良き師匠との出会い：王陽明、徐愛、恵果と空海Meeting a Good Teacher: Wang Yangming, Xu Ai, Huiguo, and Kukai
Meeting a true teacher. It is the greatest turning point, one that changes a human life from its foundation, and a miracle not everyone is given. Seeking it, even craving it, does not guarantee the chance will come. In fact, this world has a strange rule: if one seeks a teacher out of self-interest, the opportunity is lost.
Recently, in Shitsurae, I have been approaching, little by little, and beginning to look into the depths of a philosophy called Yangmingism, which came from the Confucian scholar Wang Yangming (1472–1529) of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). In the China of Wang Yangming's day, the system of knowledge that held society in its grip was the Cheng-Zhu school, born centuries earlier in the Song dynasty (960–1279). Perfected primarily by the Cheng brothers of the Northern Song and Zhu Xi (1130-1200) of the Southern Song, the Cheng-Zhu school was a fortress of logic, a rigid philosophy of the state. It was a form of Neo-Confucianism, and its system of knowledge differed greatly from the traditional Confucianism that comes from Confucius himself. Confucianism had been updated again and again through the ages since Confucius's time, but at some point it had produced a stark break from reality. The scholars of the time devoted themselves to decorating the classics with new interpretations and drifted further and further from the essence of things. As a result, the hearts of the people wavered, and the order of the nation fell into disorder beyond repair.
Why am I turning to Confucianism again? Because the world today has fallen into exactly the same impasse. The way knowledge works in the world today, like the Cheng-Zhu school of old, leans toward ornament. Essential debate grows thin, and problems are evaded with words. Under such a way of knowing, the hearts of the people are cast adrift, and the order of nations, indeed the order of the world, is descending into chaos. To me, the modern world resonates with the age in which Wang Yangming appeared.
Yangmingism, which values practice and not only devotion to knowledge, was seen as dangerous in the rigid China of that time. Yet as the suppression of Yangmingism grew, its teaching crossed the sea, as if led by some strange affinity, and reached Japan. It is not clear exactly when it arrived, but the seeds had already been sown by the Sengoku period (戦国), the Warring States period, an age of turmoil in which people's hearts were desolate and warriors across the land fought fierce wars for supremacy under the banner of unifying the country. Through the warlords Nobunaga Oda (1545–1582) and Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1537–1598), who came close to unifying the whole country, the framework of a unified state was effectively completed when Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543–1616) founded the Edo shogunate. It was here that Ieyasu began to search for a philosophy of governance to inaugurate the new regime.
At this point, a man hailed as the finest mind of the age, Seika Fujiwara (1561–1619), was summoned. Reading the anecdotes about Seika, it is certain that Yangming thought had reached him within his lifetime. At the very least, between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the thoughts of Wang Yangming had crossed over to Japan. The basic texts of Yangmingism seem to have entered Japan by then, and probably reached his hands through certain routes. That means that at the very dawn of the Edo period, two great currents of thought that would profoundly shape Japan's spiritual history were already in place: the Zhu Xi school (Shushigaku), derived from Zhu Xi, which would support the regime, and Yangmingism, derived from Wang Yangming, which raises the individual spirit to its limit. Throughout the Edo period, the samurai known as the Yangming school lived outwardly under the firm order of Zhu Xi thought, yet quietly sharpened their claws. They were not mere students. They became a kind of revolutionary element, questioning the very principles of the regime and acting on their own innate moral knowing.
Several such figures emerged, but the Meiji Restoration at the end of the shogunate, the greatest surge of history, was also carried out under the leadership of samurai who believed in Yangmingism. Yangmingism always questions the root of the governing philosophy and sets itself right against it, but it must not be mistaken for a mere ideology of radical revolution.
In truth, there were many adherents of the Yangming school who did not take such direct action. But what I want to focus on this time is the relationship between teacher and disciple behind the way this philosophy was handed down. It was not Wang Yangming himself who left many books; behind the transmission of Yangmingism stood a single disciple. His name was Xu Ai (1487-1517). He was Wang Yangming’s brother-in-law and the very first disciple to devote himself to Yangming’s teachings and way of life. He was the gifted young man who watched Wang Yangming's philosophy develop from the closest place.
