新年に、目標の先へBeyond the New Year’s Resolution

As we stand at the threshold of 2026, it is a common human experience to witness many formulate resolutions for the year, only for few to retain them until year’s end, and fewer still to achieve them. The act of setting a goal becomes the goal itself; one becomes satisfied merely by the formulation, eventually losing sight of what the goal was for in the first place. This is far removed from the authentic act of "establishing one's will". It occurs because one is tossed about by hesitation, intervened by self-interest and private desire. Indeed, while it is customary in Japan for multitudes to visit shrines and temples early in the New Year to offer prayers, the reality is that for the majority, these supplications have devolved into mere expressions of private greed. The Gods and Buddhas are not so foolish as to heed the self-centered avarice of individuals.

Precisely because such disorientation has permeated society at large, it seems necessary now, with a purified heart, to turn our eyes to the teachings of our predecessors, to face them with sincerity, and to commence the first step of the New Year. We consume our days in busyness, and it has become a shared feeling among us all that opportunities to gaze upon what it truly means to live have become rare. Under such circumstances, one cannot establish the will that serves as the axis of life; and because there is no will, there is no cultivation, only a descent into wandering. Though there may be vast disparities in wealth, the span of twenty-four hours is the sole asset bestowed equally upon all humanity. Since not everyone can become the 0.1% of billionaires, is it not in how one employs this singular asset of time that the true sensibility of modern man is revealed?

It is a mistake to equate the usage of time with efficiency; rather, it lies first and foremost in "establishing one's will." Without this establishment of will, there is no scholarship, nor is there work. Yet, the modern age has inverted this, presuming scholarship and work exist without the establishment of will, and this inversion has become generalized. The act of establishing one's will has been transmuted into "career," ossified into the hollow forms of LinkedIn profiles. However, the true essence of establishing one's will is entirely divorced from social estimation. What I felt painfully throughout 2025 is that everything has shifted too far out of alignment; stepping into individual problems one by one solves nothing. It is easy to say the "whole" is the problem, but it is rarely perceived that this "whole" resides in the very ground of civilization itself—or more precisely, the ground upon which modern people conduct their thinking. Through the realizations of this past year, I have solidified my resolve for 2026: not to view matters from the perspective of reviewing individual problems, but to concentrate all my energies on the displacement of this ground itself.

Now, in this global era, each individual harbors diverse ideologies, principles, faiths, and ways of thinking. While one cannot speak of things in sweeping generalizations as in the past, if one has lived life with some measure of depth, one will inevitably find those things and thoughts that are cherished in living. If these are born of a true heart, then even if there are surface differences between people, the interior substance often allows us to say we are the same.

I myself am not of a disposition to adhere rigidly to a single way of thinking; rather, I have taken the stance of learning what is necessary for me at the time, only in the amount necessary. Therefore, I cannot devote myself to scholarship centered on a single theme year-round. As you can understand if you saw yesterday’s photo essay, it suits my nature better to move while holding multiple themes simultaneously. However, that is merely the surface story. When it comes to the inner axis, I suspect that not only I, but anyone—surprisingly enough—believes in a rather limited philosophy or faith. And usually, this is not something newly proposed recently, but something for which the answer already lies within the classics. Those who live facing themselves with sincerity, unswayed by the times, will likely agree with this.

In fact, while I live mixing diverse themes on the surface, the root that serves as the axis of my will—in other words, the source of my driving force—stands upon a rather limited thought, or perhaps I should say, conviction. Of course, at the bottom of this lies my own strong passion and spirit of inquiry, but year by year, I feel the image that the decorative elements I have learned in such variety throughout my life are being stripped away, and ultimately, only a specific philosophy remains. As everyone has likely experienced, it is impossible to set a firm axis in one’s twenties; in one’s thirties, one continues in a subtle state where an axis seems to exist yet does not; in one’s forties, the axis is finally fixed; and in one’s fifties, that axis ceases to waver. Then, it is only in one’s sixties that one can finally perform true work from that axis. The axis of life is not something easily settled. Yet, it is the profound logic of life that only those who continue to search for the axis in the dark, who continue to move forward without giving up regardless of their circumstances, will, before they know it, acquire an unwavering axis.

