ノマドロジーと柳田國男の思想Nomadology and the Thought of Kunio Yanagita

Continuing from my previous article, I have been probing the essence of the Nomadology proposed by Deleuze and Guattari from a unique perspective. And this concept of Nomadology achieves a startling resonance with a certain school of thought: the concept of the Marebito, proposed by the folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu.

To begin with, the dawn of folklore studies in Japan let out its first cry amidst a violent collision: the decay of the unique system of the Edo period, the pressure of Western powers demanding the opening of the country, and the modernization revolution known as the Meiji Restoration. In this process, where the system of Western academia flowed in like a muddy stream, and as the Japanese people scrambled to ingest and absorb it, there was one bureaucrat who attempted to search for the substratum of the Japanese people. That man was Yanagita Kunio.

However, the folklore studies Yanagita Kunio sought to construct was, in fact, nothing more than his own distorted scholarship. He arbitrarily positioned the settled, wet-rice farmers as the "ancient layer" of the Japanese people, premising everything on rice cultivation. This approach was always in a complicit relationship with the narrative of homogenized national integration demanded by the modern state. Yanagita’s approach sought to retrieve the diverse and chaotic lives of the Japanese archipelago into a single, beautiful, ordered system; yet, in this process, countless pluralistic worlds were destroyed.

Against this massive "institution of knowledge" that was Yanagita, there was a pioneer who shone a light on what spilled out of that system—on the "other worlds" and the wanderers that could not be narrated by the logic of a rice-centric sedentary society—attempting to carve out the pluralistic world of Japanese folklore. That was Orikuchi Shinobu. In short, Yanagita Kunio was a conspirator in the reality alienated and generated toward the state, while Orikuchi Shinobu chose a thorough gaze at The real, refusing to cater to the movement being retrieved by the former. The reason I saw possibility in Orikuchi Shinobu’s Marebito theory regarding the Nomadology of the entirely different context of Western intellects Deleuze and Guattari is this: Orikuchi’s own life coincided with the euphoric period of the establishment of the modern state system. Consequently, he witnessed the movement where reality, alienated from The real, lost its myriad pluralistic characters and was integrated into a sole reality. And he did not pander to this. He resisted the torrential movement of reality—taking a step toward a pluralistic world that could not be integrated—and walked a profound path toward the excavation of The real itself. Here, I see the image of the future nomad.

Thus, based on years of voluminous research, what Orikuchi Shinobu focused on—and what became the core of his thought—was the Marebito. The Marebito refers to a spiritual, majestic entity that visits a specific community (village) from an "other world" beyond the sea (or mountains). In Japan, this other world was historically conceptualized and called "Tokoyo" (the Eternal World). The Marebito is an awe-inspiring, absolute Other that brings new vitality and blessings to a depleted, stagnant community, while simultaneously carrying the potential for destructive transformation or calamity. In other words, the Marebito was God itself.

What is extremely crucial here is that the Marebito was never dyed by the logic of sedentary society; it always appeared wrapped in the wind from the outside, existing to agitate the stagnant air of the interior. And the most decisive characteristic was the custom that if a Marebito visits, they must eventually "return." In other words, the Marebito does not settle. They do not settle; they inevitably leave. I am convinced that this dynamic of the Marebito—coming with the premise of "leaving"—is the essential form of Nomadology as I conceive it.

In fact, signs of this are already visible in the modern nomad. The nomad discussed in recent contexts has derived into the "slow nomad," a lifestyle positioned as a kind of liquefaction of residence: staying in one place for several months, engaging earnestly with the community, and conducting business to solve problems. However, what is important here is the nomad's own mindset. Do they remain merely because "business went well" or "it is comfortable"? Or, when they resolved to live as a nomad, was "leaving" factored into that mindset? What I wish to question is the singular resolve to stand in that place not as a movement for convenience or to survive a banal modern society, but as an existence destined to "leave" from the very beginning. This is the lifeline of the essential nomad, and the true externality.

Originally, in the essence of Nomadology, the "smooth space" (the space of the war machine/nomad) and the "striated space" (the space of the state apparatus)—or the Interior and the Exterior—were inseparable. However, under the name of risk management and efficiency in modern society, these have been completely separated. The Interior is accelerating its intensity as a safe, clean, managed society, and in proportion to that acceleration, the Exterior is distanced as a risk to be excluded. Originally, this Inside and Outside held an intense tension, but since modernity, and leading up to the present, no one could endure this tension anymore; the Interior and Exterior have been extremely distinguished, exposed as political struggle. Modern nomads are, in the end, merely moving from one dispersed, safe Interior to another Interior; this cannot become the true movement that causes the human being to arrive at the next stage. That is why thinking this point through is critical. Because, regardless of whether one is currently a nomad or not, ours is an era where everyone will encounter situations where they are forced to move, in every form, suddenly.

