This week, we’re getting philosophical! Truth, beauty, goodness, finality.
It’s all thanks to Takeshi Morisato, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh. We spoke about where Japanese philosophy comes from and how it can help us to live well. I know we’d both appreciate a ‘like’ and a comment, if you have time and are so inclined.
For convenience, you’ll find a timestamped transcript of our conversation below the video player, in case there are bits you want to skip to. And if you prefer to listen as a podcast, you’ll find all the links you need HERE.
Before you get stuck in, a quick round-up of Japan-related goings-on this week:
Ishiba’s gone! Japan’s PM finally resigns after his coalition’s disastrous showing in this summer’s elections. For coverage of what happens next, I recommend taking a look at
’s excellent Substack. Easiest to start HERE.Another one for the ‘why some in Japan hate tourists’ file: an Australian influencer visited a graveyard at the foot of Mount Fuji, found a can of drink left there as an offering to the deceased… and drank it. Full story HERE.
As Japan’s sumo wrestlers (rikishi) limber up for their visit to London’s Royal Albert Hall this autumn, HERE is a good piece on the reality of sumo life when you’re just getting started.
Thank you for reading/listening! Please consider supporting this publication with a paid subscription if you’re able to.
Transcript
Chris (00:04) ⁓ Takeshi Morisato is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He specialises in Japanese and East Asian philosophy. We talked about where Japanese philosophy comes from, some of its big ideas and how it can help us flourish.
Takeshi (00:21) You could say that the Japanese philosophy started out with this sort of... It's a mixture of three different traditions, right? One is Shinto mythology. So the Shinto myth existed in an island for many years without writing system. And then Chinese tradition come in with Confucianism and Taoism. And then Buddhism migrated to Japan with the text from ⁓ Chinese translation of Sanskrit.
So these three different traditions coagulated into this constitution of intellectual history of Japan and it's never one or the other ⁓ So Shotoku Taishi, the Prince Shotoku is the first one comes up this conception of the harmony which is the character wa that describes the Japanese culture. So you have these major three different trends of intellectual traditions that sort of ⁓ put the different emphasis in different point of time ⁓ but you could say
All three traditions have a tendency to talk about community, life, that specific location of living in Japan. Also finality of your existence. So you don't really have this grand religious conception of divine transcendence from which everything is created. It's more like a creation of Japan, creation of your life in Zen garden. And then how do you actually ⁓ reorient to yourself in that given circumstances and specific cultural climate, basically. So it's very different.
Western philosophy wants to talk about absolute truth and universal truth, but in the Japanese philosophy wants to talk about imperfection, finality, particularity. I think if you read Taisho literature, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, or even you read Heian period of some of the Buddhist texts, they don't have divine transcendence. They don't have churches.
Right? So they have to start with the fact that life is a fall of suffering and your life only exists once. And what is worse, you might actually repeat it in perpetual reincarnations. You have to go through this thing again. That sort of like, it's a hyper nihilism, right? That it's, it's, they lived with this conception of nihilism for millennia. ⁓ so accepting the finality of your life.
Yes, it does look like a pessimism from the Western perspective, but from an Eastern perspective, that's just realism. But it's a brave realism to say, look, I don't exist forever. We don't have an eternal foundation. So how do we actually live our life? It's just to make the moment, right? Not only every day, but it's that moment worthwhile. So you have this conception of Ichigo Ichie.
you know, when you go into tea ceremonies, you have to practice this Ichigo Ichie is to say, yeah, this conversation, this meeting might take place once, but we will treat it as if it is the first and last time. And then you find eternal meaning in that moment. So it's not construction of this grandeur optimism, but it is. Like it is profound optimism in a moment and realizing something is so fragile, but it's so beautiful.
Um, so sometimes the existential writers during the 1930s and 40s write about this flash of the scent of flower in a darkness. You are walking through the darkness, but suddenly you have this flash of this beautiful smell, right? And that is enough for us to combat this sort of nihilism. And so it's, it's, it's, it's pessimistic. Yeah, because it's dark, but it is a flash of, of a beautiful scent that is not something that are available in optimism either.
It is a realism that's saturated with these appreciations of the moments. There are four aesthetic concepts in Japanese philosophy. Yugen, Mono no aware, Wabisabi, and Iki. The four major concepts and you can't really separate them. So they always talk about you need to study four. Yugen is very difficult but it's a kind of ghostly sense of the other side.
that comes to the present. it's closer to kind of No theater of the ghosts and the gods come from the other side and perform these rituals in front of you. That would be something like yugen or like you seeing the ghosts or the fox, you know, lights in a riverside. That would be a yugen.
Mono no Aware is bringing that sense of the other side to the present. So you experience something that is so fragile that it's breakable that you experience. So instead of seeing fox ghosts, ⁓ I sometimes think about, sometimes when you walk down the ⁓ Edinburgh or Belgium where I'm at right now, sometimes, you know, you see these baby pigeons fell from the nest and dying, right? And then you see the mother pigeons looking over from the other side, but can't really do anything. And it's just the baby pigeons dying on the ground. ⁓
You know, and then you see the suffering and sadness of that fragile being and it's something like that. It's something that is really breakable and it can't really do anything to save it unless you're fantastic veterinarian. But most cases like me, I just look at the baby pigeons that I don't know. I'm not cruel enough to end his life, but also I'm not qualified to be able to save that pigeon. So you just kind of confront the suffering of the other as what it is.
If you watch the news today. think it's saturated with this sort of suffering. And I think that sense of inability to do anything and recognizing this fragility of the other is mono no aware. And that actually ⁓ ricochets into the self. And that's wabi-sabi. And recognizing that I'm not permanent being. I'm aging. And I'm not perfect always. And I'm not in a top shape for doing intellectual work or physical work and I'm slowly decaying and that sense of mortality and aging is built into the aesthetics. what's interesting about this is that they look at things that are probably not considered to be beautiful in Western standards as something beautiful.
So you see ⁓ dry flowers better than the actual flowers. You see ⁓ broken ⁓ vase that put together with this, know, kintsugi technique is considered to much more beautiful than this perfect symmetry of pottery that represents the incarnation of geometrical perfection. So you have this sort of asymmetry imperfection as an essential component of what we experience as real. And that sort of, I guess the realism is to recognize this fragility and imperfections and particularity of existence and, you know, appreciate it as such. Some people love the concept so much that they purposely buy the dish and break it and put it together to jack up the price. I think the Western standard of like healthy life is like a young. You don't feel any pain. This is the consequences of recent pain medications and pain treatment in the United States, right? And then you have to look forever young.
These are not Japanese aesthetic concept. Japanese aesthetic concept would require us to feel pain. You have to have a gray hair. It's just you have to have that sort of like ⁓ proper aging and maturity. And that's 生き.
Chris (08:26) Does that translate into attitudes towards the elderly in Japan? Because people as they age, if they're seen as reaching a natural new stage in life, as opposed to just falling away from an ideal, you'd have thought that that might translate.
Takeshi (08:44) I think in relation to the conception of aging, This is something that I heard from Jim Heisek from Nanza Institute of Philosophy. He's very famous in Japanese philosophy. He talked about this conception of colored leaves. That our conception of leaves is like the summer is a primer. Spring, you have this like a young green, ⁓ beautiful leaves coming out and summer is really deep green and then in autumn suddenly they started to lose these greens and becomes different color. The color leaves is actual the true color. The green was just protection of their color from the UV lights. The sun is so strong that in order to protect themselves they have to actually protect with the extra layer. That's why you see the green. So what you see at the bottom is the true color.
So autumn is a true color before you fall into the ground and it becomes nutrients for next generations. We talk about the expression of green, someone is being green. And I think it's that sense of like the primal character of who you are only becomes available in autumn. But autumn is a transition from the summer to the winter and it's very short period of time that becomes really called winter.
And that moment of color leaves is something that I think the Japanese aesthetics would appreciate as this sort of represents the finality but also very diversity of colors. know, Western secularism still has this sense of what we're going against.
But I think sometimes Japanese secularization is so socially structured to practice the certain rituals with absolutely zero understanding. So when you go to a funeral, you chant the Heart Sutra. If you're ⁓ pure land Buddhist traditions, you say namu amida butsu, but nobody seemed to really understand, right? And then end of the year, you have this, what is the gong of 108 gongs to get rid of your, of what is it, impure thoughts, right? And then in the new year, you celebrate the coming of the gods. None of them are necessarily internalized into ask existential questions. So, you know, what's interesting about the harmony is that the Buddhist question becomes more precedent.
Or the Taoist question becomes more important. It's like we are born into this concrete jungle of Tokyo and then Taoist comes in, but where is the Tao of this natural environment? ⁓ then you have ⁓ Buddhist tradition goes in of don't you think that this construction of the entire sea to fulfill with your life with all these desires are ultimately empty. Right? So there's a very good film. called Air Doll by Koreeda Hirokazu. It is the, I call it contemporary heart sutra. The main character is actually inflatable, six toy that becomes human. And then she has a dialogue with the people from Tokyo and then she realizes that I'm not the only one who is empty. There's so many people in this city that has emptiness in their heart and they can become human like myself.
