The invasion of the world of dreams had also affected Okada physically just after his encounter with the telephone woman in Rm.208, which was located in the dream world. “…What I saw in the mirror that catched my breath.” (p.285) The blue-black mark on his cheek somehow gave him the ability to heal people as well as transmitting telepathic messages though without realizing.
Since the disappearance of Kumiko, Okada had tried numerous times trying to find her and seeking out the reason of the disappearance. On the way, Okada had met some peculiar women that have their own dream-like existence, but all of them were the keys to keeping in touch with the dream world. Malta Kano and Creta Kano were the first two women who helped Okada with his problems. “I am thirty-one years old and I shall be wearing a red vinyl hat.” (p.35) Initially Malta Kano was contacted by Kumiko to find Noboru Wataya, her and Okada’s cat, but then after Kumiko’s sudden disappearance Malta’s job was converted to finding Kumiko instead. She has a type of ability that can go into an individual’s mind and gain knowledge from them. Creta is used as a ‘medium’ in order to gain access into a person’s brain, disguising it as a dream. This, Okada describes the ‘dreams’ as vivid as he can remember every detail of it, where usually a person’s dream could be forgotten easily.
The appearance of Nutmeg and her son, Cinnamon was taken place after the blue-black mark on Okada’s cheek appeared. Nutmeg is a special kind of healer for important women only and her son was her assistant. “Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka. Not bad, don’t you think?” (p.285) Nutmeg believes that Okada also had a special type of healing power and wanted him to be her successor, which could be the reason that she constantly buys new and expensive clothes for him, though she claimed that she couldn’t tolerate scruffiness. This kind of scenario exists only in an ideal world --- or the dream world. Yet Okada is experiencing this in the real world, which indicates that part of a dream world had already mixed in with the real world. Meeting so many strange people within a year is also considered as strange, especially in the real world. Nevertheless, Nutmeg helped Okada to reach the dream world by purchasing the ‘Hanging House’, which is what people in Okada’s neighbourhood believed because everything bad happens there, and giving full access to the dried-up well.
In Okada’s attempt to find the cause and meaning of the events that affected his life, he spent a great deal of time talking to Lieutenant Mamiya, Mr. Honda’s friend and comrade. Mr. Honda is a practitioner of spirit possession and also a favourite medium type by Kumiko’s family. Okada and Kumiko used to visit Mr. Honda every once a month and he seems to like Okada, as he requested for Lieutenant Mamiya to deliver a keepsake to Okada when he died.
Lieutenant Mamiya told Okada the story of his experience at war fighting the Russians and the time when he was trapped in a well. Mamiya had odd visions or hallucinations when he was in the well, but he was never able to tell what it is, “…something is trying to take shape there.” (p.208) Mamiya never got to see the actual thing he thought he saw while he was in the well, which probably made Okada become interested in wells too. Though these events are real, it seems to be on the edge of a dream, as Mamiya described his dream-like hallucinations, and the visits to Mr. Honda was so long ago take it feels like a dream.
Lieutenant Mamiya’s story seems to affect Okada’s own life, as there is a dried up well near his home and he also traps himself inside it. He believes that the well will help him find his wife.
The well in which Okada often goes into acts like a kind of portal into different worlds--- in this case the dream world. At first, Okada mistook this as a dream, “It was something that happened to take the form of a dream.” (p.241) but then he realizes he was teleported into the world of dreams, where he meets the telephone woman in person, though she didn’t allow him to see her face. These events are ideally surreal, and it certainly proves that the dream world had mixed with the real world, as Okada could actually remember vividly his ‘dreams’, where usually dreams are hard to remember distinctively.
Within the dream world, there is also another person who is considered as a threat to Okada, according to the telephone woman. That person is a man with a sharp knife. He always starts to come into Rm.208 every time Okada and the telephone woman were having a conversation. Okada believed that the man was actually Noboru Wataya, the brother of Kumiko. When Okada managed to beat the man up in the dream world, Wataya in the real world, probably at the same time, collapsed from a stroke and nearly died. “I clearly killed something inside him or something powerfully linked with him.” (p.598) Okada had batted the man in the dream world right on the side of the head, whereas Noboru Wataya had his blood vessel in his brain busted. This reinforces the fact that Okada had indeed nearly killed Wataya as his damaged location in both worlds is the same.
Kien’s experience of the mixture of dreams and reality is not unlike Okada’s, but it occurs less often in Kien’s world. In spite of this, Kien’s experience in the grey areas of dreams and reality are still quite significant.
The time when Kien was in the Jungle of Screaming Souls he had witnessed a ghost-like figure seen in the reflection of a pond. “Was there another ghost in this Screaming Souls Jungle?” (p.23) Kien at that time was just recovering from a fever and had just started on his patrol. Since Kien was feeling uneasy it’s not surprising that he had a hallucination of some sort. The laughter Kien heard was also, in a sense, dreamy, but considering he was in a jungle where thousands of people were massacred he described it as ‘ghostly’. It is undoubtedly strange that a voice of laughter would be heard in a jungle believed to be haunted due to the war, and yet it exists in the ears of Kien.
Kien at the end of the book disappeared for no known reason. Everything he owned was in place and nothing seemed to be taken. “…He left his door open…the wind blew through his curtained window, letting drizzle into the room.” (p.213) The description of the room gives a dream-like atmosphere, though it does not indicate dream invading reality, but possibly the grey area of dream and reality. The atmosphere also gives out a surrealistic view of the room, specifically a still life. He seemed to disappear every now and then yet his neighbors don’t care a lot about him as he has a strange personality in his late age.
Okada and Kien had suffered through a lot of pain through the grayness of their worlds. Okada was in a way more fortunate than Kien, but his experience with the concoction of the world of dreams and reality is truly more intense than what Kien experienced, and that may be what makes up the downside of his life. Kien may have not had such an intense experience in the world of dreams and reality, what his overall pain may be greater than the ones that exist in Okada’s.
