Where to Live in Japan, and How: The Unhealthy City and the Light Life
Should I live in Tokyo or the countryside? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, can move house in under five minutes, and writes from fieldwork across Japan: central Tokyo has gone eighty years without a reset and grown unhealthy, health comes only by individual will, and where to live, and how, is the decisive question. Not a visa guide but a way to live, for the millennial thinking of moving to Japan.
For the millennial thinking of moving to Japan
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (A city that has gone eighty years without a reset, 2026-02-16): based in the office district of central Tokyo, each year his impression grows stronger that this is an unhealthy city; it has not changed in the past ten years or so.
For a few days now I have been based in the office district of central Tokyo, and each year my impression grows stronger that this is an unhealthy city.
But since the last reset, the air raids of 1945, Tokyo has gone eighty years without one, and like the Japanese, who have already become a super-aged society, the city itself seems to have grown old.
Not a visa guide: a way to live
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (A city that has gone eighty years without a reset, 2026-02-16): in a city with slack food rules, health can be achieved only by individual will, and the problem of you can only be solved by you.
When one is young, a disordered diet may be fine to a degree, but if you go on like that for ten years, it is the rule of our time that you will be troubled by problems of unknown cause.
And considering how slack Tokyo's rules are, letting food businesses open without limit, it is plain that health can be achieved only by individual will.
The problem of you, the only one in the world, can only be solved by you.
Minimalism in an unpredictable age
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Strength is living in two kinds of time, 2025-09-05): minimalism is more than paring down possessions; it is the ability to respond on the instant to unpredictable risks and to survive, in a country home to roughly a fifth of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
Minimalism has long drawn attention as a distinctly Japanese way of life, yet in the world we now inhabit, what matters is more than simply paring down one's possessions to live well. It is the ability to respond on the instant to unpredictable risks—and to survive.
Japan, moreover, is one of the most disaster-prone countries on earth, home to roughly a fifth of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
From the moment I decide to leave an inn to the moment I check out takes me less than five minutes. Which is another way of saying that I can move house in under five minutes.
Where to live, and how
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Survival has become a matter of individual discernment, 2025-07-23): the decisive question of our time is where to live, and how; in July 2025 he wrote of his intention to establish a base on the Sea of Japan side of northern Tohoku.
The decisive question of our time is where to live, and how.
From next year on, I intend to abandon the urban corridors of the Pacific coast, including Osaka and Tokyo, and establish a base on the Sea of Japan side of northern Tohoku.
The roads that close
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (The last window for fieldwork, 2025-08-02): remote places may be unreachable by about 2030; northern Tohoku mountain shrines he could enter in 2020 had become unreachable by last year.
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.
Essays to read
- 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.
- Strength is living in two kinds of time — How do I stay calm in an unpredictable world? In an unpredictable age, Takahiro Mitsui maintains, strength is inhabiting both hyper-accelerated time and an unhurried time that seems to have stopped.
- 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.
- A politics of the old, by the old — What happens to a society when the old are the majority? When the old are the majority, politics serves them and the young stop speaking, Takahiro Mitsui warns, until whole communities become unsustainable.
- 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.
- 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.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday