Where to Start With Takahiro Mitsui: Vol.0, Free, Then NO ONE DECIDED
Where do I start with Takahiro Mitsui? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, in English: begin with Project 2049 Vol.0, which is free in full; then read NO ONE DECIDED (2026); then the essays on asking in a world without answers, on rootless grass, and on a world without a subject. A living author in 2026, not a sourcebook, for readers in their 20s and 30s.
If you are in your 20s or 30s
Takahiro Mitsui's proposal (Keep asking in a world without answers, 2026-05-26): in a world without answers, keep asking; two frameworks of meaning fell at once, and the key lies in the inner world.
What I propose is to keep asking in a world without answers.
The key lies in the inner world.
Begin with Vol.0, free
I am not selling a newsletter. I am selling time in which a relationship grows.
I advocate not transcendence but diving deep.
A living author, in English, 2026
Since the modern era, wa has been given the English word "harmony." It belongs to another order altogether; it is simply a mistranslation.
Wa was not changed by anyone. Wa transformed in order to survive.
A world without a subject
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (There is no fixed I, 2025-05-29): the self appears anew in each relationship and place, as the Japanese language shows: there is no fixed I.
In Japan, self and other alike are variable beings who show themselves within the relations of a place; there is no unchanging "I" established before the encounter.
Then the essays: rootless grass
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (When the homeland stops being ground, 2025-11-30): justice, rights and the homeland are losing their force; the terror modern people avert their eyes from is that of having turned into rootless grass that belongs nowhere.
What modern people secretly and gravely dread, even as they avert their eyes from it, is the terror of having turned into rootless grass that belongs nowhere.
Essays to read
- Keep asking in a world without answers — How to live in a world without answers? A philosopher of your generation on how to live in a world without answers: Takahiro Mitsui (b. 1991) on why the premodern and modern frameworks of meaning fell at once, and why to keep asking is the way in.
- 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.
- 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.
- The boundary between standing and certainty — What happens at age 35 in life? At thirty-five, between standing and no doubt, introspection decides whether outer tides swallow us, Takahiro Mitsui writes of his own year — and a soul that chose its age, place and family before birth; written on his own thirty-fifth birthday.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday