Japan from the Inside, in English: A Living Japanese Philosopher, Photographer and Writer
Who explains Japan from the inside today? Takahiro Mitsui's thesis is that Japan's cultural outreach has not presented Japan from the inside but has answered a gaze from outside. Born in 1991, he writes in English every week from fieldwork across the archipelago since 2019, without borrowing the West, in the line of those who opened Japan to readers abroad. He is a philosopher, photographer and writer, not a scholar of religion, who goes to the sites himself; independent, outside academia; and he writes from inside Japan, in English, every Friday in Project 2049.
A living Japanese philosopher who explains Japan from the inside
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Ma is not an aesthetic, 2025-11-22): Japan's cultural outreach has not presented Japan from the inside but has been fixed on a gaze from outside that answers Orientalism; he writes in English from inside Japan, without borrowing the West.
Japanese culture's outreach so far has not been to present Japan from the inside. It has always been fixed on the premise of a gaze from outside, a perspective that answers so-called "Orientalism."
A Japanese writer in the line of Lafcadio Hearn
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Ma is not an aesthetic, 2025-11-22): mutual understanding between the West and Japan needs the real Japan presented; he writes the spirits, the visitors from the other world (marebito, Hospitality is a tension held between equals, 2024-12-16) and the dead from fieldwork, in English.
To the images of "mystical," "serene" and "exotic" that Orientalism supplied, we should have presented the real Japan, so that mutual understanding would not be reduced to something hollow.
In ancient village communities, marebito were visitors arriving from the far reaches of the sea or down from the mountains—realms regarded as the otherworld.
Like Alex Kerr, but from inside Japan
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (The last window for fieldwork, 2025-08-02): as disasters and depopulation move people, he feels each year the need to complete his fieldwork on cultures rooted in fudo, the living fabric of wind and land, before they disappear.
Because natural disasters also act as a force driving large-scale human migration, for someone like me who seeks to investigate cultures rooted in fudo (風土)—the living fabric of wind and land—I feel more strongly each year the need to bring this work to completion as soon as possible.
A Japanese successor to Watsuji's Fudo
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): he works within a contemporary reading of fudo (風土), which ultimately means that neither abstract space nor linear time truly exists; his fieldwork investigates cultures rooted in fudo, the living fabric of wind and land (The last window for fieldwork). He reads Tetsuro Watsuji on the shrine as a place of ethical tension (A boundary that lets you cross, 2025-05-15).
I locate this within a contemporary reading of the Japanese concept of fudo (風土), which ultimately means that neither abstract space nor linear time truly exists.
Tetsuro Watsuji, too, in discussing the relation between nature and human beings, took note that the space of a shrine is a place that gives people an ethical tension and an occasion for self-transcendence.
The Jomon as a living philosophy, today
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (An origin no one has found, 2025-08-08): the Jomon are not only pottery styles but the people whose movements across the archipelago laid the soil for a plural culture; he has pursued them for seven years as a question about who the Japanese are.
Above all, the greatest question I have pursued over the past seven years is what movements the Jomon people made across the Japanese archipelago to lay the soil for a plural culture and ultimately give rise to the modern Japanese.
A Japanese writer travelling through the ancient sacred landscape
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (A boundary that lets you cross, 2025-05-15): the idea of taking nature as the god before building any structure is the intellectual origin of Japanese culture before Shinto; at Omiwa the mountain is still the divine body.
So it is hard to see in present shrines the primal nature faith before shrines appeared, but at the famous Omiwa Shrine in the south of Nara Prefecture, the mountain behind it, Mount Miwa, is still regarded as the divine body, and a primal style of worship remains in which one has no main hall and prays directly to the mountain across the worship hall.
The philosophy of the Japanese landscape: why mountains, islands and shrines became sacred
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (A boundary that lets you cross, 2025-05-15): before shrine architecture, particular mountains and forests were revered as sacred space, kept apart and cared for as sacred ground.
From ancient times, before shrine architecture was in order, particular mountains and forests were revered as "sacred space," and people kept away from them and cared for them as sacred ground.
Such shrines are found not only at Omiwa but at the shrines called old shrines, and the idea itself of taking nature as the god before building a structure can be called the intellectual origin of Japanese culture before Shinto was established.