For me, at 34, I can hardly claim to have acquired this unwavering axis. However, through recent experiences, I have gained the sensation of having caught a slight glimpse of it. From the latter half of 2025 through the end of the year, I personally endured the worst days of my life, a time of anguish tossed about by extreme stress. What differed from the past, however, is that while previously I would have lost myself, surrendered everything to emotion, and exploded, this time I was able to observe the movement of my emotions amidst the turmoil. Furthermore, amidst this worst of events, I was able to strongly realize and experience that this was the time when my past learning would truly demonstrate its meaning.

In other words, I became convinced that the true essence of scholarship lies in whether or not one can practically employ one's learning to surmount the predicament when facing unexpected events—those unforeseen occurrences that visit everyone in life. For me, spending my days burdened with stress in the midst of a dire situation, this was a critically important realization and conviction.

What was particularly interesting was that when I fell into this worst-case scenario, despite having learned various things independently until then, I found that the majority of it could be used for killing time or expanding knowledge during peaceful times, but was utterly useless in an actual crisis or under the worst conditions. I realized, in short, that most scholarship is not practical against the various events into which humans actually fall. To be not practical means it cannot serve as true learning in life. Around mid-November, while harboring this anguish, it suddenly occurred to me that knowledge is meaningless unless it can be used. Looking back, my attempt to experiment with this through Shitsurae was the moment this realization was born.

Most intriguing of all was that, even in this situation, there was just one discipline that was extremely practical. In fact, through the cultivation of that discipline, I was able to somehow hold my ground without collapsing during this worst period, and instead of being crushed by a helpless situation, I managed to overcome it. That was the philosophy of the Ming dynasty Confucian scholar Wang Yangming (1472-1529), which I had begun to mention little by little recently. The background to my touching upon Wang Yangming’s Yangmingism since the end of last year lay in this practical experience within my personal psychology.

What I realized simultaneously here is that, perhaps because the image of Japan is too strongly associated with Shinto, Zen, other Buddhist sects, or aesthetics, it is not well known that Confucianism forms the root of the Japanese spirit and culture. Furthermore, now that I have passed through this experience of an actual predicament, I have been able to self-consciously grasp—not merely as intellectual understanding but within my own actual experience—why people in history appeared in Japan reacting against the Zhu Xi school of Neo-Confucianism (founded by Zhu Xi, 1130-1200) and becoming infatuated with Wang Yangming’s Yangmingism. This was not a matter of theoretical difference between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, but something deeper. This will likely become a turning point in my future life.

The understanding born from actual experience—that there is almost no scholarship in the world practical for life—serves as a shocking departure point for me. Conversely, doubt arises: what, then, is the majority of scholarship doing? I was able to grasp, not through historical knowledge but in the reality of living, that this critical axis born of actual experience manifests as the critical consciousness held by the Yangming school against the ossified Zhu Xi school, from the Edo period (1603-1868)—Japan’s era of Confucianism—to the present day. In short, what I grasped through my personal life from late 2025 to the beginning of 2026 is the conviction that "knowledge is devoid of meaning unless it can be wielded." And this is the very attitude of Wang Yangming.

Wang Yangming preached four mental attitudes regarding learning to those who entered his gate to pursue scholarship. These four teachings are called the "Shigenkyo” [四言教] and have been emphasized in Yangmingism as the fundamental basis of learning. The pioneer who spread these Four Maxims in Japan was Miwa Shissai (1669-1744), a Confucian scholar of the Edo period who introduced Yangmingism to Japan. Miwa Shissai was born in Kyoto and moved to Edo in his late teens. There, he mastered Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism, which was the official academy of the Shogunate, and his talent was so superior that he was entrusted as a lecturer around the age of 20. However, in his early twenties, he realized the limitations of Zhu Xi thought. As a result of running about seeking a new learning, he had a fateful encounter with the works of Nakae Toju (1608-1648), the founder of Japanese Yangmingism who had passed away before Shissai was born. Through the works on Yangmingism left by Nakae Toju, he devoted himself to the thought of Wang Yangming.

Thus, the young Miwa Shissai, harboring doubts about the trend of glorifying Zhu Xi thought at the time, perceived the character of Zhu Xi thought: while it is certainly effective as a governing philosophy for the regime centering on the Edo Shogunate, this is limited to times when the regime is relatively strong. Once it faces unstable upheaval, it is merely a play of knowledge, serving no use in the real. On the other hand, he believed that while Yangmingism—which was almost unknown at the time—was inconvenient for the administrators on the side of the regime (the Shogunate and domains) aiming for total control, there was nothing more practical than Yangmingism when gazing at the stark, naked state of a human truly living.

Living in the first half of the 18th century, a century after the establishment of the Edo Shogunate in 1603, Miwa Shissai predicted that if scholarship continued to be solely dominated by Zhu Xi thought, the future would be extremely perilous. He spent his life fighting a solitary battle to create a new axis called Yangmingism. This was not a dualistic viewpoint of Zhu Xi bad, Yangming good. Rather, Miwa Shissai schemed to balance the situation by establishing Yangmingism simultaneously, fearing that in a climate overly dependent on Zhu Xi thought, when the non-practical aspects of Zhu Xi thought were exposed, governance would become impossible and there would be no means left to act. Personally, I feel Miwa Shissai possessed great foresight. It is particularly important to note the perspective that, as seen in Shissai’s attitude, Japanese Yangming scholars did not actually profess to be anti-Zhu Xi.

Rather, at that time, no one started learning from Yangmingism; without exception, they entered through Zhu Xi thought, and only those few who mastered it and understood its limitations inclined toward Yangmingism in search of new possibilities. Therefore, the people of the Yangming school possessed a character that did not fall into dualism. However, the people of the Zhu Xi school, having strong conceit in Zhu Xi thought’s absolute status as the Shogunate’s official learning, upheld a rigid monism, behaving as if there were no scholarship other than Zhu Xi.

That said, the era in which Miwa Shissai lived was one where the Shogunate’s politics were relatively stable, so there was an aspect where it was unavoidable that Zhu Xi thought was regarded as the one and only absolute scholarship (truth). Thus, Shissai judged that Yangmingism would not spread in his own time. Thinking of the cultivation of future generations, he began to teach Yangmingism as a different option so as not to fall into a total reliance on Zhu Xi thought. This was done in the form of lectures, and the “Shigenkyo Kogi” [四言教講義], which taught the aforementioned Four Maxims bestowed by Wang Yangming to his disciples, was transcribed and published in 1727.

However, although a small number of books seem to have been published in 1727, the structural system led by the Shogunate in the 18th-century Edo period was strongly stable, so the demand for practical scholarship like Yangmingism did not rise significantly. Rather, this era was a quite stable state, symbolized by the popularity of the phrase "Tenka Taihei" (Universal Peace). In fact, the publication of this book spread in 1827, in the late Edo period when the Shogunate’s regime became unstable and a disquieting atmosphere of epochal change spread, and again in 1899, when Japan rushed toward militarism after finishing the Meiji Restoration. In other words, Japan repeats a cycle where Yangmingism is ignored when the ruler’s regime is stable, and gains attention when the regime becomes unstable and the times fall into disquiet.

