冬という季節と呼吸The Season of Winter and the Breath
As the biting cold of the withered wind pierces the skin and the veil of winter descends, the world turns toward silence. We, too, are compelled to slow our breath, aligning it with this quietude.
Inherently, winter is a season when all creation subdues its activity to store primordial energy. It is the time most suited for introspection. That many people look back upon the year and let their thoughts wander toward the next is, one might say, in accord with the providence of nature. I, myself, have felt a dramatic shift in my life’s rhythm and physical and mental inclinations over the past two years.
Until seven years ago, whenever this season came around, I was tormented by a heavy, seasonal melancholia peculiar to winter. As the daylight hours waned, my heart would close, and I would fall into a sensation akin to wandering through a tunnel with no exit. However, one single habit opened a vent in that darkness. It was a primitive ritual: consciously absorbing the sun’s grace into the body from early autumn—specifically, the intake of Vitamin D3 and resetting mind and body under the winter sunlight whenever possible. The key lay not in acting suddenly once winter had set in, but in gradually shifting the body’s mode to suppress activity; it involves taking the time—the most critical resource for modern people—to prepare.
Looking back at myself a few years ago, there was always an excessive tension. I became aggressive toward invisible enemies and was driven by a sense of irritation. Yet, without knowing what drove me or where I was heading, I was simply chasing something blindly. Perhaps the thirst held by many living in the modern age is of the same quality. We are always chasing "something," but there are far too few who know the true identity of that "something." One of my inquiries is to verbalize this very thing.
The true nature of the fatigue we feel daily is not merely physical exhaustion. It is nothing other than the frictional heat generated by the compulsive maintenance of the ego—the demand that one "must be someone," that one "must always be the subject." Where on earth does this sensation, bordering on nihilism, come from? This time, I will consider it through the lens of tourism—the greatest feature, and simultaneously the greatest problem, of the 21st century.
Modern people live in an era where we can move more freely than ever before. With a single palm-sized device, one can book a lodging on the other side of the globe, spend a modest sum, and breathe the air of a foreign land a few hours later. Yet, no matter how much physical distance we traverse, or even if we stand amidst scenery called magnificent, the experience of true repose not visiting the heart is one that everyone must have had. Especially in this last decade, this tendency has heightened to an extreme degree, and I feel as though vast numbers of people have ultimately lost sight of why they spent their money and time in the first place.
In such moments, what assaults us from the depths of our hearts is not fulfillment, but rather a bottomless void. However, if one admits to this void, one feels the anxiety of being buried alive in the social media age. Thus, people pretend this void does not exist; they stage a fulfillment—that is, they equip themselves with a fabricated fulfillment or a prepared fulfillment—and declare, "This is not consumption." Even now, after this era has continued for some ten years, such people continue to proliferate infinitely without pause. As a result, this has surfaced in the worst possible form: a movement of regional destruction known as over-tourism. Over-tourism, which literally destroys everything—life, culture, customs, capital, and harmony—can be called a 21st-century form of army or invasion.
Reflecting on how my life has changed over these past two years, one major shift is that since Japan returned to the world after the pandemic, I have completely stopped approaching the "centers" of cities known as tourist destinations. Previously, even with many tourists, there were still places dotted around where locals found peace; one could drink coffee in a quiet shop where tourists did not enter, reading a book or enjoying conversation with the owner. In other words, a segregation was established. But from about two years ago, the situation changed completely. The background of this remains unclear to me, but I suspect the cause lies in the tourists' one-sided and selfish "experience addiction" toward the concept of "local experience."
Certainly, since they are visiting a foreign land from afar, it is the psychology of modern people to want to experience more than others. And because they can now see and hear massive amounts of information before visiting, tourists "know" the town before they arrive. Strictly speaking, it means they "feel as if they know." And precisely because they "feel as if they know," they take interest in a world not introduced on YouTube or Instagram, premised on the infinite flow of their feeds. To be accurate, their interest is guided by algorithms. Thus, they are inevitably presented with experiencing a local world that is not the typical world of tourist sites flowing in the feed (though it can be said that this local world, too, is already intentionally shown by the algorithm). In short, behind the experience addiction lies the circumstance that while individuals believe they are seeking, they are in fact being guided and presented to by algorithms.
To me, the greatest problem of over-tourism—while certainly involving the destructive logic of numbers—lies even more in the attitude itself of "feeling as if one knows" a town one has never visited. We all live in a world where one can feel as if one knows anything without moving a single step from the sofa. I believe this shares the same root as health issues. Just as people consume excessive sugar or fat, they consume excessive information, devouring it as if constantly in a state of starvation. In my personal deduction, "sugar intake" (blood sugar spikes) and "information intake" (dopamine spikes) are proportional.
