心中論 2On Shinju, Part 2

The absolute limits of the structure of human illusion. Unless each of us thoroughly understands the awareness that communal illusion and individual illusion stand in opposition and the impossibility of the real, every ounce of kinetic energy will inevitably be captured and dissipated by the communal illusion deployed in every corner. People living in advanced nations that have experienced modernization are inevitably subject to the regulation of this illusionary structure, but the problem is that unlike a camouflaged false image spoken of as a materialized enemy, it is the mode of illusion itself and its existence is denied as something invisible. As a result, while the mode of illusion specific to the modern era remains ignored, the affirmation of practical action through the tinkering with established methodologies continues as always, which conversely means there is no other choice but to do so. However, as a cruel and cold fact, movements from this perspective have absolutely no meaning in a world that has experienced the modern. In other words, the modern means that the realization of a society or nation or world desired by the individual is impossible as a major premise.

One could take a sophistical attitude here and escape into the claim that such actions have meaning, but since that brings no result other than postponing the most serious debt for future generations, it is not the method to take. Rather, understanding the impossibility of an individual changing the community from the perspective of illusion seems to be of the utmost importance. If we do not do so, the inevitable conclusion is nothing other than violent revolution. However, even if a revolution is carried out through violence or non-violence, the ground itself remains untouched, so a concealment occurs where the appearance changes but the substance does not move an inch. We who suffer and gasp in this tremendous despair face the fact that the era known as the modern transcends human intelligence, and fighting at the same point as the present no longer holds any meaning.

On the other hand, regardless of the country, for those of us living in a society or world that has achieved modernization in the sense of advanced nations, there is a hint in historically reviewing the state of our native country before it entered modernization. At this time, most people confuse their motherland with bloodlines, but we must view the country of our birth and upbringing through the perspective of illusion. In other words, even if one can claim to be Japanese by blood born of Japanese parents, if one was born and raised in the United States, viewing Japan from the perspective of illusion becomes an error. The hint obtained in this review becomes the greatest weapon we must acquire to extinguish the modern. The principle is the same as when the Choshu and Satsuma domains, which engaged in direct combat with Western powers at the end of the Edo period, realized they could not confront them without possessing modern weaponry and command of military forces. We no longer need to possess things like nuclear weapons but are facing a time when we must hold weapons to extinguish the modern. Needless to say, because this is impossible to realize at the collective level, democratic methods will absolutely not function and will rather fall into a reaction, so this too should be thoroughly discarded. In the first place, we are surrounded by statesmen held captive by the magic of deterrence by nuclear weapons who only think of maintaining the system by setting up virtual enemies one after another. The fact that the day humanity unites is recalled is actually due to the visual effect of communal illusion. In other words, such a future will never be realized.

If one intends to extinguish something, one cannot begin without knowing the opponent that must be extinguished (not in the sense of an enemy). When considering the opposition phenomenon between communal illusion and individual illusion which is a particularly modern character within the invisible structure of illusion, we must premise that the will of the individual cannot change the community. Unless based on this absolute premise, extinguishing communal illusion becomes permanently impossible. Certainly, there is pain and suffering that is emotionally and sentimentally unbearable. Although there are many who wish to transform society or the nation, there are almost none who understand this absolute premise. The reason we become confused when facing this is that although communal illusion is not equal to society or the nation but is a primal characteristic of human existence, communal illusion is positioned as society or the nation. Due to the opposition phenomenon of the individual against the community born from illusion, the individual accomplishes self-domestication into the system, causing survival in a world where one functions only as a social agent. What is important is that this self-domestication into the system does not occur through domination but occurs actively. However, due to the visual effect possessed by this modern communal illusion, the social agent is not myself but becomes inverted as if it were myself. Now that modernization has progressed, the majority of humanity has lost sight of its own existence, but that is an inevitability arising from being unable to distinguish the mode of illusion.

