the qualia journal

So there is this craze about global warming. The former U.S. presidential candidate Al Gore is enlightening the public ("An Inconvenien...

There are crazy things in life. If there are two kinds, pro-life crazy and anti-life crazy, I firmly believe that the former will eventually...

I was reading a recent book by Genichiro Takahashi ("The Novels of Japan--A hundred years of solitude", written in Japanese, trans...

Interaction Simultaneity The Origin of Consciousness blog 31st January 2007 http://origin-of-consciousness.blogspot.com/ 　

I met with one of Japan's most popular "idol" of the time, Eriko Sato who have starred in some films e.g., "Cutie Honey...

When I was a kid, the first snow of the year would always fall sometime in December in the Tokyo suburb where I lived with my parents. Looki...

I don't claim to know what a "classic" really entails, but it appears to me that it is something that provides one with new fi...

The novelist Hyakken Uchida ("Idiot Train", see the 29th December 2006 entry of this blog) was wont to say "being hungry is o...

I met with the photographer Gregory Colbert at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo. It was a wonderful opportunity to discuss his unique approach...

In a recent magazine article (in "Kangaeru Hito" ("The Thinker"), a quarterly published from Shinchosha, Tokyo), Yasujir...

Earlier, I wrote about the recurring dream in which Godzilla would appear as a menacing presence. As a child, I was not aware of the atomic ...

Violence brings only sorrow into this world, but wrath and indignation, when managed and directed properly, can sometimes generate good and ...

Mr. Kimura was one of the guests of the "The Professionals" program broadcast on NHK, which I host. He harvests apples in Aomori, ...

When I was very small, up to the age of three or four, I was very fond of the color red. I would ask my parents to buy red things for me. I ...

The American way of communication has been said to be unique to that particular nation. When I go to the States, people say hello to me on t...

"Mono no aware" (the pathos of things) is an important concept in understanding Japanese literature and way of seeing the world in...

The present paradigm of neuroeconomics is too narrow in its conceptual setup in order to encompass all that is truly relevant and important ...

Two years after the end of the war, my mother passed away. Mother's death affected me very deeply. Compared to this sorrow, the great wa...

When small things tend to let you down in life, it is useful to think of the really wonderful things. In my case, I remember how wonderful t...

A few years ago, I was giving a joint talk with Masahiko Shimada, the famous Japanese novelist of my own generation, at the Asahi Culture Ce...