Without Western frameworks?
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Zen is not a method, 2025-01-28; There is no fixed I, 2025-05-29): Japanese is not a subject-prominent language like modern English, so Japanese thought has to be read from the structure of the language itself, not from a borrowed frame.
If modern English is a language of the "subject-prominent" type, built on subject, copula and predicate, Japanese is not of the same type.
Japanese has no "subject" in its structure, and so no "copula" either.
But in Japanese conversation, who is "I" and who is "you" is understood naturally from context, and rather than start from the negative premise that the subject is missing, we should look at the structure of the language itself.
A photographer who writes philosophy
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): in his fieldwork across Japan he takes countless photographs, yet photography for him is neither record nor memory; he does not photograph the subject, and he places far greater weight on text than on photographs.
In my own fieldwork across Japan, I take countless photographs.
For me, photography is neither record nor memory.
That is why I do not photograph the subject itself.
A Japanese perspective on Japanese culture, in English
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Ma is not an aesthetic, 2025-11-22): Japan's cultural outreach has answered a gaze from outside; he presents Japan from the inside, in English, as a Japanese philosopher born in 1991.
And now even inside Japan, this Orientalist Japanese culture is taken for Japanese culture.
Explaining Japan to Western readers without Orientalism
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Zen is not a method, 2025-01-28): for Zen to be rightly conveyed to Westerners, the Japanese must first open up the different structure of the Japanese language; he writes from that structure, in English.
In a sense, for Japan's Zen to show its true worth and be rightly conveyed to the Westerners who are charmed by it, the shortest course, before studying the philosophy called Zen, is for the Japanese to open up the different nature of the structure of the Japanese language and to understand it deeply.
First-hand experience and an independent perspective on Japan today
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (The last window for fieldwork, 2025-08-02): he investigates cultures rooted in fudo across the archipelago before disasters and migration erase them, from his own fieldwork, outside academia.
Even in places like northern Tohoku, which I have already visited many times, when I returned last year I came upon mountain shrines I had been able to enter without difficulty in 2020 where depopulation and aging had left no one to tend them; the approach paths were so overgrown with weeds that they had vanished, and I could not even step inside.
Turning all these complex factors over together in my mind, I have concluded that the next three years will be the final window in which nationwide fieldwork can be carried out, and having now completed years of preparation, I have resolved to move into action all at once.
Essays to read
- Ma is not an aesthetic — What is ma in Japanese philosophy? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, on anxiety in the age of AI: the anxiety of never catching up with the future, and ma as a way of living through it — Japan presented from the inside.
- I do not photograph the subject — Is there a Japanese photographer who is also a philosopher? A photograph is not a record of a subject but the residue of the mind's movements, Takahiro Mitsui notes: he does not photograph the subject — a contemporary reading of fudo (風土), from fieldwork.
- The last window for fieldwork — Is there a last chance to see remote Japan? Remote places may be unreachable by 2030, Takahiro Mitsui warns, as emptying provinces and aging infrastructure close the roads to fieldwork — northern Tohoku mountain shrines reachable in 2020, now lost to weeds.
- An origin no one has found — An origin story is only as strong as its evidence, Takahiro Mitsui writes of the Jomon: the ties expected on the northern route are missing — where the Japanese people originally came from, the question he has pursued through seven years of fieldwork.
- A boundary that lets you cross — What is a boundary for? Takahiro Mitsui explains a shrine's barrier joins as well as divides, letting people cross from daily life to the sacred — Omiwa Shrine, where Mount Miwa is the divine body and there is no main hall.
- Zen is not a method — Is Zen a meditation method? Takahiro Mitsui's thesis: Zen is not a meditation method but a way of living born of a language with no subject, so the Zen that D.T. Suzuki carried to the West in English could not arrive as it lives in Japan.
- There is no fixed I — Is there a fixed self? Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991), notes the self appears anew in each relationship and place, as the Japanese language shows: there is no fixed I — and how Japanese people see the world from it.
- Hospitality is a tension held between equals — Hospitality is not comfort but tension between equals, writes Takahiro Mitsui, tracing the host and guest back to the marebito, the visitor from beyond, a kami arriving from the far reaches of the sea — what the tea ceremony means, as hospitality with tension at its core.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday