In the opening of his novel Kusamakura (草枕, 1906), Natsume Soseki (夏目漱石, 1867-1916) states that if one leans too heavily towards intellect, emotion, or stubbornness, it will cause problems in human relationships and social life, ultimately making the world a difficult place to live.
Soseki wrote this opening in a lively seven‐five‐syllable meter, and my translation below attempts to convey its pleasant nuances rather than directly using the metaphorical expressions within the text.
—–
Climbing up the mountain path, I thought about…
Relying on intellect creates conflicts and troubles. Clinging to emotion leads to being swept away. Clinging to stubbornness and forging one’s own path leads to being crushed. In any case, it is difficult to live in the human world.
When the place gradually becomes uncomfortable, we would prefer to move to a more comfortable place. However, when you realize that no matter where you move, you will not feel comfortable, poetry and painting will arise. The human world was not created by God or the devil. It was made by ordinary people that you sometimes see in your neighborhood.
If you feel uncomfortable living in the place, because it was made by ordinary people, and if you seek to replace it, but there is no better place than where you live now. If any, it is a place of scoundrels and beasts. The world of rogues is more difficult to live in than the world of ordinary people. If the unavoidable world is uncomfortable to live in, we should make that uncomfortable world a little better so that we can live comfortably even for a moment.
from Natsume Soseki ‘s “Kusamakura”
—–
Regarding the metaphorical expressions not included in my translation, the friction and conflict in human relationships are expressed with the sharp image of sharp, hard objects clashing together, as in “the sharp edges stand out.” Furthermore, the danger of surrendering to emotions is likened to a pole used to steer a small boat drifting against the current, visually and sensually representing the passive acceptance of emotions—whether to go against the current or ride it. This opening sentence encapsulates Soseki’s refined sensibility and profound insight into human nature, offering an artistic visualization that deeply embodies the essence of universal conflicts in social life and humanity’s attempts to escape them.
Soseki’s “intellect, emotion, and stubbornness” refer to what Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) called intellect, emotion and volition. The Meiji era, when Soseki wrote these words, was a time when Western rationalism, Japanese sentiment, and personal self-awareness were in conflict, and many people keenly felt the need to harmonize these elements within society. This opening passage encapsulates the human condition, caught between ideal and reality, where one faces friction and constraints no matter which direction one leans.
Furthermore, as a social context, Japan, having won the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), gained international status as a civilized nation and began participating in treaties and conferences as a member of the international community. Along with this, awareness of the relationship between power and equality increased, and it was also a period when Japan began to lean towards imperialism. Internationally, concepts such as race, equality, and the essence of the nation-state were re-examined, and a series of awakenings and conflicts regarding racial barriers, civilizational prejudices, and the hope for independence occurred, marking a historical turning point.
In any case, the opening lines of “Kusamakura” accurately capture the feelings and circumstances of ordinary people and commoners caught between ideals and reality, facing friction and constraints no matter which direction they chose, and searching for direction in life amidst confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty.
Even in modern times, there is little difference between then and now in the way authoritarian regimes manipulate information, engage in psychological warfare, mass destruction, and mass murder for their own benefit, while suppressing the personal intelligence, emotions, and free will of ordinary people, driving society toward a deeper nihilism, emptiness, and despair.
Incidentally, in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia overwhelmingly surpassed Japan in military power. To raise funds for the war effort, Takahashi Korekiyo (1854-1936) and his group first headed to New York but were unsuccessful. Their next destination was London, where they met Jacob Schiff (1847-1920), a German-born Jewish banker, and secured a loan from the London Rothschilds, including funds for purchasing used battleships.
Schiff’s impetus for making this loan was supposedly to provide relief to Jews who were being oppressed and persecuted by the Slavs in Russia in 1903. However, in reality, Schiff also provided loans to Russia, and arranged things so that he would profit regardless of whether Japan or Russia won. On the other hand, for the Rothschild family, who held the rights to the Baku oil fields, the world’s largest oil-producing region in Russia, it was not in their best interest to fully support Japan. Therefore, they only provided funds for Japan’s battleship purchases through their subordinate Jacob Schiff, and refused to provide any further war funds.
