My father came from the barber and sat down on the sofa while I was watching news on TV. He said, “Do you know the word mitch? (In Japanese becasue he cannot speak English.) I came up with this word when flipping over the pages of a magazine in waiting.”
      “It must’ve been Mitchell.”
      “No, no. I’m positive. It was spelled mitch.”
      “Oh, so what about it?”
      “You don’t know its meaning, do you?”
      “Well, probably, it’s a nickname or something.”
      “No, not that. It means to make advances to a woman.”
      “Oh, does it?”

That was it. I didn’t ask him further. He simply smirked and started to read the papers. It seemed to me that he wanted to tell somebody about it. He had no intention to talk more about it. I wasn’t particularly interested in discussing the meaning with him.

However, deep inside, I was stunned because he had never talked about anything of that nature with me. My father was an old-fashioned man. He fought in Okinawa during the the last phase of the second World War, and was one of the survivors because he was stationed on a small island near Okinawa.

In Japan, three scary things used to exist: earthquake, thunder, and father in that order. And he was scary not because he was violent but because a Japanese father was supposed to act scary. This is, however, no longer true nowadays because the authoritative stance of a Japanese father has disappeared since the end of the second World War with the introduction of the American cultures.

In fact, almost everything has been changed since that war. For one thing, the United States was an enemy. After the war, however, America has become the most important partner of Japan.

And the saying goes: an old soldier never dies, but fades out.
My father was of that type. He didn’t talk much, seldom laughed, and always remained reticent.

So, what’s so unusual?

Well, I haven’t mentioned one more thing. The above thing happened in my dream last night.

My father died of esophagus cancer four years ago at the age of 79. He had to quit school at the age of 14 because of poverty. So he did study by himself and passed the state exam for teaching license. He had been teaching at elementary school for about 40 years since he was eighteen, and a retired principal when he died.

My father and I had never talked about women in general—let alone sex. When his illness had turned into a critical condition, I visited Japan and would go to his hospital almost everyday for a month while staying in Japan.

We talked a lot more during my hospital visits than we had done before in my life—but not about women. His doctor told me that my father might have died after three months of his treatment but that he had been alive ten months now. The doctor seemed astounded. It was too late when my father went to hospital for treatment in the first place. My father died a month after I returned to Canada.

It was a strange dream:

• The topic seems out of his character.
• The barber has no English magazines.
• I haven’t owned a TV set for the past 25 years. How come I sat down watching news on TV?
• When I woke up, I looked the word up in my dictionary, but there is no such word. How come he came up with this particular word?
• Why an English word—not Japanese? I have never heard him speaking English.

I don’t believe in the afterworld.
And I don’t believe in a supernatural being called the spirit, either.

Is this the way for him to tell me that there is a supernatural being called the spirit? I always wonder after having a dream why I don’t realize that I have a dream in my dream. If I knew that I had a dream, I would have asked him so many questions.

Although my father acted strangely in my dream, I behaved just like the usual self. Though quite curious how come he came up with the word and why he was telling me about it, I behaved as if nothing strange had happened. It is quite regrettable that I couldn’t break my shell to act differently in the dream. I really wish if I could behave differently in my dream.

• Fertility Rituals at Asukaza Shrine
  and Dithyrambos
  
  
• The head and tail of Japan were switched in the modern times
  
  
• Is the Japanese royal genealogy unbroken?
  
  
• Have a good time with this Jukebox!
  
  
• The Mystery of Ape Stone