In the past, when this Interior and Exterior were not separated or divided by physical walls and institutions as they are today, the boundary in the Japanese community was maintained by an "invisible barrier" (kekkai). The markers were invisible boundary lines constructed by merely a single stone statue known as "Sainokami" (Dosojin). Take one step out of the village (Interior), and it was an Exterior where evil spirits and monsters rampaged, dominated by death and impurity, with no guarantee of life. For the people of that time, leaving the village was an act equivalent to a leap toward death, with no guarantee of ever returning. That is precisely why, when one who had gone outside returned to the village (Interior), a rigorous ritual was required. Only after undergoing days of Misogi (purification) to cleanse the impurity and alien forces attached to them in the outside world were they welcomed back as members of the community. This sensation is extremely important.

This intense tension between Inside and Outside, and the awe and resolve required to cross that boundary, thoroughly contained "death." In other words, for me, the background of modernity losing the tension between Inside and Outside—and heading toward separation despite every nation and ethnicity originally possessing the technique of non-separation—cannot be thought of separately from the movement to avert one's eyes from this "death." By trying not to think about death, life becomes depleted. This is because the tension of life and death, which is non-separation, is lost, and consequently, the invisible barrier of the community is weakened.

This sensation was the raw The real itself for ancient people, and there existed a highly sophisticated spiritual tension where Inside and Outside were fused while being separated. Existing at this boundary line, the node connecting Inside and Outside, were functional agents like shamans and shrine maidens (Miko); through their mediation, the village society was maintained by incorporating external vitality. Indispensable to this vitality was the absolute Other (the Exterior) known as the Marebito.

Here, I posit that the most important concept in modern Nomadology is the distinction between "The real," "reality," and "Actuality." Many modern people believe that the social systems, common sense, and ethics they live by—this safe and domesticated world—are "reality," but this is an error. The world we normally live in is nothing more than an illusion named "reality" which has been alienated to avert our eyes from "The real."

The true "The real" is something extremely raw. It is nature itself, uncontrollable; it is naked anxiety, the tactile sensation of death, a torrent of chaotic energy that cannot be retrieved by words or logic. What the ancients confronted was this "The real." They sharpened their senses desperately so as not to be swallowed by the massive violence of nature. Had they not, they would have been annihilated. However, even in ancient times, alienation from the rawness of reality had already occurred. That was their communality at the village level—this was the reality of that time. But what makes it completely different from our conception of reality is that it existed in infinite plurality. In other words, it is easy to understand if one considers that there were as many realities as there were tribes. Therefore, a reality that equals the reality of a unified state system existed nowhere in the world.

Therefore, in the reality of the ancient tribal village which alienated The real, invisible boundary lines were stretched in all directions by barriers, and they themselves distinguished between Inside and Outside. Meaning, this is to say that countless tribes performed different alienations in reality from the vast, boundless base of the world that is The real. That is why, in ancient tribes, viewing the rituals of other tribes was prohibited. For them, ritual was the brewing of an alienated reality. As mentioned before, in the past in Japan, leaving the village meant death. And even if one were lucky enough to return, they required thorough purification because they were clad in impurity—that which is not the community's reality. Thus, they understood the distinction between The real and reality. However, this changes completely after modernity.

Modernization, in my eyes, is a process of the total alienation of this terrifying The real. Before that, every ethnicity held a non-separation in the tension between The real and reality, but modernity abused this heightening of reality to commit the outrage of pretending The real did not exist. At this time, an arbitrary re-recognition takes place claiming that their own reality is The real; hence, when put into language, this becomes the precipice of confusion. Here, what surfaces is actuality. In short, modernization moved to unify other pluralistic realities in order to cover up The real itself by expanding a specific reality. Through this, a movement appears that renames a single reality as "The World" consequently, such a perspective, having already thoroughly destroyed the pluralistic realities in its own country, heads toward violent practices of enforcing its own reality upon other nations and other ethnicities. This is modernity.

