午夜剧场

Apparently, there was debate for and against including "Individualism" in the book title during the publisher's planning meetings. The concern was that it might be confused or misunderstood as egoism—thinking only of oneself. But of course, that is not the intention at all. I guarantee that reading the content will instead provide an opportunity to cast off egoism.

Soseki Natsume has a recorded lecture titled "My Individualism." It is a record of Soseki passionately explaining his own experiences and thoughts to the students of Gakushuin, describing how he finally discovered a path worthy of risking his life after struggling in his youth. These words of Soseki from over 100 years ago have something to appeal to us especially now.

Combined with various issues surrounding COVID-19, we live in a time covered by a vague sense of difficulty in living. I feel that both adults and children are in a society where they tend to be exhausted by top-heavy "aerial battles." In the midst of a digital and data-driven internet society, people are surrounded by "information" and dominated by algorithms before they can experience or challenge things for themselves. As a result, it feels as though many people avoid dialogue with their own hearts and end up cornering themselves.

I have been continuing a project called "Capitalism of Desire" through video and print. A few years ago, I published "Capitalism from Age 14," and this current work on "Individualism" also serves as a sequel. When shifting the axis of thought from society to the individual, I intended this to be a prescription for the question of how to cultivate immunity in a society where technology seems to commodify not just data, but the human heart itself.

Starting with Soseki, and including Lacan, Fromm, Lao-Zhuang, Montaigne, Kitaro Nishida... I remove the quotation marks from these "historical giants" and consider how they protected their own way of being and living within the "human world" that is "hard to live in" (Kusamakura) in any era. Conversely, this is an essay on how we face modern society as individuals. I believe it also contains elements of a message that will resonate with business people.

While "individualism" is easily misunderstood, I had fun thinking about how Yukichi Fukuzawa, who believed there could be no national development without individual independence, would have perceived Soseki's "individualism." Though their angles of thought differed, they were two people climbing the same mountain from different paths.

For my next work, I would like to go with "independence and self-respect from Age 14."

Shunichi Maruyama

Daiwa Shobo

272 pages, 1,650 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.