Particular caution is required in that when the opposition phenomenon between communal illusion and individual illusion becomes the self-domestication of the individual into the system in the history of modernization, we humans here lose sight of the realm of individual illusion. However, since instability would then appear in human survival, the communal illusion side generates and employs individualism to buffer it. All modern characters, not limited to individualism, were not invented by some human individual but generated by the communal illusion side. The inventor merely extracted it from the communal illusion side. Through this action, the reality of individual illusion blurs, and it becomes impossible to clearly determine whether what I believe to be "I" is truly me or a fabricated me. This is an action due to the vision of the illusionary dimension that occurs when individual illusion is extinguished by communal illusion, but due to this vision we become unable to resolve doubts regarding existence. One should understand the historicity that this tendency is something carried out over a vast length of time and does not happen in a few years. Then individual illusion effectively vanishes from my world, so I equals you, and the scope of "us" constantly moves toward a transference that indicates the community. Generalization occurs through this and commodification occurs, but once plunging into this state, one becomes unable to place the location of a definite identity against one's own origins. To give a prominent example, it appears in various fields in a form as if culture has already vanished from fashion. Although the disappearance of culture from fashion is unrelated to the advent of AI, humans already hold an arbitrary stipulation of AI as a non-cultural existence. At this time, as a phenomenon occurring in the illusionary realm, it is not seen through that this is the absolutization of communal illusion.

Due to this absolutization of communal illusion, what we must discern is that the last possibility does not lie in the reinstatement of the individual illusion side which continues to be mistakenly combined. To speak more clearly, it is not the reinstatement of the individual. When understanding this precondition, it should become visible that the only form of illusion that confronts communal illusion and extinguishes communal illusion is pair illusion, which has gradually lost intensity since the modern era and whose existence itself is now forgotten. I position this as the future, the light, the hope, and the possibility. And what is most critical is to re-acknowledge the fact that some of our predecessors sensed the mental abnormality occurring in this process.

If asked what kind of people presented the abnormality of the process toward the absolutization of communal illusion, I think the start is to grasp that the mental conflict of the creator appears prominently in the works left by artists who have expressed in various forms the modes of illusion that are generally difficult to verbalize or things that can only be called sensibility. What should be seen is not the signified of the art work but the subtle movement of the heart that it revealed. Therefore I focused on Chikamatsu Monzaemon this time, but based on what has been stated so far, speaking from the perspective of opposing pair illusion which is the only hope of the future against communal illusion, it becomes visible that we should focus on the "Shinju" (double suicide) he expressed. Needless to say, Shinju is not merely suicide. I capture this Shinju back as the most radical act in the structure of illusion.

The era in which Chikamatsu Monzaemon was active corresponds to the cultural peak around a century after the start of the Edo period. At the time, the hegemony of the samurai which spanned several centuries was facing a major periodic shift where its intensity was shaken by the rise of the merchant class. This agitation should be grasped as having occurred not through historical events but through the "heat" brewed by humans. The existence called Chikamatsu Monzaemon who abandoned the samurai class himself in this new era and transferred to the merchants holding only his own existence. What we must see is the movement of the heart of one human who continued to walk with the merchants and the world seen from there. This is because the problem of the three phases of individual illusion, pair illusion, and communal illusion is disclosed brilliantly. Moreover, the illusionary structure in the dimension of Chikamatsu Monzaemon does not abundantly retain an undifferentiated state like primitive or ancient people, and while it has not reached complete separation, it has already reached separation to the limit.

The intense tension caused by the friction of this illusionary structure. What manifests this prominently is Sonezaki Shinju (Double Suicides at Sonezaki) produced by Chikamatsu Monzaemon around 1703. The setting of Sonezaki Shinju is exactly the neighborhood of current Umeda, Osaka. The Tsuyu no Tenjinsha shrine, called Ohatsu Tenjin by the people of Osaka, is established here even now, but the original work was based on an actual event where this area became the stage. In 1703, two lovers, Tokubei aged 25 who worked at a soy sauce shop managed by his uncle and Ohatsu aged 21 who was placed in the Tenmaya brothel, had vowed to marry in the future, but Tokubei's uncle was proceeding with a story to have the business-enthusiastic Tokubei marry his own niece and possess a new store in distant Edo. However, because Tokubei was in love with Ohatsu, he did not accept the marriage proposal and rejected his uncle saying there could be no wife for him other than Ohatsu. The uncle, enraged that Tokubei would not readily consent, went to the place where Tokubei's stepmother lived, handed over a large sum of money, and settled the matter on his own. Tokubei protested fiercely upon learning this, but naturally, the uncle would not allow a marriage with a courtesan for Tokubei whom he viewed as his successor. This was something that happened normally at the time. Courtesans generally had no choice but to wash their hands of the brothel through a method called redemption or be sold to a rural brothel. Naturally, the fledgling Tokubei could not prepare the money to redeem Ohatsu.

