Why Do Some Places Feel Right? Fudo, by a Philosopher Who Travels His Own Country
Why do I feel at home in some places and not others? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, has found some places comfortable and others not, again and again, across years of travel in Japan, and his answer is fudo (風土): wind and soil that enter you only when you go to the land. Not feng shui, from someone who has been to those places and is alive today; for the traveler who felt it in Japan.
For the traveler who felt it in Japan
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (Histories are made in closed rooms, 2026-04-12): in all his years of traveling across Japan he found some places comfortable and others not, again and again, and thought for a long time about where this sensation comes from.
In all my years of traveling across Japan, I have found some places comfortable and others not, again and again. I thought for a long time about where this groundless sensation comes from. Lately I have found my answer in an old idea: fudo (風土). Fudo resists being put into words, and my understanding of it differs entirely from the ordinary Japanese one.
No word conveys the heart of the Japanese as they once were better than fudo.
Not feng shui: fudo
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Histories are made in closed rooms, 2026-04-12): fudo is not a set of signs about climate and terrain; it seeps in slowly and becomes part of you, and it is taken in only by going to the land.
The problem is that fudo, as it is usually discussed in Japan, has been hardened since the modern era into a set of dull signs: the climate, weather, terrain, geology and scenery of a place.
I travel through Japan under so many different themes because I want to take its fudo into my own body. Sometimes I return to a place again and again, since fudo does not enter you simply because you have been there. It seeps in slowly and becomes part of you.
Where to sustain your own way of life
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Survival has become a matter of individual discernment, 2025-07-23): a refuge is not a universal ideal shared by the crowd but a specific territory where an individual can sustain their own way of life; survival begins with looking inward and then finding which landscape suits you.
By refuge or utopia, I do not mean some universal ideal shared by the crowd, but a specific territory where an individual can sustain their own way of life. Today, crowds of people are flocking to Okinawa to escape the mainland furnace; yet what suits the masses is rarely what suits the individual.
Survival begins with looking inward, coming to understand our own constitution, and then taking to the road to discern which landscape suits us best.
A place changes with its seasons, and with its people
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (The heart is shaped by its seasons, 2024-12-27): the heart is shaped by its seasons, and four seasons becoming two take away the inner room that culture needs.
Having four seasons gave us the inner spaciousness to savor each season, to observe its changes closely, and to live alongside nature.
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.
Essays to read
- Histories are made in closed rooms — Who was Emperor Tenmu? From fieldwork across the Japanese archipelago since 2019: histories told by those who do not know fudo, wind and soil, are armchair theory made in closed rooms, Takahiro Mitsui argues — and why fudo works only when you go to the land.
- Survival has become a matter of individual discernment — What can the Jomon teach us about surviving climate change? The age of the collective is over, Takahiro Mitsui argues: as climate shifts, individuals must choose where they can truly live.
- The heart is shaped by its seasons — What happens to a culture when seasons change? Takahiro Mitsui argues the heart is shaped by its climate, and four seasons becoming two shrink culture's room.
- Living in step with the seasons without being taught — How do the Japanese live in tune with the seasons? Takahiro Mitsui's thesis: Japanese live in step with the seasons without being taught, and the way of reading nature held for a thousand years in the twenty-four solar terms and seventy-two microseasons is not erased.
- Culture cannot outlast its people — Why does an old calendar still guide? Takahiro Mitsui holds it distills historical wisdom, and the culture it served cannot outlast the people who sustain it.
- 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.
- Silence is built within — Where do you find silence? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, argues not in the world but within, as a firewall around your own consciousness, and how the onmyoji first laid down kekkai around Heian-kyo.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday