35歳を迎えてTurning Thirty-Five

Today, I welcome the age of thirty-five. In the seven-year cycle theory once advocated by the pedagogue Rudolf Steiner, this age marks a turning point, an entry into a new stage of growth. The sixth cycle, beginning at thirty-five and continuing until forty-two, is positioned as a period for the awakening of one's calling. Put simply, it is a time when one must know their own limitations; a time to cease directing one's gaze solely upon oneself, and instead ask how one might use that self to act for others and for society. The preceding cycle—the fifth, spanning from twenty-eight to thirty-five—was defined as a period of facing spiritual crises, a time to refine and cultivate oneself by turning away from outward expansion and toward inward growth. Looking back, I have indeed spent the seven years since the age of twenty-eight moving across the various lands of Japan, undertaking a solitary pilgrimage in search of origins. I can thus concur with Steiner’s insight that human beings possess a seven-year cycle of maturation.

On the other hand, Confucius, the sage of ancient Confucianism, argued: "At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts." Since thirty implies "independence" and forty implies "freedom from vacillation," the age of thirty-five corresponds exactly to the boundary between them. It teaches us that we are in a phase of standing upon our own feet and, from that vantage point, seizing the opportunity to re-examine ourselves as we move toward the next stage of unclouded clarity. Therefore, this age can be described as a trial period: can one remain standing until the end, even while being swayed right and left by great currents? In this season of life, when one interacts most intimately with external existences—others, family, society, the nation, the world—can one survive without being swallowed by the tides outside? It is at this age that a great multitude of people lose sight of themselves. For this very reason, I believe that thorough introspection and trial and error at thirty-five are critically important for the future that follows. After all, if one cannot remain on the stage until the end, one will vanish from the scene before ever reaching the state Confucius described as "At fifty, I knew the mandate of Heaven."

Of course, during this period, being shaken by external circumstances is unavoidable. Yet, the question remains: can I pierce through with the individual self I have cultivated thus far, and continue to advance without stagnation? This inquiry circulates within my brain day and night, making me feel that I am standing in a season of transformation. Ultimately, it may be a difficult era where one is tested on whether they can live with their own convictions as a compass, never surrendering their own self to external entities, no matter what occurs. At this juncture, the importance of the vision—what kind of future one is depicting—rises significantly. Another crucial point, as Steiner presented, is that the next seven years leading to age forty-two constitute a stage where, having passed through a period of self-reflection, one finally fulfills their mission toward the outside world in the truest sense. In other words, it is a time to continue asking what one can do for others and society, how one can contribute through one's deeds, and then to continue executing those answers.

The question reached when thinking in this way is: "For what purpose, exactly, was I born?" Regarding my view of life and death, I believe in reincarnation, a concept common in Japan, but at the same time, I believe that before dwelling on this earth, the human soul makes a decision, by itself, to be born into a specific era, place, and family. This can be interpreted as daring to choose those temporal conditions and that location to fulfill the soul's mission. Therefore, the fact that I was born in Japan in 1991 and have walked with Japan for thirty-five years was indispensable for realizing my true mission and fulfilling it. The year 1991 was a time when the nation moved from high economic growth into the bubble economy, only to see the signs of collapse that would awaken it from its frenzy. Around this era, multiple critical elements that form today's times occurred: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the beginning of globalization led by the United States, and the spread of the personal computer.

Viewed broadly, this was a turning point that asked how Japan and the Japanese people, within a global world, would utilize their past experiences to accept international responsibility, and how they would cooperate by doing what only the Japanese could do. It was also the genuine dawn of the era of digital technology. However, looking at the history that followed as a result, Japan clung to its past, refused to discard its experiences of success, turned its eyes away from the fact that the era had begun to shift drastically, and steered its helm rapidly toward a national seclusion. Thus, Japan's image in the global world was damaged over the years, and it became completely isolated from the currents of digital technology as well. The result of ignoring this bidirectional turning point appeared most conspicuously in the nation's soft power, symbolized by J-content and K-content. The turning point had occurred in 1997.

The collapse of Yamaichi Securities, which announced its voluntary closure in November 1997, became a symbolic event of the breakdown of the bubble economy that began with the Plaza Accord of 1985. Meanwhile, in the same month as the Yamaichi collapse, the neighboring country of South Korea faced a turning point leading to IMF management due to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. At this moment, in these two neighboring East Asian nations, the limitations of continuing with past methods became obvious. Here, Japan headed toward a future that strengthened the inward-looking phenomenon of national withdrawal, while South Korea decided to steer toward a global world, heading outside the nation to explore new possibilities. While the difference in national fiscal strength may be considered a reason, I believe it was a decisive difference between "adherence to the past" and "belief in the future." That is, at the end of the same year, 1997, Japan stopped moving, clinging to past success, while South Korea decided to discard past success and move by their own volition. This difference in action became a remarkable divergence in the decision of whether to ceaselessly update one's own operating system or to proceed through a global era of changed rules while keeping the old one. This led to a massive bifurcation in the futures of two countries with a long shared history.