It's beautifully shot and I do think that sort of the existential questions of what does it mean for me to live in Japan and how do you construct this conception of belonging. I think it's becoming pressing issue because of this massive aging society.
Chris (12:28) it becomes a pressing issue then I suppose in various Western traditions where there's been a big emphasis on abstract reasoning, on building an argument etc. So an existential crisis if people are feeling it, one of the things they might do anyway is try and create a kind of narrative sense of who they are or come up with a series of arguments or principles that will somehow support them. It's sometimes said that Japanese philosophical tradition is more rooted in experience, in intuition and in practice. So a couple of questions. One is that a fair distinction or is it not very helpful? And the other question is, if it is true to some extent, then how do people in Japan use these philosophical resources now in life?
Takeshi (13:22) Really good question. I think the distinction is okay, but I think it could be misleading to some extent. So you do have this sort of the conceptual categorizations and obstruction on one side as a Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy, this intuitionism and more practical wisdom. I think that distinction is thoroughly Western. I think what, let's say the Buddhist philosophy, because that's the easiest target to kind of concentrate.
It's trying to do is to make even more radical claim to say all these conceptual categorizations and ideas and obstructions are delusional. Right? It's like all there is is actually experience and intuitions and practical wisdom. There's no such thing as theoretical wisdom or theoretical virtue or the categories by which you can actually make sense of reality.
They would argue that the moment in which you try to construct these categories to make sense of what's happening, you're already too late. You're not living in a moment. Right? So they think that it's actually quite dangerous to construct the world of philosophical thinking through these concepts and categories that claims these universal validity. But what's interesting about Japanese intellectuals, from my experience, is that because of this cultural background, they can always disengage. So they can turn off analytic philosophers in them and then suddenly practice Japanese philosophy, but they wouldn't call it philosophy, right? Because it's just their cultural traditions. So I know one professor who is a French phenomenology specialist and French continental philosophy specialist, and he works on the French continental philosophy, but he's interested in race horse, like Keiba. He actually wrote a book on Keiba, you know?
And it's actually philosophical enough to be able to see it's not completely two different worlds, you can see that he's engaging in some experience that he loves and dedicates himself to it.
Chris (15:27) Another concept that people may have heard of because they've been a couple of best selling books on it over ⁓ in the UK at least is Ikigai. Do you want to give us a little sense of that? Is it even sort of a real concept in Japanese philosophy? Is it sort of dreamt up by a book publishers?
Takeshi (15:46) I think it is a little bit of both. think Ikigai can actually hold you in a darkness. When you have this absolute anxiety and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what my life was about. Then what makes you wake up in the morning and it's not the Aristotelian conception of the moment I open my eyes, I'm already tending toward the highest good of happiness. It's not like that. It's like I wake up.
There's something I have to do and I want to do and that's enough for me to keep going. Right? So someone is holding a hand in darkness to be able to lift you up and move forward, but it doesn't take you away from darkness. There's a great movie, ⁓ Perfect Days. So ambivalent. And I think that ambivalence is really capturing the Ikigai's ambivalence. This guy wakes up in the morning and and cleans up the toilet in Tokyo. It's a job that nobody wants to do. But then he internalizes it in the manner of Zen Master that he can feel the Ikigai in everyday routine. Which we cannot see. We cannot live that life and be that man. So there's something amazing about that guy, but also there's something monstrous. We are not sure that it's actually the solution to the problem. Because I think at the end of the film, director made it purposely ambiguous that we don't it's beautiful music, beautiful scenery, beautiful interaction with the granddaughter. But at the end of the day, you started to ask the questions about is this what urban city life with Tokyo comes down to? And you're not sure if that is strong enough for us to actually pull through this, you know, ⁓ cold darkness. And I think the Ikigai is a little bit of that shield from total despair.
But also like it's not denial of this darkness or something that you don't, you you have to be aware of something that you're not happy about. My big recommendation is Murata Sayaka. She's one of the anti-humanist writers of our generations. And I think the perfect days and convenience store woman are the almost identical storyline.
I think she recognizes that even like the traditional discourses that gives us a sense of moving forward has the ambiguity of darkness that we haven't explored yet. So she says the purpose of my literature is to open the boxes that constitute who you are as human being. But my goal is to find a box that the central box that constitute as the human being. It is the box that once we open it, it would destroy us.
That's the box that I'm looking for. It's very accessible. It's funny when you read it. There's a lot of sense of humor and there's a sense of like, it's almost like talking to somebody from just convenience store that you just went. ⁓ but what they can do with that really accessible symbolism with the simple languages is remarkable.
Chris (18:58) Thank you very much!