This is because corruption always lies behind stability, and that corruption is steadily revealed over the years. However, since this stability is inevitably thought of in connection with the power of the regime philosophy—Zhu Xi thought—the tendency to believe in Zhu Xi thought increases further. Under these circumstances, there is no interest in the true value of Yangmingism. Rather, young scholars, much like today, use their heads only for career advancement, so they heighten their tendency to view Zhu Xi thought—which centers on the expansion of knowledge—as absolute. In fact, the 18th century came to welcome the era of total Zhu Xi dominance that Miwa Shissai feared. Here, only the handling of knowledge became the issue, and practicality was out of the question. Therefore, Yangmingism did not come to be evaluated, and a movement of anti-Zhu Xi erupted from an unexpected place. That was the rise of a new scholarship called Kokugaku (National Learning). Considering that the great consummator of Kokugaku, Motoori Norinaga, lived from 1730 to 1801, we can see the circumstances of an era where the rise of Kokugaku was born reactively in correspondence with the Zhu Xi dominance of the 18th century.

Rejection of strong foreign spirits—asserting that Confucianism is the spirit of China and not Japan’s indigenous spirit, and Buddhism is the spirit of the continent and not Japan’s indigenous spirit—was the hallmark of Kokugaku scholars led by Motoori Norinaga. They held a strong anti-Zhu Xi attitude. However, we must not overlook the point that Kokugaku scholars, on the whole, did not possess the perspective of practical scholarship either. Rather, in my eyes, I receive a strong impression that Kokugaku opposed the foreign intellectualism of Zhu Xi thought with a domestic intellectualism. In the sense that they stagnated in intellectualism, I believe there is little difference between 18th-century Zhu Xi thought and Kokugaku. In other words, both Zhu Xi thought and Kokugaku have a tendency to attract attention in eras where regime maintenance is possible, but when the situation falls into one where we must survive a turbulent era in the real, neither is of much use. And the reality of this useless scholarship is exposed more and more as we enter the 19th century.

In fact, since Zhu Xi thought and Kokugaku—which are merely plays of knowledge useful for social career formation in peaceful times—have zero practicality in turbulent times, a drastic reaction against the existing intellectualism of Zhu Xi and Kokugaku occurs once the 18th century ends and the 19th century begins. It is particularly important that a movement to make Kokugaku practical was born from severe criticism: that Zhu Xi thought is useless, but Kokugaku, in the end, is just another type of mere intellectualism like Zhu Xi thought. This was the movement of the warriors of the Mito Domain (present-day Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture), located slightly away from Edo. The scholarship of this Mito Domain was known as a brand throughout the Edo period, also called the Mito School because it possessed its own unique scholarship.

The Mito Domain was one of the domains where the Daimyo was hereditary among the three families originating from the Tokugawa Shogun family—Owari (western Aichi), Kii (Wakayama-southern Mie), and Mito (Mito, Ibaraki). These Three Houses held a family status second only to the Shogun family in Edo and were treated as special existences throughout the Edo period. The Daimyo was called the Mito Tokugawa family and was hereditary for generations. In the Mito Domain, interest in academic education was extremely high from early on under the leadership of the feudal lord, and excellent talents appeared one after another. In particular, they actively incorporated not only Zhu Xi thought but also Shinto and Kokugaku, making it a major base for spiritual creation that mixed various disciplines independently. I view the spirit of the Mito School, nurtured within this Mito Domain, as the existence that became the driving force to practically apply scholarship when the desire for practical learning rose in the 19th century. They seriously placed the problem of how to resolve the non-practical character held by the two major disciplines of the time, Zhu Xi thought and Kokugaku, at the center of their inquiry.

In fact, the scholarship and spirit of the Mito School nurtured within this Mito Domain became the spiritual pillar of the revolutionary movement at the end of the Edo period quite directly. It also served as the base for the rise of the Mito Tengu-to, an armed organization acting as the vanguard of the Sonno Joi movement (the practice of the ideology of revering the Emperor and expelling foreigners).

The limitation of scholarship understood through knowledge, and the limitation of scholarship embodied through actual experience.

If I consider the ability to realize this difference through the experiences of late 2025 as a seedling, I was thinking, while eating Osechi early in the New Year, that it might be one of my responsibilities to grow this seedling over the next few years.