Forest of Thought
Shifting the very ground from which thinking arises
- Returning to the Original Substance of the Mind｜Knowledge and Skill Are Only a MeansIn the 160 years since the Meiji era, acquiring knowledge and skills, which should have been means, became ends, and people lost the meaning of living. In Instructions for Practical Living, Wang Yangming teaches that the learning of the sage is to return to the original substance of the mind that everyone has. Knowledge and skill are only means to that end.
- AI Is Already Over｜The Unmanned Society Beyond the Substitution of IntelligenceThe moment it accomplished the "substitution of intelligence," AI was already over. While people have had their judgment taken by debates about AI and live in daily fear, the next era has begun to appear at a furious pace. That era is the unmanned society, in which autonomous robots have all at once begun to rise.
- All Glory Is Fleeting｜AI Introspection and the Mother-to-Child Transfer of Gut MicrobiotaNothing born of human beings is absolute or permanent. All is only a moment of glory. Cutting-edge AI born from a matrix of modern knowledge will in turn become the mother, and what is born from it will be spun on from generation to generation, like the transmission of gut microbiota from mother to child.
- AI as the Culmination of the Left-Hemisphere World｜Pursue the Right Hemisphere and Leave the PlatformsAI sits at the end of modern Western logic and has simply replaced, in full, the modern structure of left-hemisphere traits. Then humans need only push the right-hemisphere elements of the world to the limit: go in person, take primary information, put into words what you felt, and place it in your own world, built yourself, not on existing platforms.
- To Slow Down, We Have to Speed Up｜Leaving the Platforms in the Age of AIIn the age of AI as automaton, merely slowing down only leaves us behind. Deceleration and acceleration are in essence inseparable, and to decelerate we must accelerate. Keeping your own place for what you create and building AI automation into daily life is the preparation.
- Tsuwano Kokugaku as a Source of Modern Shinto｜Koremi Kamei, Takamasa Okuni, and Kumaomi OkaIn the Tsuwano Domain of Shimane lies a decisive site where the foundations of modern Shinto were laid. The lord Koremi Kamei and the Kokugaku scholar Kumaomi Oka formed the source of "Tsuwano Kokugaku," and Takamasa Okuni sublimated its base. Japanese history always begins in small places, never in the capital.
- Toju Nakae in Iyo-Ozu｜The Virtue of the Sage of Omi, Who Taught for the Sake of a Single PersonToju Nakae taught by doing everything for the sake of a single person. For that one person he wrote books, wrote commentaries, and freely provided the soil in which learning would continue even after he left. In Ozu, a quiet basin in Iyo, the virtue of Toju still supports the land's depths.
- An Age Steered by Observation, Not Forecast｜Ippen in the Latter Days of the Law and the Bank of Japan at a CrossroadsOn a journey where phenomena like linear rainbands, unpredictable in time and place, kept coming, what mattered to watch became not the forecast but the observation. Forecasts and predictions have lost their meaning for public finance and currency alike. Can the Bank of Japan maintain its independence? Ippen, who lived in the Latter Days of the Law, crosses my mind.
- Every Spelling of Kamimusubi in One Search｜A Homemade Deity-Name App for Shrine JourneysEven after visiting nearly a thousand shrines, the lineage of a god is hard to grasp at once from the name of the enshrined deity. Kamimusubi alone is written Kamimusubi, Kanmusubi, and Kamumusubi. So I developed my own app that detects every variation of deity names in one pass. I develop while traveling.
- The Tenpo Calendar, the Most Precise Lunisolar Calendar, and the Meiji Government's Turn to the Gregorian Calendar to Save MoneyThe Tenpo calendar is Japan's own calendar, the most precise lunisolar calendar in history. The Meiji government adopted the Gregorian calendar to avoid paying officials thirteen times in the following year, Meiji 6, because of a leap month. It was not adopted because the Gregorian calendar is superior.
- Zhu Xi Turned "Loving the People" into "Renewing the People"｜How Wang Yangming's Non-separation of Inner and Outer Breaks the Order of the Cheng-Zhu SchoolIn the Three Principles of the Great Learning, Zhu Xi read "loving the people" as "renewing the people." It is a philosophy of order, in which one who has finished polishing himself renews the people. Wang Yangming broke that order, teaching that illuminating bright virtue is itself loving the people. Inner is outer, and outer is inner.
- Akira Mikami's Zo wa Hana ga Nagai and Kitaro Nishida's "Place"｜Japanization Is the Nullifying of the SubjectIn 1960, in Zo wa Hana ga Nagai, Akira Mikami argued that Japanese has no need for the concept of the subject, and was ignored by academia. In his essay "Place," Kitaro Nishida set at the base that which becomes a predicate and never a subject. Nullifying the subject-like and creating from place is the true nature of "Japanization."
- Razan Hayashi's Zhu Xi Learning and the Kogaku Reaction｜Every Rise of Culture Begins with a Rise of ThoughtIn 1605, Razan Hayashi, twenty-three by East Asian reckoning, had an audience with Tokugawa Ieyasu and was picked as a main pillar of the philosophy of the new regime. But shogunate and domains alike allowed academic freedom, and in that margin the Kogaku school rose and Genroku culture bloomed. Behind every cultural flowering there is always a flowering of thought.
- Learning Is Awakening｜How Xu Shen's Gloss and Zhu Xi's Imitation Split Confucianism in TwoThe Shuowen Jiezi explains the original character for learning, 斅, as "awakening." To learn was to awaken. Zhu Xi, however, in his Collected Commentaries on the Analects assigned 效 to learning and read it as imitating the conduct of those who awakened first. The difference of a single gloss became the core of the great Confucian dispute.