Yangming himself, like other sages before him, disliked fixing his teaching in writing, because it would harden into an empty shell and be handed down that way. Xu Ai, however, recorded his teacher's words one by one with care. His intent was urgent. These were the turbulent Ming years. Those who took office, like Yangming and his followers, were often banished to remote lands or forced to move repeatedly; there was no guarantee they could always study by Yangming’s side. When that happened, weak-willed people like themselves would be unable to train while facing their teacher directly. So the only way was to leave his words behind and take them as food for daily practice. By that reasoning, "we must leave them," he took up the brush himself and gathered Yangming's teachings.
Tragically, Xu Ai departed this world at the young age of thirty-one, preceding Wang Yangming. However, the will he left behind was inherited by other disciples, and Yangming's teachings came to fruition as a single book, the Denshuroku. The book drifted across the sea to Japan, where it deeply moved men of purpose who worried about the state of things and cared in earnest about the future, and it became a force that actually changed history. I too am drawn to Yangmingism, and with the Denshuroku as a book I love to read, I touch every day the heat of those who came before.
Teacher and disciple. There is one more story to tell about this relationship. Long ago, an unknown monk crossed from Japan to Tang China in search of the Buddha's teaching. To cross the sea toward the Tang, then the most advanced civilization, was truly a matter of life and death. Four ships set out, including the one carrying this young monk, and two were swallowed by storms and never arrived. Having crossed the brink of death and somehow reached the continent, the young monk felt that fate had sided with him so that he could fulfill his mission, and from that day he threw himself into fierce study.
In those same years he studied Sanskrit script with a monk who had come from India, and he knocked at the gate of a man in Chang'an, then a metropolis of the world, who was among the most eminent monks of the age. There was an exceptional man who had thought through Buddhism properly, at a time when it was already growing vague. This was Huiguo (746–805). The moment he saw the unknown young man from Japan, he said, "I have been waiting for you." Aware that his own life was running out, Huiguo, sparing even his sleep, poured into this young monk from a foreign land all the deepest teachings of Esoteric Buddhism, which would normally take decades to master. Chang'an was a place where young men wishing to learn Buddhism gathered from all over the world, and naturally, it was overflowing with brilliant young Chinese monks. Esoteric Buddhism is taught in Sanskrit script, which takes even people from India more than ten years to master. That this nameless young monk had applied for a twenty-year study plan suggests just how much learning in that era was a lifelong endeavor.
He was fortunate to have met Huiguo, the finest teacher of his day, and, convinced that he had "luck," he gave all his strength to learning. Their exchange was surely not the hard study of a modern university but "living learning," charged with extraordinary heat. And then, one year and ten months later, his teacher Huiguo said to the young monk, "I have taught you everything. Return to Japan as soon as you can and teach this to the people." Having said so, the teacher sank down and soon passed away. He died as if to say that, having passed everything on to an unknown monk from another land, his role was done.
At this point, it is said that Huiguo had five or six thousand disciples, yet no one else had mastered the teachings in such a short period—let alone a nameless monk from Japan. Those around could not hide their astonishment. The monk then wrote, on behalf of all the disciples, the inscription for his teacher's stele, and as if his twenty-year study application mattered not at all, he returned to Japan merely two years later. The year was 806. The monk's name was Kukai (774–835). He is known for achievements of many kinds, among them bringing Esoteric Buddhism to Japan and opening the pilgrimage of the henro.
Departing Chang'an and arriving at Dazaifu in Kyushu, the monk looked out at the sea he had traversed. Before setting out he had been a monk without a name; now, having received all his teacher's teachings, he stood again on his homeland's soil. He was overcome with emotion. The words he murmured then were:
"Empty I went, full I returned" (虚しく往きて実ちて帰る, munashiku yukite michite kaeru).
Even in the modern age, many people leave their homelands, resolved to death, to learn foreign cultures or to struggle to integrate into foreign communities and societies. Many have such experiences. But that lonely struggle, placing oneself in a wholly different cultural sphere where one cannot fit in or understand, and resolving to get through it alone, in resolve and in deed, is the very origin of Kukai's words, "Empty I went." Such experiences greatly raise the quality of a person's life and become the driving force that living gradually takes on.
And before you know it, once you cross a certain point—whether in study or anything else—matters proceed as smoothly as flowing water; this is a self-evident fact to those who hold such experience. It is the same when learning the community or culture of another country; cross that point, and it enters you effortlessly. Until you cross that point, how earnestly can you make the effort? How earnestly can you cling to it? At such times, I believe, the presence of a teacher matters greatly.
I too have such a teacher, who is still living and who over the last ten years has kept changing my life profoundly. In that sense, there is only one thing those of us who are disciples can do: keep doing, steadily, what we are able to do.
Exactly one year ago, I began writing articles on Substack. I wrote various pieces, but it was truly a continuous process of trial and error; I myself did not fully understand what I should be writing. Assuming I would write down my daily contemplations like a diary, I released them one after another. That is because I am by nature quick to take fire and quick to tire, and I am poor at sticking to one theme. Since my thoughts shift daily, I thought to deliver them to readers in the freshest state possible, like organic ingredients direct from the farm. But after about a year of this, I felt strongly that the times had changed greatly and my way of working had to change greatly too. I began to think seriously not about simply presenting Japan as a subject, but about how, having made that culture and spirit my own, I might touch readers in other countries. That was exactly one month ago.
So, as one line of exploration, I changed my direction substantially about a month ago. It may be only the start of a new round of trial and error, a new experiment. Looking back on this past year, though, I can feel that I have gained a different skill. It comes from a current everyone has lived through worldwide in 2025: the explosive progress of video-generating AI.
In fact, while video generation services existed before, they were not at a level that could be seriously utilized. But the tide turned at once when OpenAI released Sora early this year. After that, companies competed fiercely and made explosive progress, and before long we arrived at an age in which anyone can make video of considerable quality. I have followed this year's developments in some detail while making my own work. Now, as the culmination of what I have done this year, and because it has been exactly one year since I began Shitsurae, I made a promotional video from that standpoint.
That anyone can now work in the medium of video is, I think, a true revolution, because it could not be done a year ago. What was entirely impossible when I began writing these articles is effortlessly possible a year later. All of us are already living in the future.
Anyone who has learned the culture of another country and tried to translate it into English, or into their own language, will understand: when you cross from one cultural sphere to another, the language changes, and you inevitably run into "untranslatability." Untranslatability is a limit. Somewhere there is a critical point at which essences and nuances that translation cannot carry are stripped away, and how to deal with it is the heart of multicultural communication. In my case, I have accepted it to a degree and lean toward letting those parts go. But I have long held a complementary idea: to present in video the elements of those other cultures that, in text alone, I have to give up because of language.
Unlike text, visual communication lets such realms be seen, so there remains room to convey through expression what untranslatability blocks in words, though not perfectly. I watched this year's rise of AI video generation and honed my skills, and I believe that intuition was right.
But there is an interesting problem here, and it will probably be the greatest theme in how I relate to AI: the difference in linguistic structure. Programming shows it: the base language is English. Even with generative AI, when I type prompts for video or image generation, Japanese is of course supported, but for precision I often still have to write in English. That is because AI fundamentally runs on the rules of English, and I take it as an absolute premise that this is a technology of the "Subjective Language Mode," a language with a subject. Against the technical manners of the Subjective Language Mode, Japanese has the manners of the "Predicative Language Mode," and from them many cultural forms were born. I am convinced that yohaku (余白), wabi-sabi (侘び寂び), and zen are so widely welcomed because the language is different, not because of their content.
Thinking this through, my greatest theme from here is how to make the cultural and spiritual expressions of the Predicative Language realm resonate with a technology born of the Subjective Language Mode, which is AI. I have spent this year exploring that possibility. So when I use AI, I begin by thoroughly drilling into it the particular sensibility, manners, and many modes of expression of the Predicative Language Mode. By my own senses I have already confirmed that AI, whatever the instruction, whether the answer is an image, a video, music, or text, replies in the modes of expression of the Subjective Language realm.
That is not what I am after. I am thinking about how to bring out a cultural sensibility that comes from the Predicative Language. Over this past year I have worked with various AIs to explore that possibility. I cannot yet express all of my intent, but I feel I can do a little of it now. It is condensed in this promotional video, which you might call the presentation of the year's culmination.
In every age, for everyone, meeting a good teacher makes a disciple leap forward. I feel strongly now that this is true of me, and that it was true of the great figures of history. Our predecessors passed on a relay of knowledge at the risk of their lives, across barriers of language and culture. To take up that baton and leave it behind as my own Denshuroku, in the new vessel of today's technology, may be the mission of those of us alive now.