However, while sugar intake reaches a limit when one is full, information has the specific characteristic that it never ends, no matter how much one eats. The reason is clear: information far exceeding what a single individual can consume is being generated by the second.
In a sense, modern tourism is merely tracing the "correct answers" cropped by others in guidebooks or on social media, and placing one's own body there to record it. It is not an encounter with the world, but merely a confirmation task of known information. Yet, the number of people who do not understand this is exploding year by year. What exists there is not humble surprise or emotion toward the world, nor is it respect or understanding for other countries, others, or communities; it is merely the mirror image of a bloated self-consciousness that wants to confirm "the me who came here." In other words, the reason over-tourism can be positioned as destruction is that the true identity of this "faceless tourist" is centered on people who do not possess cultural understanding or consideration for others, but think of life only selfishly. That is why tourism has surfaced as a problem of the 21st century. Conversely, for the soulful tourist, there is no problem more troublesome than this. This is because the label of "tourist" causes everything to be viewed as identical. If one intends to be a soulful tourist, I strongly feel one must not avert one’s eyes from this problem of over-tourism. It is a matter of questioning thoroughly: what on earth is this?
Modern society constantly forces us to be the "subject." Where to go, what to eat, how to live—the basic premise is that all responsibility lies with "me" who made the choice. This excessive theory of self-responsibility dominates us even in travel. Since we pay money, use time, and move, we must obtain the maximum result at the highest efficiency; failure is not permitted. As we try to control the itinerary with our own will, the world becomes a miniature garden of pre-established harmony, and the unexpected mystery closes its doors. If one asks whether it is better to simply drift without deciding anything, that too only awakens an anxiety peculiar to the modern age. What a difficult era to steer through.
I travel quite a lot, but I wish to present a shift in perspective that may serve as a breakthrough here. Simply put, it is a return from "going" to "being called." A return from "looking" to "observing" (perceiving). I dare to call it a return. There is no need to do anything new. If there is an opportunity and the readers are interested, I am considering writing an article presenting my modest diary-like records accompanied by photos, from this perspective of "traveling by being called." I say this because, particularly for readers in the English-speaking world, this sensation of "being called" may not be fully conveyed through text alone, as the language structurally requires a subject.
That we are exhausted by the act of choosing means, in other words, that we are tired of using "I"—this small vessel—as the starting point. Interestingly, modern people are exhausted by the very act of possessing a subject. In the past, people lived rooted in the soil, surrendering themselves to the local gods and the turning of the seasons. However, we severed those roots ourselves, becoming rootless weeds drifting in a digital sea before we knew it, struggling to drive a stake called identity into a gravity-free space. That identity does not exist, that it is nothing but a camouflage, is one of my themes of inquiry, and it squirms at the root of the insomnia and restlessness held by modern people. Yet, abandoning civilization like the hippies of the past, or starting a rural life away from the city as is trendy in Japan, is not the modern solution.
The principles of the world are strange; the more we move outward, ever outward, in search of answers, paradoxically, the wider the inner hollow becomes. As a result, we lose the eye to see the world, or we cloud it, perhaps merely consuming the dazzling surface like gnats swarming around a light. Then, it becomes visible that this light—the true nature of this dazzle—is not "Life Light" emanating from life, but an unnaturally created or prepared "Artificial Light." The tourists squirming in over-tourism are nothing but gnats swarming around the performance and bait of this artificial light. That is why, to the residents, it feels like an eyesore. Just as anyone would feel it an eyesore to see gnats swarming around a streetlamp at night.
Needless to say, the light of other countries, of other cities, is not originally mere decoration that is simply beautiful. No matter how much branding or promotion feigns beauty, it does not reflect the real. It should have been the raw radiance of living itself, pregnant with the shadows and pain, the history and cultural stratification that the land bears. However, in towns turned into tourist sites and theme parks, these impurities are removed for the sake of the tourist, and only refined light is artificially staged. Through this, the environment is thoroughly sanitized so that tourists visiting from afar do not feel aversion. Let us call this "Refined Light" (like sugar refined to white sugar with impurities removed).
To accept that light head-on, the viewer also requires a corresponding resolve and inner silence. However, our eyes today are muddied by far too much noise. And modern people, raised in a hyper-protective clean room where they see only what they want to see and do not see what they do not want to see, are no longer satisfied unless the scenery they see there equals the scenery they "feel as if they know." In other words, the providers of tourist sites and the tourists in over-tourism are equals; they are accomplices. The tourist, like the "Refined Light," refines the impurities themselves, arranging the experience to equal the one they "feel as if they know." This is the pathology of modern tourism.
Is what is truly needed now really to "go" to a new place? Rather, should we not question how to reclaim the sensation of "being called"?