At the time, in Japan, a robust consumer market of over 100 million people existed domestically, and there was a mood that the hard power and soft power of neighboring countries would not threaten Japan. On the other hand, in South Korea, which had experienced fiscal collapse, many people flew to the U.S. West Coast, where they ambitiously learned the most advanced content creation and dissemination methods of the United States. Above all, it goes without saying that all human beings age. Although the future of Japan's declining birthrate and aging population was already understood at the time, the Japanese government took no measures. As a result, Japanese companies that looked only at the domestic market suffered a succession of global defeats, and the hard power that once swept the world was rapidly lost. Even with a domestic market of over 100 million, the demographic that makes up the workforce retires year by year, causing consumption to lose its vigor. Consequently, Japanese companies are inevitably forced to look globally, but it is already too late. The rise of Korean companies during this interval is known to all, and in the future of the era shifts of the 1990s, Japan succumbed to South Korea in hard power. However, Japan’s defeat was not limited to hard power; it was the same for soft power.

Korean immigrants who mastered the American style of global strategy in the Koreatowns of the U.S. West Coast remixed the sensibilities of East Asia, including their motherland, South Korea. They then placed this upon the U.S. global strategy and began to unfold an offensive of soft power. K-content, spearheaded by music, drama, and film, swept the world market in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, beauty and other industries riding this tide were launched strategically, creating a cumulative effect. The fact that KPop Demon Hunters dominated the Golden Globe Awards this month can be said to be the most symbolic event. For originally, it would be strange if Japan, possessing manga, anime, and J-pop, were not standing in this position. However, the future did not unfold that way, and we face a result where Korean soft power wins an overwhelming victory globally. This, too, is entirely a reflection of the consequences of the decisions made when both countries faced the national fiscal crisis of 1997: one decided to turn inward, the other outward. In other words, Japan’s miserable decline today was already determined at that time.

Having been completely defeated in both soft and hard power, Japan’s degree of downfall is evident in various international statistics. The Japanese labor force, once called diligent, has already been surpassed in nominal GDP per capita by South Korea and Taiwan in the last few years. The national inward-looking tendency that arose about thirty years ago has become a pathology that visibly thins the relationships between people. The WORLD GIVING INDEX RANKINGS is an interesting statistic for understanding how giving and mutual help are practiced, and for the past several years, Japan has belonged to the bottom tier. Furthermore, Tokyo, which leads Japan, ranks first in the world in sleepjunkie's "The Cities with The Highest Burnout." Innumerable international indicators show this Japanese decline, but this can also be understood through visceral sensation. Just within the thirty-five years I have lived, the atmosphere of Japanese society has clearly changed. And not in a good direction; it has become harsher. This is an impression held not only by me but also by my friends. The collapse of human relationships is proceeding at an accelerated pace, and because people severed from community form the mass of the urban areas, a situation where vitality is lost has inevitably occurred.

And the global overtourism of this last decade has produced a mechanism that detects a certain national lie. That is the rapid increase in the number of inbound visitors to Japan. Shifting from a situation in the 2010s overwhelmingly dominated by Chinese travelers, the post-pandemic figure of travelers has seen Westerners become quite prominent. Until now, due to geographical distance and language barriers, the fiction Japan broadcast to the world was never seen through, no matter how fully the lie was pushed to the fore. However, as a result of the explosive global increase in people visiting Japan for the first time, the fact that Japan's growth myth is a complete lie has come to be known by many through direct, visceral sensation. In short, the lies of politicians on the international stage, which ignored the actual conditions of Japan, were unexpectedly exposed by overtourism. After all, there is no country other than Japan where one goes out to find only the elderly, and where even animal trails where no people pass are beautifully paved. This is clear proof that the state system has been privatized by a select few. As this was sensed physically by travelers through overtourism, Japan's decline entered a rapid development. That is the collapse of the Japanese government bond market, reported this week as the "Takaichi Shock" or "Sanae Shock." In other words, the primary cause is not merely the concern over fiscal deterioration due to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s declaration of the dissolution of the Lower House and her campaign pledges. Rather, it is a symbolic event signifying that Japan can finally no longer deceive the world's media and investors. Put simply, it has become globally apparent that Japan is living a lavish life far removed from the actual economy.

