Reading My Own Genome: Who Am I, Really?
Who am I, really? Takahiro Mitsui read his own whole genome, analyzed over six months, to ask who he is and where the Japanese came from. His field report: seen at the level of the genes, much of the being he had called himself turned inside out; genes do not decide fate, but they let you become fully aware of yourself as N=1, and the question becomes what you do after you awaken.
Not a DNA test for fun: a question of the self
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (Awakening is not the goal, 2026-08-19): he had the most advanced genetic test of the day and received the data, analyzed over six months; seen at the level of the genes, much of the being he had called himself turned inside out.
This year I had the most advanced genetic test in the world, and last week I received the data, analyzed over six months.
What is fascinating is how much in it seemed to turn inside out the being I had thought of all my life as "myself" when seen at the level of the genes.
Genes, of course, do not decide fate.
Knowing yourself as N=1
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Awakening is not the goal, 2026-08-19): the great benefit of genetic testing is that it lets you become fully aware of yourself as N=1, a dialogue with the self that human history has never had.
To my mind, the great benefit of genetic testing is that it lets you become fully aware of yourself as N=1.
Analysis by ultra-high-depth whole-genome sequencing is quite literally the finest tool for "dialogue with the self" ever given to people today, and it offers possibilities human history has never had.
The provisional self
Takahiro Mitsui, reading Toju Nakae (Project 2049 Vol.1): what people take to be their true self is kago, the provisional self taken on since childhood, and social media keeps us inside it at every hour.
What people take to be their true self is entirely kago, the provisional self they have taken on from childhood until now.
Through social media and the like, we have built a state in which people cannot step out of kago at any hour of the day.
Where the Japanese came from, from inside
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (Start with your own origin, 2026-02-03; A country's history is a plane, not a point, 2026-02-18): he had his whole genome analyzed to explore origin, and the test divides the roots of the Japanese into the Jomon, Yayoi and Kofun peoples; he also warns that gathering everything into the result of genes raises another nationalist problem.
Next weekend I will have the whole of my own genes analyzed, and from about summer I will begin exploring origin on the basis of that data.
With DNA analysis now reinforcing many past theories, what I think again is that when everything is gathered into the result of genes, another nationalist problem always arises.
Last week I wrote that I took a cutting-edge genetic test in Tokyo, and in fact the feature of this test is that it clearly divides the roots of the Japanese into the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun peoples, and by giving the ratios makes visible which root one comes from.
Awakening is not the goal
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Awakening is not the goal, 2026-08-19): knowing yourself matters only if you then turn to the world; the question is what you do after you awaken.
To put it plainly, awakening is not the goal.
I believe that Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism each, at their origin, held one question: "What will you do after you awaken?"
Tracing my ancestors by fieldwork, not a DNA kit
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (Roots are a dialogue with the dead, 2025-05-25): one of the most personal purposes of his journeys is the search for his own ancestors, which he traces through a grandparent's village and a family temple's death register.
This journey has several purposes, but one of the most personal is the search for my own ancestors. In immigrant societies like the United States, tracing roots through DNA kits has become immensely popular in recent years, but in Japan one can trace ancestry through an entirely different method.
Setting foot in the place where one's grandparents were born is therefore the crucial first step in any search for roots.
In my own search, I have successfully traced my paternal ancestors back into the Edo period. The precision of the records allows for the construction of a detailed family tree, showing where the family migrated from, how they settled into their new land, and how the lineage unfolded across generations to reach me.
Roots and the motherland: an afterimage, and a plane
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (History is the heat of your own time, 2025-12-10): the motherland may be an afterimage people live on clutching; the only history one can truly know is rooted in one's own singular life, and fieldwork in one's own country shows that its history cannot be drawn as complete in itself.
Is the motherland merely an afterimage—the phantom remnant of an illusion and a reality that once possessed tactile weight? Why is it that human beings can live on, clutching nothing but these afterimages?
The only history any human being can truly know is rooted in their own singular life: in which era they were born, where they grew up, and where they stand today.
But if you keep up fieldwork in your own country, you meet the impossibility of drawing the history of Japan as complete in itself, as Japan.
Put another way, once we have the will to look into the history of our own country not as a point but as a plane, we are asked to wrestle, swinging between the monolithic national space and the place as a plural world.
Essays to read
- Awakening is not the goal — What is self-knowledge for? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) who read his own whole genome, sets it beside Wang Yangming: knowing you are N=1 matters only if you then turn to the world, after you awaken.
- Start with your own origin — Start with your own origin without compromise, Takahiro Mitsui urges, even to ask what it means to be Japanese; studying others' origins from outside is flight from inner work. This is about the Wa people of the Wei record (3rd century), not the Wajin of Hokkaido.
- A country's history is a plane, not a point — Who are the Japanese descended from? From fieldwork across the Japanese archipelago since 2019: history is a plane, not a point, Takahiro Mitsui observes, and the single-people theory runs on crude perception — who the Japanese are descended from: three layers, not one people.
- When the AI bubble bursts, AI does not end — What happens after the AI bubble bursts? Takahiro Mitsui on the life skill the age of AI and unmanned automation asks of each of us, and why it leads to the search for one's own origin.
- Roots are a dialogue with the dead — How do I find out where I really come from, beyond a DNA test? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, starts at a grandparent's village and a temple's register of the dead, a dialogue across time.
- Why wandering does not cure anxiety — Why are digital nomads lonely? A young philosopher from Japan on loneliness and belonging: Takahiro Mitsui on living rootless in a drifting age, and whether the anxiety you carry is about identity or about origin.
- History is the heat of your own time — Where do I come from, and what is a motherland now? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, argues history is the heat of your own place and time, and grief is where renewal begins.
- A word that lost its iron — What does the word motherland actually mean today? The motherland was a shared narrative with texture, Takahiro Mitsui writes, and as it dissolves it is felt only by standing on the land.
- When the homeland stops being ground — Why do so many feel they belong nowhere? Takahiro Mitsui argues justice and rights have lost force and the homeland can vanish in an instant — and what a true nomad is, beyond the digital nomad.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday