Thinking in the Threshold: Why the World is Attracted to Japanese Subculture

2025/05/21

Looking back, I have always lived with a feeling of being torn apart. When it came time to choose a university path, I wavered between the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Letters, eventually choosing the Faculty of Economics. I thought that even with my fickle nature, I could find a point of contact somewhere within a broad academic field ranging from theory to thought. When it came time to find a job, I agonized between journalism and academia, eventually landing at NHK. This was out of the expectation that I could find a way to continue not only visual expression but also academic inquiry. I found myself attracted to the gaps between various fields, different modes of thought, and the thresholds of cultural climates. I have always felt a sense of not quite fitting within the frameworks and genres already established in society.

In fact, that habit does not seem to have changed since I started working. "Eigo de Shabera Night," "Bakusho Mondai no Nippon no Kyoyo," "Nippon no Dilemma," "Desire and Capitalism," "A History of World Subculture," "Nekommentary"... before I knew it, while flying the banner of "liberal arts," I kept coming up with projects that somehow strayed from the "orthodox" and continued to give them shape until the present day.

This book could be described as the traces of the thoughts of a person who cannot settle down anywhere. Reflections that begin with my own discomfort repeat cycles of flux and introspection, eventually leading me to face my own origins. For example, an episode involving a unique collection of dialogues by a certain philosopher, which was the catalyst for my joining NHK, appears in Chapter 1, and in the final chapter, I rediscover the possibilities of that philosopher's thought as if drawing an arc. It has also taken on the character of a personal history of the movement of ideas and thoughts.

However, this is not a book that simply indulges in sentimentality. It scoops up what lies dormant at the bottom of an individual's heart, expands it into universal issues, discovers identical structures within disparate genres, and savors the process of contemplation. It is a way to resist an era that demands quick "correct answers" and to cultivate mental immunity. Whether I was able to demonstrate the same "toughness" in this book as Haruki Murakami or the "Third Generation of Postwar Writers" whom I quoted in this context is something I must leave to the readers' evaluation, but I pride myself on the fact that it is peppered with hints for thinking that are worth sharing with people living in this same era.

Discovery lies in the threshold between the gaze of the individual and the other. Open thinking and introspection lead to resolve and hope.

Thinking in the Threshold: Why the World is Attracted to Japanese Subculture

Shunichi Maruyama

Kodansha

240 pages, 1,870 yen (tax included)

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