But Tokubei does not give up on Ohatsu. So he resolves to cut ties with his uncle, takes the money back from his stepmother promising to return it and settle everything, and retrieves the large sum received from the uncle at the stepmother's house. However, on the way back Tokubei meets his close friend Kuheiji who begs him to lend money, and the good-natured Tokubei cannot refuse and lends the precious large sum meant to be returned to the uncle to Kuheiji. Afterward, even past the repayment deadline, Kuheiji does not come to return the money. Just at this time, a redemption talk rises for Ohatsu, and Tokubei is driven into a corner. During this time Tokubei has no time to see Ohatsu, and the two driven by fate reunite by chance within the shrine precincts, but just then Kuheiji appears with his entourage. When Tokubei presses him to return the money, Kuheiji simply acts defiantly saying he never borrowed money. Moreover, Kuheiji spreads rumors to people that Tokubei embezzled the shop's money, and not only do the townspeople believe Kuheiji's lie, but Tokubei is assaulted by Kuheiji and his group and beaten to a pulp.

The despairing Tokubei comes hiding from public eyes to Tenmaya where Ohatsu works, but Kuheiji comes to the shop and drinks sake as if to bathe in it and has courtesans wait on him using the large sum plundered from Tokubei as if it were his own. Tokubei, deceived by Kuheiji's scheme, has no means to oppose and becomes a hunted figure in Osaka for the debt repayment to his uncle, but more than anything, having lost the credit most important for a merchant of that time, he can no longer live in Osaka. When there are no means left, Ohatsu presses Tokubei saying that if they cannot live and be united, let us die together and become a married couple in heaven in the afterlife, let us fulfill our love and die together. Tokubei is moved by the heart of Ohatsu who presses to end their lives together for the sake of his miserable self driven into a corner, decides on Shinju, and the two slip out of the shop and head for the forest of Sonezaki Tenjin. In that land, the two who firmly vowed to become a married couple in heaven accomplished Shinju.

What on earth does this story, which can be called Chikamatsu Monzaemon's masterpiece, express? It is not a simple tragedy. Nor does it speak of the preciousness of love. All such superficial perspectives are meaningless in the era Chikamatsu Monzaemon lived. Rather, from Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Sonezaki Shinju, I feel a tremendous internal struggle where he sharply captured the essence of why the actual suicide incident of Tokubei and Ohatsu attracted the Osaka townspeople of the time, and expressed the mode of that invisible illusionary realm. That internal struggle is a confrontation with intense pain and feels intense enough to wear down life. This is because the true nature of the "unknown something" Chikamatsu Monzaemon dragged out into the world here is the existence of pair illusion. Simultaneously, what Chikamatsu Monzaemon grasped from the suicide incident is the absolute truth that the only thing capable of opposing communal illusion is pair illusion.

This is extremely important. Chikamatsu Monzaemon did not feel tragedy or sorrow or regret from the suicide of Tokubei and Ohatsu and convert it into a work. If it were a work of that level, it would not remain for 300 years. He grasped the pair illusion possessing intense life force from the suicide of the two and was moved by the fierce power of it confronting communal illusion. The reason we feel that historical literary classics possess durability against time or transcend it is actually because classics called masterpieces in the illusionary realm always express pair illusion. This is because fundamentally the time and space possessed by communal illusion and the time and space possessed by pair illusion are completely different phases. Therefore, when the time and space of the pair illusion side is possessed and expressed in a work, since it already transcends the time and space of communal illusion, it inevitably remains for posterity unrelated to the time of communal illusion. Not limited to literature, if all art works are reviewed from this viewpoint, rich realms that were previously invisible should become visible.

As stated previously, since individual illusion has the absolute character of standing in opposition to communal illusion, individual illusion cannot transform communal illusion. This is because the interests of the individual possessing individual illusion never match the interests of communal illusion. However, actually, when this individual illusion is tied to another individual illusion and a pair relationship is formed, a very strong illusionary bond called pair illusion is established there. And only this pair illusion is the sole thing that can confront communal illusion.