Personally, I view Japan since the 1990s as a "Nation of Concealment." This is because the background supporting Japan's growth myth was the result of multifaceted malfeasance: organizational masquerades such as data falsification, concealment by mass media that neither pursued nor reported the truth, and the privatization of systems by certain administrators. They were able to disguise these things and deceive the world because of physical distance and the wall of the Japanese language. However, these have crumbled away brittlely due to recent overtourism and the rise of AI. Overtourism became the power to see through lies via visceral sensation, and AI nullified the linguistic obstacles. As a result, the pathologies of Japan's various problems, which had hardly been known internationally, were exposed one after another. This is showing influence in many directions, but it is typical that while K-pop achieved a global leap, J-pop fell to the earth due to the criminal acts of Johnny Kitagawa of Johnny & Associates, who was called the Emperor. To begin with, even regarding this incident, the Japanese media reported nothing; it moved toward a global issue via an accusation by the BBC in the UK, routed through independent voices on digital platforms. Even after that, the Japanese media has pursued nothing at all.

Such instances are countless. Some of the hegemons of vested interests, called the "Dons" of their respective worlds, are still alive, but once they perish, the incidents that have been hidden until now will likely be known one after another. All is the result of Japan thinking only of maintaining vested interests by withdrawing into seclusion in the 1990s, instead of heading toward a global transparent society. Thus, the present moment is the time when Japan's figure—having lost both hard and soft power, and having abandoned the currents of digital technology—is being exposed to the world. This is not something that happened recently; it has been formed over the system of the last thirty years, and further by the second Abe administration of the 2010s and the current Takaichi administration, which identifies itself as his legitimate successor. Hence, it is called the "Lost 30 Years," but we have already plunged into the "Lost 40 Years," and it feels as though the day when the fiction called Japan reaches its limit is approaching year by year. In proportion to this, the thinning of relationships between people deepens. In short, the image called Japan is already coming to its end.

Now, we can return to the opening question. That question is: assuming my soul decided to be born as a Japanese person in Japan facing this era, and even if I do not know how long I will live, if I base my thoughts on the experience of facing this figure of decline in reality, what mission exactly was I born into this world to fulfill? In the vortex of this upheaval, what do I feel, what mission will I discover within it, and how will I execute it? Even if that mission is ultimately directed toward the future of Japan and the Japanese people, how will I face the responsibilities of the wider world, and how will I fulfill that mission? That is, asking myself thoroughly whether I possess an open attitude to learn earnestly from the world, with the major premise that I myself will not repeat Japan’s past failures. Actually, this is the most difficult thing for me. Therefore, I strongly resolve to make the coming seven years a period to earnestly overcome this point, which I feel is a wall for my own self.

My mission is not yet clear, but I have a premonition that the key likely lies within the exploration of Japan that I have cultivated over the past seven years or so. It will likely be born based on that, or in a form that arises from further refinement and cultivation. At the same time, I feel this may be the most difficult thing for a Japanese person, but one must never turn inward. Now that the fiction of "Japan and the Japanese" has collapsed globally, next, we must survive an era where this fiction meets its systemic collapse domestically. And this situational context of the era closely resembles the Meiji Restoration that created modern Japan 160 years ago. The disastrous state of the final years of the Edo Shogunate system, led by the Tokugawa Shogun family which lasted for about 300 years, has many points of close resemblance to the present. And the people who anticipated the collapse of the Shogunate system successively advocated for the image of a leader appropriate for the next era.

In fact, Shoin Yoshida, a young leader of the Choshu Domain who became a pivot of the Meiji Restoration and whose students occupied key positions in the new Meiji government, preached that the best future to protect Japan’s independence was to sense the advanced technologies, cultures, political systems, and societies of overseas nations with one's own skin, and upon that, to nurture true leaders capable of gazing at Japan with a broad perspective. Pushed by this conviction, Hirobumi Ito and Kaoru Inoue secretly left the country for London, learned for about two years, and returned to build modern Japan. Besides them, countless young and ambitious people studied in Germany, France, the United States, and elsewhere, absorbing the West and becoming the driving force that formed modern Japan. This figure is exactly what occurred in South Korea in the late 1990s.

Will a revolution comparable to the Meiji Restoration occur in Japan in the future?

Until that day comes, I spent this day as a thirty-five-year-old bracing myself once again to fulfill my own mission and to continue standing without surrendering to my convictions.