In any case, rational judgment can sometimes appear cold, emotional judgment can undermine trust, and self-assertion can be seen as uncooperative—this may be a universal social conflict that has been passed down through generations.
In fact, in “Kusamakura,” Soseki deals with his unique philosophy of “heartless (非人情),” succinctly illustrating the unavoidable universal conflicts and suffering of living in society. We can see Soseki’s deep insight into the pessimism and uncertainty of human existence that he always harbored, as he sought to find true beauty in art and nature, distancing himself from worldly sentiments and self-interest.
Therefore, the opening sentence presents the troubles and difficulties of living in a world of human emotions, poses fundamental questions about what it means to be human and how one should live, motivates the journey toward a state of detachment from human emotions, and invites the reader into intellectual contemplation and delicate emotional descriptions.
Soseki’s philosophy of harmonizing intellect, emotion, and will in life can be described as having the wisdom and discernment to flexibly balance things according to the situation, and also as living while maintaining the virtue that lies in the middle ground between excess and deficiency, as Aristotle described.
In classical theory of Forms, the nature of things is determined by their essential and constant elements, while attributes are viewed in a dualistic way: the essential (often ideal, true) attribute and the non-essential, incidental elements that obscure it. Therefore, classical humanism presupposes an essentialist concept of humanity, believing that an unchanging humanity exists and manifests itself in individual people.
In existentialism, as advocated by Marx, Nietzsche, and Sartre, the focus is on real existence, and the essence of that existence is determined by the practice of that existence.
Sartre (1905-1980), in particular, stated that existence precedes essence. In the uncertain, anxious, and chaotic social conditions following World War II, he argued that one’s essence is not something that exists from the beginning, but rather that each individual’s way of life—cherishing their existence and respecting their individual position, strengths, and individuality—builds their essence. These words gave hope and courage to ordinary people exhausted by war, who had lost their values, sense of justice, and sense of belonging, by showing them that there was at least a slight possibility of reflecting on the meaning of life and freely choosing their own way of living.
In other words, classically emphasizing God-centeredness or reason, rationality, and universality can lead to human homogenization and averaging, potentially resulting in the loss of humanity, individuality, and unique characteristics. Therefore, existentialism can be said to have emphasized the existence and role of the individual, and sought an attitude of creating a subjective and independent life through one’s own will.
While existentialism delved deeply into the inner world of the individual, structuralism, which emerged in France in the late 1950s and 1960s, re-examined freedom itself and approached humanity from a completely different angle.
Originating from Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who argued that the meaning of words is determined in relation to other words, structuralism suggests that just as we can speak naturally without consciously thinking about grammar as a structure, and our words lose their meaning if we deviate significantly from that grammar, there might be an invisible grammar in society that unconsciously directs our thoughts and actions. In other words, it showed that even the preferences and values that we perceive as uniquely our own may have been shaped by the structure of the era and culture to which we belong.
Cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) argued that the recurring appearance of binary oppositions such as heaven and earth, life and death, and good and evil in myths—which are full of regional originality and seemingly disparate—might be evidence that a common pattern of structure transcending culture is pre-built into human thought itself.
In other words, even the creative act of creating stories may be governed by unconscious rules beyond individual will, and this was presented as a counter-argument to existentialism, which prioritizes adherence to individual, free creative subjectivity.
In fact, Lévi-Strauss pointed out Sartre’s actions, which fervently defended a certain set of values and fell into Eurocentrism, based on the following:
(ref., The Savage Mind, 1962)
1. Every society can be expressed as a combination of several binary oppositions.
2. No matter which binary opposition is chosen, there is no objective basis for prioritizing one option over the other.
3. Therefore, it is impossible to recognize any superiority or inferiority between one society and another.
4. Nevertheless, people often tend to view their own society as superior to others.
Indeed, assuming that one’s own sense of what is good is also good for others, and insisting on one’s own way, doesn’t guarantee that everything will go smoothly. This somehow brings to mind the words from the opening of “Kusamakura.”
