午夜剧场

Until now, I have written books with the intention of conducting something like "independent research for adults"—an adult version of the independent research projects children do for summer vacation homework. In “The Mind-Brain Problem,” I researched and summarized brain science; in “Unreasonable Evolution,” evolutionary theory; and in “Human Anatomy is the Key to the Anatomy of Monkeys,” life science and cognitive science.

This summer, however, I ended up publishing a book of a slightly different color titled “At the Threshold of Philosophy.”

In this book, instead of researching the work of distinguished experts, I challenged myself to use my own mundane experiences as the subject of consideration. If independent research and picture diaries are the two pillars of the summer homework industry, then this is, so to speak, an "adult's picture diary."

Perhaps because it was based on a magazine series, I fortunately did not suffer much from the pains of creation (I had already suffered enough during the serialization), but there was one thing that bothered me until the very end. It was the issue of style (sentence-ending forms).

“At the Threshold of Philosophy” is structured by alternating between personal experience parts, where I recount my own observations and experiences, and analytical parts, where I analyze them with the help of scholars and writers. After much trial and error, I ended up writing the experience parts in the "da/dearu" (plain) style and the analytical parts in the "desu/masu" (polite) style.

What troubled me a bit was that I couldn't shake the doubt: "Isn't it usually the other way around?" Generally, the "da/dearu" style is considered objective, while the "desu/masu" style is considered subjective. I worried that this book was the reverse. This doubt continued to smolder even after publication.

My savior in this regard was Masahiro Hirao's “Philosophy from the Japanese Language: Why You Must Not Write a Thesis in ‘Desu/Masu’” (Shobunsha), which was released one month after my book.

In that book, Mr. Hirao argues that the "da/dearu" style is a closed principle that exists without the presence of others, while the "desu/masu" style is a principle that only exists between oneself and a second-person "you." That's it! I certainly wanted to present my experiences as anecdotes that only I could tell, while presenting my analysis as a basis for joint research with the reader. I was right to do it this way.

I feel as if the mist has cleared. Thanks to this, I can now sleep soundly.

Hiromitsu Yoshikawa

Kinokuniya Shoten

272 pages, 1,980 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.