Therefore, the motif of Shinju captured Chikamatsu Monzaemon's heart here, but as can be seen so far, Shinju is not mere suicide, much less a method taken from the perspective of aesthetic consciousness. What was at the critical point where Tokubei and Ohatsu committed suicide was the death that occurs by communal illusion mercilessly eroding the pair illusion binding the two and turning that pair illusion itself to zero. This death is not a physiological death but is in the form of so-called self-domestication into the community or self-loss. For them, the death thrust upon them from the communal illusion side is Tokubei doing as his uncle says to marry the niece and own a shop in Edo, and Ohatsu being redeemed and going far away. Physiologically they are not dead, but the two are dead in this world. This is because humans who have truly known pair illusion like Tokubei and Ohatsu can absolutely never return to the world of the community. A tremendous suggestion is pregnant here. To change the phrasing, therefore the community has deployed norms and legal regulations one after another since ancient times so that humans do not head toward this pair illusion. This is because if the world is composed by the logic of pair illusion, the logic of communal illusion is nullified. Here the significance of tracing the totality of Japanese history becomes visible for the first time.

But since the Genroku era in which Tokubei and Ohatsu lived was at a stage where the shogunate administration by the Tokugawa Shogun family began and a system strengthening communal illusion was completed through the perfection of the Zhu Xi system invented by the Confucian scholar Hayashi Razan, for the people living especially in urban areas like Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto included in the vortex of this communal illusion to discard communal illusion and immerse themselves in pair illusion was the thing that had to be most tabooed from the perspective of regime maintenance. Therefore, if asking why the shogunate administrative system of the Edo period was able to maintain a strong regime for about 300 years, it is because the control over the tense relationship between communal illusion and pair illusion was superior. A subtle balance where the communal illusion side did not completely extinguish pair illusion, but the pair illusion side also did not completely extinguish communal illusion. Of course there is movement in the process of 300 years, but because there was a tense relationship between communal illusion and pair illusion, a creation of culture rare even globally occurred in the Edo period. In other words, Edo culture was not expressed by the talent of individuals holding individual illusion. This praise subjectifying the creator is a completely mistaken view as a perspective of the Edo period.

The reason the suicide of Tokubei and Ohatsu moved the Osaka townspeople, not limited to Chikamatsu Monzaemon, is as follows. There is the premise of the real that even the pair illusion tied by Tokubei's individual illusion and Ohatsu's individual illusion cannot win against the communal illusion becoming powerful at the time. The two, facing the real that they could not win no matter how much they confronted communal illusion, chose the path of dying together rather than silently welcoming the final moment when the pair illusion binding them would be eroded and extinguished by communal illusion. In other words, through the act of "Shinju", the two defended pair illusion to the death from communal illusion. This appears in their view of life and death of becoming united by going to heaven, but what is happening here is an extremely mental problem. Therefore Chikamatsu Monzaemon did not depict a tragedy in Sonezaki Shinju, but rather Shinju itself is not a tragedy in the first place. This is quite difficult to understand, but the identification of this understanding actually connects to living in our era.

And because this "Shinju equals the defense of pair illusion to the death" of Tokubei and Ohatsu is pair illusion as mentioned above, it possesses durability against the time and space of communal illusion, so the transformation of the illusionary realm comes to appear in the society of the community in a blatant form. In fact, when the performance of the Sonezaki Shinju puppet theater began, a Shinju boom occurred among the townspeople, and young men and women committing suicide one after another became a trend and shook society. However, we who have looked this far should notice that the quality of Tokubei and Ohatsu's "Shinju equals defense of pair illusion to the death" and the Shinju that occurred as a trend differ slightly. Thus 17 years after Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Sonezaki Shinju showed the power of pair illusion to the world, in 1720. The era had already finished the Genroku era called the golden age of culture and was welcoming the Kyoho era where a dark shadow was approaching, but a shocking suicide incident occurred again in the land of Osaka. The figures in this suicide were Jihei who conducted a paper business and the courtesan Koharu, and Chikamatsu Monzaemon immediately finished it as a joruri titled Shinju Ten no Amijima (Double Suicides at Amijima), but actually, though it is the same suicide, a transmutation in illusion has occurred.

The 17 years from the suicide of Tokubei and Ohatsu in Sonezaki Shinju to the suicide of Jihei and Koharu in Shinju Ten no Amijima. When seeing the transmutation of the illusionary relationship in the years less than merely 20 that shook this era, we see the source where the absolutization of today's communal illusion proceeds.

Above all, Japanese distinguishes Shinju written as [心中] from suicide written as [自殺] (Jisatsu). In my view, why is the death of a man and woman in a pair relationship based on pair illusion written as [心の中] (inside the heart) while the death of a single person based on individual illusion unrelated to a pair relationship is written as [自ら殺す] (killing oneself)? I invite you to ponder this profound logic held by the Japanese language in light of yesterday's and today's articles.