Whatever, not even close.
I know what happened. But it’s hard for me to explain, even now. Way harder for a kid ten or eleven years old to put into words—into Japanese.
Anyway… I guess what really triggered it was Children’s Day. “When you write ‘Children’s Day’, don’t do it in kanji,” my teacher said. “Spell it out in kana. If you can read the kanji for ‘children’ then you’re not a child any more.” Ha ha ha. Hilarious.
The whole world was comfortably dumb.
Children’s Day: A day for the children, for their happiness and for their mothers.
Give me a break. As soon as I saw all the carp floating over the city, that was it for me. What the hell is this farce? Tokyo’s full of carp (or streamers acting like carp). What are all these fish-mouths trying to say? It’s a giant farce. True, “farce” wasn’t in my vocabulary back then. But that’s what I felt, in my bones. I had to get the hell out.
Which is what I did, in dreams.
Not ambitions. Real dreams, if dreams can be real.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. This record of mine is nothing without my Japanese and all of its limits. When you talk about life, you have to talk about the Big Limit. Death. It’s a part of life. No escaping it.
OK. Let’s start at the beginning.
Pretty sure it was the end of the fourth grade. February probably. February 1985. I went to sleep. Except I didn’t. After a few minutes in bed, not sleeping, I had this revelation. It just came to me. I might’ve been a stupid kid, but this fact hadn’t hit me until that night. Suddenly I understood: I’m going to die at some point. My life won’t last forever.
I curl up.
That night, alone in bed, I started seeing time differently. History. Followed by a full stop. Try to imagine what it’s like for a fourth-grader to be terrified of death. I had to find a way out. Sleep was definitely scary—a whole lot like death. But that didn’t keep me from getting sucked in.
Into the world of dreams.
The boy who is afraid of death lives for dreams.
I started my dream diary before entering the fifth grade. But writing down your dreams isn’t as easy as you think, so I went looking for help. A guide. Something to point the way. What I found was a how-to book. Dream analysis stuff. Like Freud (yeah, Sigmund Freud). “Snakes represent penises, caves represent vaginas.” That sort of thing. But the real Freud is too complicated for a total beginner. Hell, I still haven’t read Introduction to Psychoanalysis. The book I bought wasn’t the real Freud. It was Freudian. Written by a so-called “expert”, published by a so-called “publisher”. But this book became my bible. It was easy to read. The chapters were short, and there were tons of illustrations. It almost felt like a strategy guide for some video game. Cheat codes for the libido or something.
But what’s a vagina to a prepubescent boy anyway?
Sure. I’d had some sex dreams. But I never saw the female anatomy as the be-all and end-all. Well, I never saw the female anatomy at all. In my dreams, there was nothing but skin down there. Smooth, like a doll’s. You can’t dream about something you’ve never seen in the real world. I hadn’t come yet, either, so all the references to “ejaculation” meant jack to me.
Reading dreams is hard.
I tried my best. I was a big fan of free association. The moment I woke up, I would write down how my dreams felt, using a few clues picked up from my bible. You have to start somewhere. Can’t write about your dreams without the language of dreams.
The problem wasn’t me—not necessarily. The Japanese language has its own shortcomings. But that’s a story for another time.
This is the story of a fifth-grade boy hell-bent on making sense of his dreams. Cracking the code. And that means staring death in the face. Which takes, you know, courage. In the words of Henry Miller, “Sleep is an even greater danger than insomnia.” Or did he mean something else? Maybe I’ve got it wrong.
Story of my life.
Back in the world of the living: Children’s Day. 5th May 1985. Flying fish invade Tokyo airspace. But I’m not there. I’m in bed.
I was so devoted to figuring out my dreams that I never left my bed. I kept on sleeping. Didn’t go to school.
That’s how I became a “dropout”.
What happened then?
By the end of June, I was no longer a resident of Suginami ward. The guidance counsellor at school recommended “a change of environment”. For me. Not my family. They stayed put. I was sent away, on my own, to an alternative school for dropouts. A place for kids who are for some reason unable to go to regular school. There were grade-schoolers—like me—and middle-schoolers. We lived together under one roof, in a dorm. And, following our marching orders, we walked to and from the local school each day. Together.
Out there in the mountains. It kind of felt like summer camp.
But we were still in Tokyo.
Japan Railways, JR, by that name, didn’t exist yet. It was National Railways. Well after the NR Chuo Line stops to the west, Tokyo keeps on going. I never thought about it until then. After Takao? Another prefecture, right? Saitama or Yamanashi or something. Beyond my ken. Hell, I was oblivious to the fact that Tokyo has eight “villages”. Did you know that? Tokyo’s eastern limit: Minamitori Island. Formerly known as Marcus Island. Part of the Ogasawara Islands. Co-ordinates: 153° 58′ 50″ E. To the south: the Okinotori Islands. An atoll, actually, almost completely underwater at high tide. 20° 25′ N. Uninhabited, obviously, and far and away Tokyo’s southernmost point.
Tokyo.
How far does Tokyo go?
There I was. A ten- or eleven-year-old dropout with no interest in speaking to others. Sent away—to the only Tokyo “village” on the main island. Damn close to Tokyo’s western edge.
I was shocked to find Tokyo went that far. It took me two trains (the Chuo and Ome Lines) and one bus (called the West Tokyo Line for a reason) to get there. A solid two hours from home—and I’m still in Tokyo? Are you kidding? For one thing, this place is deep in the mountains. For another, the news-stand at the station is selling wasabi… The news-stand.
It felt like Chichibu Tama National Park.
Nothing around, unless you’re itching for a killer hike. And the dorm was apparently built on land that used to be a village for fugitive warriors.
“Fugitive warriors”?
The village school had opened its doors to us dropouts. Due to a dwindling student body, it had to shut down or agree to educate a wild bunch of losers from all over Japan. It chose door number two and stayed open. That was what everyone wanted—the teachers, the village, everyone. And in my own (unasked-for) opinion, it was the right move. Right?
That’s how I see it at present.
Now, technically, the dorm was for grade-schoolers. But, like I said before, there were some older kids, too. When a dropout was unable to drop back into life, they were allowed to stick around. Indefinitely.
I have more to tell you about the dorm, but let me say something about the school first. It’s a little embarrassing—I can’t remember the name of the place. Wonder why. No, I’m pretty sure I know why. Some kind of complex, some deep desire…