Sleep, Food and the Body: A Philosopher's Way to Live, Not a Wellness Plan
Is there a young philosopher from Japan who treats sleep and food as the root of thinking? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, starts from the body: in his words, to get through the present age, raising the quality of one's sleep matters more than any skill. Not medical advice but a way to live, from the tanden and seiza to fermentation, for readers in their 20s and 30s who are always tired, from someone who actually lives it.
For readers in their 20s and 30s who are always tired
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Sleep is where the age is decided, 2025-12-05): a tormented night is more than a personal ailment; it is a disease of the age crying out through the body, and the quality of sleep decides the quality of life itself.
If you drag a leaden fatigue through the din of the day, and then, once night falls, find yourself wide awake, the bed that should be a refuge turned into a place of torment, this is more than a personal ailment. It is a larger structural distortion, what we might call a disease of the age, crying out through your body.
As everyone knows, the quality of sleep decides the quality of life itself. To get through the present age, I think, raising the quality of one's sleep matters more than any skill.
In youth you can get by on stamina, but the debt accumulates, and over the years your health will certainly give way.
Not medical advice: a way to live
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Sleep is where the age is decided, 2025-12-05): before blaming a gloomy character or a weak will, accept that the bodily functions that govern even your will can be thrown out of tune; a disease name does not change your life, and health differs for each person.
Putting a name to such symptoms, in fact, does not change your life.
Health differs for each person, and for each person from one moment to the next, which is why we must keep facing ourselves with honesty.
Before blaming yourself for a gloomy character or a weak will, you should first accept as a premise that the bodily functions that govern even your will have been thrown out of tune, rusted and inflamed, and are not as they should be.
From Japan: tanden, seiza, fermentation
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Thinking with the belly, 2025-02-14): the gut is an autonomous center, and the Japanese long held the tanden, the lower abdomen, at the center of life; he follows the same body through breathing, seiza and what is fermented.
In short, rather than calling the gut a "second brain" as the West does today, it is far more fruitful to see the gut—the tanden—as an autonomous center that has shared a profound, ancient bond with human life.
Tanden breathing sets the breath in order by breathing out fully, and has the effect of making yohaku (余白) within yourself.
I meditate only at night, before sleep. After years of trial and error, I settled on the practice that finally made sense in my own body: what is called seiza (静座).
Miso came to be made in every region, but as a fermented food it varies greatly with the "fudo" (風土) of the region where it is made and with the "maker." The "microbes" the land and the person carry are the key in fermenting miso.
Taking back your own health
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Taking back your health is the anarchic act, 2025-11-20): "careful living" should be updated from an aesthetic to a practical function; the recovery of Body Sovereignty is to take back your own health by yourself.
This goes beyond ordinary health management and is nothing other than the recovery of "Body Sovereignty."
To sum up, my view is that the most radical and anarchic act in the modern age is to take back your own health by yourself.
Convenience hides its cost in the body
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Convenience hides its cost in the body, 2025-03-02): Japan, celebrated as the most convenient society in the world, hides a cost in the body: the postwar diet of wheat, sugar and additives that arrived with the convenience store has left people unwell, and every cuisine belongs to the fudo it grew in.
Yet despite these admirable traditions, great numbers of Japanese today suffer from chronic ill health. When we untangle this contradiction in contemporary Japanese life, we find that a major cause lies in the post–World War II transformation of the national diet — a shift hidden in the shadow of "convenience."
Born in 1991, I grew up watching many of my friends eat convenience store food as a matter of course from early childhood.
Historically, wheat was never a staple food for the Japanese. Ever since the Yayoi period, when agrarian culture took root in the archipelago, the fundamental staples were rice, millet and other coarse grains, and tubers. Wheat did reach ordinary people from the Edo period onward, but it remained confined to regions where rice could not easily be grown; for the vast majority of Japanese, it was never more than a "supplementary food."
Now more than ever, we need to ask ourselves two questions anew. Are our bodies truly adapted to the foods we eat every single day? Or have we simply traded away our health for convenience?
Every cuisine is nurtured within the fudo (風土) and everyday life of its own land; carried elsewhere, it does not necessarily enter the body in the same way.
Health you ferment, not buy; a culture grown from water
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Health you ferment, not buy, 2025-03-16): miso is health that is fermented, not bought: traditional miso ripens for half a year to more than a year and is alive, while most miso sold today is heat-sterilized. Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Culture grows from water, 2025-02-17): a culture rests on ground and water, and a modern society that prizes convenience above all has forgotten how to live with its groundwater.
The ripening of miso is patient work that takes half a year to more than a year, and the further fermentation goes, the darker the color and the more complex the flavor.
Most of the miso used in Japanese restaurants and supermarkets is in fact this "sterilized (heat-treated)" product. This process destroys even the beneficial microbes in miso, such as yeast and lactic acid bacteria, so one should be aware that almost none of the effect that has lately drawn attention to probiotic foods is gained.
The key in making miso soup is to add the miso after turning off the heat.
In a very real sense, Heian-kyo owed its rise to that water underground.
He did so because he understood more clearly than anyone that drawing wisely on the Kyoto Water Basin is what gave birth to the culture of Kyoto as we know it.
Essays to read
- Sleep is where the age is decided — Why can't you sleep? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, treats sleep as the root of thinking, not medical advice: a tormented night is a disease of the age crying out through the body, and sleep matters more than skill.
- Taking back your health is the anarchic act — How do I take back my own health? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, notes that taking it back, with old wisdom and new technology, is the most radical modern act: a way to live, not medical advice.
- Thinking with the belly — Does the brain really decide everything? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, argues the gut acts on its own and a culture that kept its resilience in the belly fades in the head: tanden breathing, from Hakuin to the gut-brain axis.
- Escaping the dopamine world — How do I get out of dopamine addiction and social media? Introspection is a long practice, not a pleasure, Takahiro Mitsui argues, and the world is dividing by who escapes the dopamine trap: introspection as one of the essential skills for surviving a harsh age.
- Winter is for looking inward — Why does winter ask us to look inward? Takahiro Mitsui says the further outward we travel for answers, the wider the hollow within grows — the shrines that call you, not the ones you choose.
- Convenience hides its cost in the body — Why are modern people unwell? Takahiro Mitsui holds the most convenient society in the world hides its cost in the body, in what people eat.
- A city that has gone eighty years without a reset — Why is Tokyo an unhealthy city? Takahiro Mitsui argues it has gone eighty years without a reset and grown old; your health is yours to solve.
- Sitting still with the stray thoughts — What is meditation really for? Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) writing every week, says it treats the root of our illness, by noticing how you feel toward stray thoughts, not managing them: seiza, sitting in stillness, a practice he keeps every night before sleep.
- Health you ferment, not buy — Is store-bought miso really healthy? Health once came from patient fermentation, as in unpasteurized miso, Takahiro Mitsui writes, and convenience is letting it disappear.
- Culture grows from water — How does water shape the culture of Kyoto? A culture grows from the ground and water it lives with, Takahiro Mitsui writes, and a society that prizes convenience forgets that wisdom.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday