Center-less Faith
The Art of Being Called
As the biting cold of the withered wind pierces the skin and the veil of winter descends, the world turns toward silence. We, too, are compelled to slow our breath, aligning it with this quietude.
Inherently, winter is a season when all creation subdues its activity to store primordial energy. It is the time most suited for introspection. That many people look back upon the year and let their thoughts wander toward the next is, one might say, in accord with the providence of nature. I, myself, have felt a dramatic shift in my life’s rhythm and physical and mental inclinations over the past two years.
Until seven years ago, whenever this season came around, I was tormented by a heavy, seasonal melancholia peculiar to winter. As the daylight hours waned, my heart would close, and I would fall into a sensation akin to wandering through a tunnel with no exit. However, one single habit opened a vent in that darkness. It was a primitive ritual: consciously absorbing the sun’s grace into the body from early autumn—specifically, the intake of Vitamin D3 and resetting mind and body under the winter sunlight whenever possible. The key lay not in acting suddenly once winter had set in, but in gradually shifting the body’s mode to suppress activity; it involves taking the time—the most critical resource for modern people—to prepare.
Looking back at myself a few years ago, there was always an excessive tension. I became aggressive toward invisible enemies and was driven by a sense of irritation. Yet, without knowing what drove me or where I was heading, I was simply chasing something blindly. Perhaps the thirst held by many living in the modern age is of the same quality. We are always chasing “something,” but there are far too few who know the true identity of that “something.” One of my inquiries is to verbalize this very thing.
The true nature of the fatigue we feel daily is not merely physical exhaustion. It is nothing other than the frictional heat generated by the compulsive maintenance of the ego—the demand that one “must be someone,” that one “must always be the subject.” Where on earth does this sensation, bordering on nihilism, come from? This time, I will consider it through the lens of tourism—the greatest feature, and simultaneously the greatest problem, of the 21st century.
Modern people live in an era where we can move more freely than ever before. With a single palm-sized device, one can book a lodging on the other side of the globe, spend a modest sum, and breathe the air of a foreign land a few hours later. Yet, no matter how much physical distance we traverse, or even if we stand amidst scenery called magnificent, the experience of true repose not visiting the heart is one that everyone must have had. Especially in this last decade, this tendency has heightened to an extreme degree, and I feel as though vast numbers of people have ultimately lost sight of why they spent their money and time in the first place.
In such moments, what assaults us from the depths of our hearts is not fulfillment, but rather a bottomless void. However, if one admits to this void, one feels the anxiety of being buried alive in the social media age. Thus, people pretend this void does not exist; they stage a fulfillment—that is, they equip themselves with a fabricated fulfillment or a prepared fulfillment—and declare, “This is not consumption.” Even now, after this era has continued for some ten years, such people continue to proliferate infinitely without pause. As a result, this has surfaced in the worst possible form: a movement of regional destruction known as over-tourism. Over-tourism, which literally destroys everything—life, culture, customs, capital, and harmony—can be called a 21st-century form of army or invasion.
Reflecting on how my life has changed over these past two years, one major shift is that since Japan returned to the world after the pandemic, I have completely stopped approaching the “centers” of cities known as tourist destinations. Previously, even with many tourists, there were still places dotted around where locals found peace; one could drink coffee in a quiet shop where tourists did not enter, reading a book or enjoying conversation with the owner. In other words, a segregation was established. But from about two years ago, the situation changed completely. The background of this remains unclear to me, but I suspect the cause lies in the tourists’ one-sided and selfish “experience addiction” toward the concept of “local experience.”
Certainly, since they are visiting a foreign land from afar, it is the psychology of modern people to want to experience more than others. And because they can now see and hear massive amounts of information before visiting, tourists “know” the town before they arrive. Strictly speaking, it means they “feel as if they know.” And precisely because they “feel as if they know,” they take interest in a world not introduced on YouTube or Instagram, premised on the infinite flow of their feeds. To be accurate, their interest is guided by algorithms. Thus, they are inevitably presented with experiencing a local world that is not the typical world of tourist sites flowing in the feed (though it can be said that this local world, too, is already intentionally shown by the algorithm). In short, behind the experience addiction lies the circumstance that while individuals believe they are seeking, they are in fact being guided and presented to by algorithms.
To me, the greatest problem of over-tourism—while certainly involving the destructive logic of numbers—lies even more in the attitude itself of “feeling as if one knows” a town one has never visited. We all live in a world where one can feel as if one knows anything without moving a single step from the sofa. I believe this shares the same root as health issues. Just as people consume excessive sugar or fat, they consume excessive information, devouring it as if constantly in a state of starvation. In my personal deduction, “sugar intake” (blood sugar spikes) and “information intake” (dopamine spikes) are proportional.
However, while sugar intake reaches a limit when one is full, information has the specific characteristic that it never ends, no matter how much one eats. The reason is clear: information far exceeding what a single individual can consume is being generated by the second.
In a sense, modern tourism is merely tracing the “correct answers” cropped by others in guidebooks or on social media, and placing one’s own body there to record it. It is not an encounter with the world, but merely a confirmation task of known information. Yet, the number of people who do not understand this is exploding year by year. What exists there is not humble surprise or emotion toward the world, nor is it respect or understanding for other countries, others, or communities; it is merely the mirror image of a bloated self-consciousness that wants to confirm “the me who came here.” In other words, the reason over-tourism can be positioned as destruction is that the true identity of this “faceless tourist” is centered on people who do not possess cultural understanding or consideration for others, but think of life only selfishly. That is why tourism has surfaced as a problem of the 21st century. Conversely, for the soulful tourist, there is no problem more troublesome than this. This is because the label of “tourist” causes everything to be viewed as identical. If one intends to be a soulful tourist, I strongly feel one must not avert one’s eyes from this problem of over-tourism. It is a matter of questioning thoroughly: what on earth is this?
Modern society constantly forces us to be the “subject.” Where to go, what to eat, how to live—the basic premise is that all responsibility lies with “me” who made the choice. This excessive theory of self-responsibility dominates us even in travel. Since we pay money, use time, and move, we must obtain the maximum result at the highest efficiency; failure is not permitted. As we try to control the itinerary with our own will, the world becomes a miniature garden of pre-established harmony, and the unexpected mystery closes its doors. If one asks whether it is better to simply drift without deciding anything, that too only awakens an anxiety peculiar to the modern age. What a difficult era to steer through.
I travel quite a lot, but I wish to present a shift in perspective that may serve as a breakthrough here.