English as reconstruction of being

In writing my autobiography, I have decided not to shy away from the dark reality of my own life, but to confront it head-on. Looking back, I must admit that my childhood and adolescence were extremely lonely. My father worked on Sundays, so he rarely took me out. In junior high, I became friends with a classmate named U. He felt sorry for me for not going anywhere, so he took me to his relatives in Ikoma during summer vacation. During elementary school, I went on "field trips" alone to the children's park or a small hill in the suburbs. Even during New Year's, the house was always gloomy, and I remember being trapped in a cold room, snowbound, and enduring the long winter ahead. On the rare occasions when I was taken to a department store, I was happy to receive Abekawa mochi (rice cakes) to eat when I returned home. The siblings next house each had their own celebrations for Hinamatsuri and Tango no Sekku , but my brothers had none. The toy gun I begged for was a w...

  I finished Freud's "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" today. It's a massive 838-page work, two volumes in total. I probably bought the Shincho Bunko edition I had when I was a university student, and the type was small and densely packed across the double-page spreads. I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it if I hadn't set it as a goal. I can read a full-length novel without any particular reason, but reading an academic book (not a paper) all the way through has always been difficult. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is an undeniable great man who established his own unique analytical method by examining patients (clients) as a sole clinician. Since the book is presented as a transcript of a lecture given to a general audience and medical researchers, I struggled at first to keep up with his lawyer-level eloquence and logical development. In addition to the founder's efforts to create something from nothing, his inclusion of an analysis of i...

  If an ordinary person has value, then surely there must be value in what they express themselves. I don't think there's anything to need to express only what others are likely to value, as a shy to speak that what you have to say has no value. When I saw someone state that they were only selecting valuable things from their experiences to write about on their blog, a question struck me. Of course, marketers and creators who express themselves solely for commercial value would recognize that value is an exchange value that can be converted into money. What I'm concerned about is an ordinary person who no longer has a social title or occupation. I think that a person's value is the value of their existence as a person. An ordinary person who lives an ordinary life, has no physical advantages, can't become an athlete, can't draw, write, or sing, isn't particularly intelligent, and doesn't have any hobbies or special skills that they're passionate abou...

Sartre used to be the center of my philosophical interest. When I was a cliant of his, I was drawn into Marxism, and when I became familiar with the political movements of student power, I needed to have a position of my own. Sartre also regarded Marx as the last (impossible to climb) philosophy, but whereas Marxism seemed to have a logic in which the subject was automatically required from the theory of objective situations, Sartre's philosophy was based on the freedom of the individual. It seemed to provide an ideological position. Sartre seemed to be opening up a field in which I could question my own participation and solidarity. In China, participating in demonstrations against the government's coronavirus policies is itself a danger to one's life, and while the situation I was in as a student was not to that extent, I was still in danger. Therefore, I was afraid that if I had a half-hearted idea, I would be affected. In certain situations, I needed to have a reason to...

  It goes without saying that most authorities, Japanese and foreign, who write at all impartially and inteligently on the moral or cultural or spiritual life of the Japanese people, agree on the importance of the influence which has been exercised by Zen Buddhism on the building-up of the Japanese character.  I have elsewhere quoted statements bearing upon this from the later Sir Charls Eliot and from Sir George Sansom as two most recent and authoritive foreigh writers: the one on Japanese Buddhism and the other on Japanese Culture. It is more appropriate and necessary here to say a few words about Zen itself, as I imagine my readers have very little knowledge of it. This is, however, not a very easy task to do, for Zen is a difficult subject to comprehend for those who have no knowledge whatever of it either by hearsay or from reading, since Zen claims to be above logic and verbal interpretation, and again since it has never been made accessible to general readers. As to tho...