Thus, we hardened the ground with concrete, managed the air with conditioning, and created a greenhouse of clean and safe reality by excluding foreign matter. But this was merely superficial; essentially, the pluralistic existence of reality itself was pulverized over centuries. And the reason the West held superiority in the modern era is that they faced this first and spent years dealing with this problem. Therefore, it became the ideal to preemptively make their own reality the absolute world, and in their history with the continental rivalries of nations and ethnicities, this was sharpened all at once. Eventually, some left the sea to export (force) their reality to other countries; the result of which is understood all too well, even from the vantage point of present-day Japan.

And within this greenhouse, people say in unison: "Look at reality." But the reality they speak of is not The real; they are pointing to the pressing situation within the system—"maneuver well within this system," "obey the social codes"—in other words, "Actuality." Since modernity, maintaining the box called reality required the thorough concealment of The real; thus, here, The real was transferred into the peer pressure of actuality, reaching a dimension where the original The real is completely forgotten. In the space/Field created this way, The real indigenous to that land was hardened with concrete and bleached white.

In the modern era, what we should aim for is to break away from this alienated and concealed state and dare to acquire the perspective of the modern Marebito. It is not to fly around the world like a hyper-nomad, enjoying superficial "differences." Rather, it is to submerge vertically and deeply, from the fissure in the ground currently beneath one's feet, toward that terrifying and raw The real that must have once existed. Because only there do we learn of the plurality of reality that is not unified. And this pluralistic existence of reality, existing in non-separation with The real, is always born in place. I call this "Re-landing."

This "Re-landing" is completely different from a return to facile exclusionist nationalism or an escape into agrarian nativism. Instead, it is an act accompanied by intense pain: digging down into the "Origin" beneath one's own feet, thoroughly into one's own interior. This "submersion into the Origin" entails pain. Because it forces one to tear the membrane of domesticated reality, not be misled by actuality, and face the chaos, trauma, and naked The real within oneself. However, if one continues to run away by averting one's eyes and changing locations, true landing will never visit.

One must establish a will as a strong individual that is not retrieved by existing systems or peer pressure (Actuality)—a will with the hardness of stone.

As Kitaro Nishida expounded in his Logic of Place, "place" is not merely a geographical coordinate, but the source that defines our consciousness and existence. Because physical movement has become easy in the modern age, it is often misunderstood, but what is truly asked is: "Can you place your spirit in a state of complete mobility?" It is my fundamental belief that only in the deepest part, reached by digging vertically, do we arrive at a "paradoxical universality."

The diversity trumpeted by modern society is merely one aspect of unification presented in an abused form, using the residue of reality—the countless pluralistic existences that were violently unified in alienated reality. This is because modern diversity is nothing more than arranging specimens of prepared categories in a showcase and admiring the "differences." It is a vacuous consumption that never gouges The real. True mutual understanding, and true diversity, are not achieved by spreading hands laterally, but only by individuals digging down into their respective "Origins" to the limit, in their respective places, and connecting with others like a rhizome deep underground. Therefore, at this time, the problem of origin cannot possibly be politicized; the moment one falls into that temptation, they have actually already been retrieved as a panderer to modernity.

Not superficial solidarity, but connection in the deep strata. That is essentially the horizon we aim for, the future, and the position of the true world citizen. As can be understood from the aforementioned perspective, the "world" and "world citizen" considered to date contain a specific unified reality as a premise; therefore, no matter what mixing occurs there, the basis has not changed. And my insight is that this basis always lies in discrimination and superiority/inferiority. Thus, as long as we cannot yet discard this basis of modernity, the future spoken of here as "world/world citizen" remains, regrettably, a state intensely containing discrimination and hierarchy. It happens because the vector is wrong; regarding the last thing remaining in the process of transcendence as the sole universal is a fundamental error. Modern people must now live at a level where each individual discards all of modernity. Nay, we have reached the predicament of asking whether we truly have that resolve.

Can each individual question their distinct "Origin" to the very end? I believe the future lies here.

In my case, it is a question of how deeply I can gouge out the stratum called Japan—including its darkness, its beauty, and its cruelty—and make it my flesh and blood. It is not the time to be bewildered by the glittering circumstances of other countries or trendy global discourses. First, continue to think thoroughly about one's own footing, that "Origin." Nothing begins except from there.

True universality is a realm reached only by diving thoroughly, not by spreading hands horizontally. Do not transcend upwards; dive first to the deepest abyss. Only there, for the first time, does one encounter—in a domain beyond words—the Other who has dug down just as deeply. This is the true network, the modern implementation of the Rhizome that Deleuze and Guattari dreamed of, and the figure of the "true world citizen" we should aim for.

The Outside is not far away. It extends right there, beneath your feet, beyond where you have dug deep.