In any case, to use an analogy, structuralism can be likened to a map that has different cultures and eras as its framework—that is, an objective overall picture showing the topography and rules of the current place. On the other hand, existentialism can be likened to a subjective mental guide for finding the direction one should take by carefully observing the dynamism as a phenomenon of how multiple elements relate to and move on that map.
Therefore, rather than pursuing the truth or falsehood or superiority of existentialist self-will and structuralist social norms, it is essential to calmly interpret the overall picture, follow the guidance of one’s inner self, and take a step towards individual creative expression.
To add to that, constructivism, which emerged in the latter half of the 20th century as a reflection on existentialism’s excessive adherence to the subject and a critique of structuralism’s excessive constraint on structure, asserted that individuals do not exist in isolation, are not completely free, nor are they completely bound by structure, but rather exist within relationships with others and social interactions.
Just as subjectivity in existentialism and the overall framework in structuralism created walls and oppressions as personal limitations, in constructivism, the relativization of the individual as a social correlation could sometimes lead to a sense of loss of guidance in life and distorted biases.
Personal limitations are not inevitable; they arise depending on which of existentialism, structuralism, or constructivism one leans towards and where one leans. While these approaches can be effective, excessive bias can also lead to distortions, making careful consideration and assessment of balance essential.
However, on the other hand, the individual, as a single entity forming the whole in existentialism, becomes the individual as a difference within the overall structure of society and culture in structuralism, and in constructivism, the individual as a component of herd loses its individuality and identity due to social relativity and dissolves into the whole mass as an ambiguous entity, which can be seen as a deliberate transition process to a strict surveillance society. This is because, since structuralism, the idea of an essential nature, as seen in Plato’s theory of Forms, has disappeared, and there has been a shift to a duality of the ruling class and the subordinate non-ruling class.
This is because, following the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which asserted that behavior is determined not by one’s original character but by the circumstances in which one is placed, concepts such as Plato’s theory of Forms, which posit an inherent essence that leads to respect for the individual, have been discarded, and society is shifting to a structure in which the ruling class controls the common people through AI control using social credit scores and digital IDs.
Such AI-controlled social surveillance systems have already been implemented in China, a leading country in digital society, but in Japan, on April 8, 2026, the Cabinet approved an amendment to the Personal Information Protection Act for AI development, making it possible to acquire personal information and provide it to third parties without the consent of the individual, suggesting that other regions are following suit.
Regarding power structures, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) examined them in three stages, and many historical facts can be understood as social trends within this framework.
1. Power of Fear:
Direct rule through violence, such as public executions during the era of absolute monarchy.
Example: Brutal executions, etc.
2. Power of Discipline:
Control through discipline and training, which developed from the 17th century onward.
Example: Military training, school education systems, etc.
3. Power of Life Management:
Management and control of the entire population.
Example: Vaccine policies, population control, etc.
Furthermore, Foucault uses the Panopticon (circular prison), a panoramic surveillance system with a central watchtower allowing constant monitoring of prisoners, as a metaphor for the power structure of modern society, and lists the following as tools of surveillance, management, and control:
— Tools of Surveillance:
* The gaze of surveillance
* Punishment for standardization
* Testing
The following are listed in disciplinary training:
— Techniques of Disciplinary Training:
* Allocation: Management in closed spaces, identification by number.
* Behavioral Control: Time management, training in efficient movements.
* Organizing the Growth Process: A step-by-step education system.
* Composition of Force: Treating individuals as functions.
In any case, Foucault’s philosophy provides a perspective for critically re-examining the social structures and values that we take for granted, and it also provides important clues for understanding power structures and knowledge formation processes in modern society, and for exploring a freer and more creative way of life.
Foucault views individual lives as works of art, stating, “Aren’t our lives different and beautiful, a single work of art?” This gives us the courage and possibility to proactively choose and create our own way of life, rather than being bound by existing frameworks and social structures.
In any case, whether it be Soseki or Foucault, they visualize the invisible through figurative and metaphorical expressions, which promotes a deeper understanding, experience, and recognition of concepts, emotions, thoughts, social truths, and the essence of cosmic existence, and are especially indispensable for expressing artistic and aesthetic feelings and impulses.
Here are some invisible things.
1. The Abstract:
Things that lack concrete form or color, such as emotions, thoughts, ideas, memories, time, love, and death.
Example: In abstract painting, emotions and philosophical concepts are expressed through form, color, and composition.
2. The Cosmic and Metaphysical:
The essence of existence, the laws of the universe, or fundamental, invisible things.
Example: The Black Square (by Kazimir Malevich, 1915), as a non-objective painting embodying Suprematism, represents the ultimate existence beyond material form.
3. The unconscious and inner world:
An individual’s unconscious, dreams, imagination, and memories.
Example: Surrealism aimed to visualize the world of the unconscious and dreams.
4. Things hidden in society and history:
Social problems, power structures, suppressed voices, etc.
Example: Social realism and contemporary art visualize things that have been overlooked.
Visual experience is self-referential; it involves being aware of oneself as the observer. Therefore, vision is not merely about seeing the physical, but a process of re-examining the very way things appear within perception, and a means of touching the unseen.
While each artist may have their own unique method of visualizing thought, generally, it involves first enabling cognition and awareness by verbalizing abstract concepts and information, and then visualizing thought by considering the logical relationships between them and structuring them hierarchically.
Metaphor, symbolism, abstraction, and movement are visualized as artistic expression through concrete forms, colors, and compositions, or by eliminating concreteness and using color, form, and rhythm, or by associating movement with concepts based on time and relationships.
In fact, Foucault developed an artistic theory of action that fundamentally re-examined the very nature of real society by taking what is visible in the representations of paintings by Velázquez, Manet, and Magritte from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and through the recognition of the invisible things inherent in them—things that can be thought about and things that must be thought about. (ref., The Order of Things (1966), by Michel Foucault)
Foucault’s concept of episteme refers to the framework of knowledge that changes with the times and society, and is a concept that suggests people are unconsciously influenced by the direction of thought and worldview of their era.
First, Foucault explored a conceptual system that, according to rules operating under objective human consciousness, could determine the limits of language and thought used in a particular time and region.
By unearthing the unconscious framework (or layers of thought) of thought—the premises for certain knowledge to be established, the rules of thought that govern an era, the regularities of expression, and so on—he revealed that knowledge and truths that have seemed universally existing and taken for granted since ancient times, such as concepts of illness and madness, and economic concepts like wealth and labor, are actually historical constructs, determined by the rules of thought of a particular era. (ref., *The Archaeology of Knowledge* (1969), by Michel Foucault)
In The Order of Things, episteme is presented as the central concept of the archaeology of knowledge. It refers to a fundamental framework—a transparent filter-like device (dispositif) applied to an entire era—that defines all thought processes within a particular time and society, such as what is considered knowledge and how truth can be discovered. It is a prerequisite for the existence of knowledge, but it suddenly breaks down with the change of era, causing previous truths to instantly lose their meaning. Foucault analyzes Western episteme from the Middle Ages onward by dividing it into three periods.
By analyzing these modes of episteme and the discontinuities between them, the focus is placed on the relationship between words and things, and the transformation of our perception of them.
1. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance period (16th century) – Similarity:
Things in the world are connected to one another through similar relationships.
Examples: The idea that eating walnuts, which resemble the shape of a skull, would cure head diseases; or the belief that aconite was effective against eye diseases because its form resembled the shape of an eye.