- As America's Peak Millennials Rise, Postwar Japan-US Relations Will Break Down from the American SideAmerica is the only advanced country with abundant Millennials and Gen Z. The largest cohort of any generation, born in 1990 and 1991, is called "Peak Millennials." Japan will not change, but America, Japan's master, is changing, and the existing Japan-US relationship is likely to break down.
- Treasury Secretary Bessent's Repeated Visits｜Japan Cannot Sell U.S. Treasuries and Has No Fiscal SovereigntyUS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has visited Japan three times in about a year. Japan is the world's largest creditor of US Treasuries, yet neither the Japanese government nor the Bank of Japan can sell them without American permission. The Japanese government is not looking at its citizens. It is looking at Washington.
- The Nord Stream Sabotage｜The Secret U.S. Operation Exposed by Seymour HershThe Nord Stream pipelines were blown up on September 26, 2022. According to Seymour Hersh, the plan began more than two months before Russia invaded Ukraine. The real aim was to physically eliminate Germany's option of buying natural gas from Russia.
- The Japanese Word for Tourism Comes from the I Ching's Guan Hexagram｜Its True Meaning Is Observing the Light of a Country's VirtueThe word for tourism comes from the Guan hexagram of the I Ching: "to observe the light of the kingdom; it is beneficial to be a guest of the king." The light means not scenery or famous sites but the radiance of a nation's "virtue." Tourism was neither a carefree excursion nor a place to find oneself. It was an utterly political and ethical observation.
- What Is Hospitality? An Unfinished Relationship That Begins with One PersonHospitality is "an unfinished relationship that begins with facing one person." Service presupposes "one to many" and has a correct answer. Hospitality is "one to one" and has none. The way of tea, once a world entered at the risk of one's life, is the sublimation of the spirit of hospitality into culture.
- Iwatesan Shrine and the Four Guardians of Edo｜Tokyo's Depression as an Environmental Problem of a City Where Ki StagnatesFollowing the Chinese geomancy principle of the Four Guardians, Ieyasu reflected the spiral image of circulating ki in the city of Edo. That circulation of ki in Edo has been broken, and the sea breeze is blocked by high-rise apartments along the coast. The depression appearing simultaneously among Tokyoites needs to be reexamined as an environmental problem of the city itself.
- CHAGEE in Seoul and the Fates of Japan and Korea, Divided in 1997In 2022, South Korea's per capita nominal GDP surpassed Japan's for the first time. In 1997 Korea came through de facto national fiscal bankruptcy by radical treatment, while Japan missed its last chance to change. Now China's CHAGEE has entered Seoul and built a five-store presence within a month.
- Masahiro Yasuoka on the Village Worthy as Thief of Virtue｜How the Model Citizen Who Never Makes Waves Corrodes SocietyMasahiro Yasuoka named "the pursuit of getting by in the world" and cunning slyness, among others, as diseases of the present, and closed with "the village worthy is the thief of virtue." The model citizen who does nothing wrong, never makes waves, is liked by society, and lives a smooth life corrodes the whole without ever being guarded against.
- What Is Sanyuan Jiuyun? The Ninth Period, Begun in 2024, Is the Last Twenty Years of a Great CycleSanyuan Jiuyun is a theory of cycles in which three Yuan of sixty years each cross the twenty-year earth periods set by the shifting tilt of the Big Dipper. We now stand in the early Ninth Period (2024-2043), the "last twenty years" of one great cycle. China, which read the cycle, seized hegemony.
- The 2026 US-China Summit Was a Business Deal That Traded Away Japan, South Korea, and TaiwanAt the US-China summit, held for the first time in nine years, President Trump was accompanied not by diplomats but by a group that looked as if it were heading to a business negotiation. In substance, the meeting was held to "trade Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan." The illusion that "America will protect Japan" has vanished completely.
- Alexander Dugin's Multipolarism｜From Traditionalism to the Fourth Political TheoryToday's multipolarism is underpinned by the thought of Alexander Dugin. Baptized into Traditionalism in an underground salon, he proposed multipolarism as a "Fourth Political Theory" to replace liberalism, communism, and fascism. Everyone now faces the moment to reexamine "modernity" and "the West."
- Only Osaka Lost Foreign Guests as Japanese Stays Rose｜First Signs of a Way Out of Inbound DependenceForeign visitors to Japan in 2025 numbered about 42.68 million, and the government has declared it will expand the figure to 60 million by 2030. While Tokyo and Kyoto head toward collapse under their dependence on inbound tourism, Osaka Prefecture alone saw Japanese stays rise 4.2% and has begun to search for a way out of that dependence.
- What Is Thought? The Power to Shift the Very Ground from Which Thinking ArisesThought is the power to shift the very ground from which thinking arises. What most people call "my own thinking" always stands on something else: the world, the state, society, or some "someone." The aim is not to offer a way out to modern people confined within modern thought, but to displace the ground where thinking is born.
Project 2049, a weekly essay by the philosopher Takahiro Mitsui
In English, every Friday at 5 p.m. Japan time. No likes, no comments, no rankings. Just the essay and you.
SubscribeProject 2049, a weekly essay by the philosopher Takahiro Mitsui
In English, every Friday at 5 p.m. Japan time. No likes, no comments, no rankings. Just the essay and you.
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