that long running conflict in their history. The fact that I lay in bed (and wondered why for a moment or two – shouldn’t I be waking up in a chair?) for a couple of hours, collecting these thoughts in order to arrange them in a coherent format like this, probably does little to make them make any such sense, either, as the details, such as they were, have already begun to grow a bit fuzzy. But at least I can present what I have to you, for you to take for what they’re worth. Considering the nature of these scenes, I don’t know what this says about me, as they were both fairly unpleasant and uncomfortable to watch, especially if you were somehow invested in any of these clearly doomed characters. And while I can’t say that I was in any way, I feel a bit sociopathic for even admitting to that.

I do hope your dreams – if there are any where you are, as I understand that there is no night in heaven – are better than this, honey. For now, though, I need to get started on my real day; keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.