Foucault presents four forms of such “similarity”:
(1) convenientia (adjustment):
Adjacent similarities between things in the world.
Example: The fit between plants and animals in growth, and the fit between animals and humans in sensory functions.
(2) aemulatio (imitation):
Similarities arising from the realization of reality between objects and images.
Example: The eyes resemble the sun and moon in brightness.
(3) analogie (analogy):
Similarities based on slight analogies.
Example: The relationship between stars and the sky represents the relationship between grass and the earth.
(4) sympathie (empathy):
The principle of identifying all things.
Example: Heavy objects evoke empathy for the gravity of the earth, and sunflowers evoke empathy for the movement of the sun, simultaneously creating a sense of aversion and thus giving rise to the self-identity of objects.
To summarize, these points can be summarized as follows:
* Natural objects are linked together like a chain by imitation relationships that exist like reflections in a mirror.
* Such similar relationships are read through externally visible signs.
* All things become signs that reveal secrets, and these are interpretable.
2. Classical period (17th-18th century) – Analysis of Representation:
The thinking of similarity began to be criticized, and the era shifted to one in which representations were given to images that appeared before the eye or mind, and which were ordered by identity and differences through comparison.
This was a shift to an era in which comparison, classification, deduction, calculation, and analysis were the standards of knowledge, and Descartes pointed out the following in “Rules for the Direction of the Mind”:
* The workings of the human mind are almost entirely carried out by comparison.
* In particular, the comparison of numbers and quantities, and the comparison of order, are important.
* In comparing order, a continuous series is created by comparing one term to another, and then to a third term.
* By continuously connecting what can be perceived through reason, a larger order can be formed.
Foucault focused on the following, which are the sciences of representations (images that humans hold about things) and the signs that represent them, in relation to human life, language, labor, and production:
* Natural history (biology):
The study of natural organisms and living things from a human perspective. Based on visible characteristics, natural objects are given names and classified based on identity and difference.
* General grammar (linguistics):
The study of the origin of human cognition. It analyzes “how words give names to representations, and in what order words are arranged.”
* The science of wealth (economics):
Money is used as a symbol of wealth to make wealth exchangeable. From this representational relationship, an order is created by corresponding the amount of money with the amount of wealth.
3. Modern period (19th century onwards) – Human:
Human finitude emerges in a positive sense through external expression.
In the Middle Ages, the relationship between objects and symbols was linked by similarity, but in the Classical era, narratives based on objects and symbols were eliminated, and only what was represented was faithfully described. Each individual then acquired self-identity within the differences placed on a universal table through identity and difference.
Then, in the modern era, it was discovered that living organisms exist according to internal laws, and they came to be understood within a context of temporality and historicity, giving rise to the concept of life and leading to the development of biology.
Meanwhile, in linguistics, while the accuracy and precision of noun placement were emphasized in representations during the Classical era, in the Modern era, when comparing languages, emphasis shifted to verb conjugations and other inflections of word endings. Furthermore, the focus shifted from the analysis of linguistic expression to the importance of a linguistic system possessing an internal structure and historicity.
Furthermore, in the concepts of labor and production, there was a shift from a representational relationship in the classical era where money was a symbol of wealth, to a social transformation in the modern era where labor, which involves the exhaustion of the body, became the unit of measurement, leading to the imbuing of economic activity with temporality and historicity.
The episteme was like the atmosphere or mood unique to a particular era, underlying an entire culture and representing a common mode of thinking shared by those belonging to the same cultural community.
In modern society, knowledge and truth tend to be generated by AI based on a modern episteme defined by data, algorithms, and evaluation rules. Foucault, in his archaeology of knowledge, deconstructed the universal structure of structuralism, demonstrating that the structure of knowledge is historical and accidental, and that there is a framework that constrains not what people know, but the scope of what people can know.