Not "going," but "being called." This sensation is the key to being released from the curse of the subject. I myself have had moments in places I stopped by on a whim during my travels where I felt an indescribable comfort or nostalgia. Repeating this experience several times, I realized that it was not I who chose, but the place that chose me. This connects to the sensibilities of ancient Japanese Shinto. In connection with my investigative journeys, I visit many shrines, and there are many times when I cannot help but think, "I did not choose to worship," but rather, "I was called by the divine and arrived there." Even if I go to a famous shrine, I may feel nothing, yet at a shrine I stopped by chance, I may feel welcomed by a powerful spirituality. This is exactly what "being called by the gods" means, and I believe there is a hint here for moving beyond the era of over-tourism. The key is the abandonment of the arrogant subject and the surrender to something greater.
It would be meaningful here to return to the basics. That is, the etymology of the Japanese kanji word for tourism, "Kanko (観光).” Kanko comes from the phrase "Kankoku no Hikari (観国之光)” (Observing the Light of the Country) in the Chinese classic I Ching. Originally, this referred to the king deeply observing the customs and human sentiments of the land—that is, the invisible logos (principles)—for the sake of governance.
What is important here is the act of "observing" (Kan/観). It is not "looking" as a mere collection of visual information. Just as "Kannon (観音菩薩)” (Avalokiteshvara) in Buddhism means "Observing Sound (音を観る),” it signifies a deep gaze that unifies with the object and sees through to its essence with the eye of the heart. There is no separation between subject and object there.
To reach this state, "sympathetic resonance" is necessary. Only when the heart becomes still, like a clear water surface, does the world on the other side reflect into this side. In fact, the Chinese character for "Kan" (観) derives from the image of a stork staring fixedly at a fish in the water. Its true meaning is a gaze that is not misled by the fluctuations of the water’s surface (the layer of the real), but sees through to the essence lying deep within, quietly, yet with intense concentration. The one who possesses this gaze must extinguish their own ego and unify with the object.
While the Western modern ego aims to establish a "solid individual," a philosophy flows through the ancient layers of the Japanese spirit that regards oneself as an "empty vessel." This is untranslatable, but it is not a state of mere nothingness; it is "plenum." Rather, precisely because it is empty, the wind blows through it, the divine dwells within, and the thoughts of others resonate.
In short, tracing the etymology of tourism means going out to other countries and cities to "observe" the "light" of that foreign land. Light, as mentioned before, carries pluralistic meanings, but in my definition, it is to observe everything—the good and the bad—from one's own perspective. And the most important thing is that tourism exists, without fail, to give back to one's own country or city. It is absolutely not for satisfying one's own selfish desires and concluding there. That is, tourism holds its true value precisely in returning and dedicating oneself to one's motherland. If a soulful tourist, who is not recovered by over-tourism, holds this perspective—this circulation or fluidity—they will never fall into selfishness.
However, modern people cannot "wait." They fear the blank space and try to fill the silence with noise. Conversely, winning in the modern age is not so difficult. This is because everyone is swallowed by the vortex of instability and acceleration, losing themselves and becoming selfish; they cannot endure even a moment of blank space and absolutely cannot hold a long-term perspective. That is why one must stop the hands that try to search, plan, and possess, and learn to "wait." This is not to do nothing. It is to strain one's ears to a faint call within an active silence. By doing this, one waits patiently for the voice to "be called." One waits until called.
In fact, when I go on investigative journeys, I do not make precise plans. I rely only on the scent of the wind and intuition. To ascertain which direction my body wants to go, not by logic, I always start by opening a map and identifying where I want to go. That is, asking where the spirituality, rather than the body, feels it wants to bathe in the wind. Various elements such as place and season are involved here, but when I move faithfully to that sensation, the scenery I encounter by chance or the silence of a nameless place sometimes speaks eloquently to me. Even if it is not a famous tourist site, or if it is a remote place, it is a moment of happy congruence where the land needed me, and I needed the land. In Japan, this has been expressed as "En" (connection) or "being called by the gods."
The place chooses the person, and the person is chosen by the place. If we believe in this sensation, we will never again suffer from the craving for "somewhere other than here," no matter where we go. Because standing in that place is, in itself, a necessity and a response.
To view everything—the good and the bad, the beautiful scenery and the desolate sights—as "light." When we confront the world with such resolve, we may transform from mere tourists as consumers into "pilgrims" carrying the light. Even in the West, pilgrims of the past must have had such a figure. I believe that religious faith, in any form, is beautiful, and that faith is necessary for human beings in some form. Religion need not be a specific sect or organization. For me, from the perspective of the Japanese Shinto concept of Yaoyorozu no Kami (Eight Million Gods), I take a "center-less faith" as my religion.
Make yourself a transparent medium, and simply let the wind pass through your body.
Before you plan to go somewhere far away this winter, why not stop once and strain your ears? From beyond this cold wind, the faint voice of the place calling you will surely be heard.