In other words, the episteme, the framework that governs society, is formed by the powerful class, and a characteristic of the episteme is that it enforces a particular way of seeing things and conceals other viewpoints. This framework is imposed through institutions and permeates society, constraining people’s ways of seeing and behaving, training them to conform to the rules, and standardizing them. The concepts of “normal” and “common sense” are derived from this standardization, and those who deviate from it find it difficult to live. The mechanism can be seen in how people are ostracized from society by social credit scores.
On the other hand, while exploring the academic content Foucault referred to may be meaningful, what is more intriguing is how the concept of episteme—the framework of knowledge that changes with time and society—seems to be expressed and visualized. Perhaps it’s just my personal imagination, but images related to the representations of each era come to mind.
In any case, the perspectives depicted by predecessors like Soseki and Foucault can serve as valuable clues for later creators in artistically visualizing their inspirations and concepts, and also as tools for viewers in deciphering the messages embedded in their works.
As an aside, the above describes the function of generating mental representations based on sensations, but apparently there are people in the world who cannot conjure up mental images or visualize images in their minds. While Aristotle called the ability to imagine “fantasia,” the characteristic that refers to the inability to spontaneously form visual images, or mental images, in one’s mind is called “aphantasia.”
Aphantasia is not a disease, memory impairment, or intellectual problem; it is simply a manifestation of the diversity of human perception, a difference in the way information is processed in the brain. It is not rare, and it is estimated that a few percent of the population possesses this characteristic. It is believed that they understand things through conceptual knowledge without relying on visual representations.
In Plato’s philosophy, truth is found in the Ideas—the unseen and intangible—and truth resides in these supersensory Ideas. Sensation is merely a constantly evolving perception, and only pseudo-truth can be found.
On the other hand, Aristotle presupposes the existence of fantasma, which possesses the capacity for imagery. He argues that intellectual cognition and sensory perception share the commonality of being the soul’s function of grasping something, and that what can be intellectually perceived exists in forms that can be sensed. He asserts that when we contemplate using our intellect, it is inevitably accompanied by phantasma.
Aristotle defines fantasia as the function of representation, that is, the function and content expressed in terms of imagination and representation. He lists its characteristics as being dynamic, indispensable for sensation, and similar to sensation. Furthermore, he argues that fantasia is the ability to produce and retain images as echoes even after real sensory stimuli have passed, and that the entire chain of cognition—from sensation to memory, from memory to thought, from thought to desire, and from desire to action—is mediated by phantasma.
In other words, Aristotle’s perspective, namely the idea that hallucinations underpin cognition at all levels, can be expressed as the following chain of events.
Sensation (aiesthesis)
→ Movement (kinesis) as an echo of sensation
→ Production of phantasma, which is a mental image, by fantasia, which is the ability to imagine
→ Memory (mneme)
→ Recall (anamnesis)
→ Thought (dianoia)
→ Desire (orexis)
→ Action (praxis)
Through this chain, phantasma intervenes at every stage as a carrier of information. Even after sensation fades, even when memory is recalled, and even when thought manipulates abstract concepts, phantasma always exists as the foundation, securing a pathway that leads from imagination to fantasy or artistic visualization.
According to Foucault, self-care is not merely a way of living well, but a practice of aesthetically constructing life.
In other words, each individual is not simply a being who is made to live, but rather a being capable of uniquely weaving their own life through continuous practice based on subtle aesthetic judgments about how to live and what form they want their life to take.
Furthermore, Foucault argued that creating one’s own style of living also involves reconstructing one’s relationship with institutions, and that subjectivity conditioned within institutions can be aesthetically and ethically reorganized through self-technologies based on knowledge and techniques.
Between existence and structure, reorganizing one’s relationship with oneself based on the artistic visualizations created by each individual, thereby speaking of oneself, refining oneself, and transforming oneself, and connecting to future ethical horizons while avoiding being submerged in social institutions imposed by power, is essential for maintaining freedom in the modern age.
Sincerely grateful for your financial support.
Sources and references:
