Escaping the Dopamine World: Redefining Japanese Culture

Questioning “Japanese Culture = Tea Culture” Through COMT Variants

“People are all different.” In today’s world, where everything is becoming individualized, each of us is being forced to consciously secure the time and space to reflect with ourselves and to engage with life on the basis of medium- to long-term plans. Introspection has already become one of the essential skills for surviving our harsh era, yet the world is not made of pretty ideals, and it is also true that there are always some people for whom it is inconvenient if others turn inward. Even if it sounds exaggerated to call this “awakening,” once you are pulled into the dopamine-addiction structure that underlies contemporary marketing, it becomes extremely difficult to escape, and your most important personal resources—your time (and your money)—are stripped away. This has now become a serious issue facing all of humanity.

Even for those who would like to turn toward “introspection,” many have already been absorbed into the structures of the contemporary world, and for people who do not know, and do not even try to know, what lies “outside” that structure, the dopamine world is simply reality itself. If the extreme polarization along this axis continues, one group will be those who, on the basis of introspection, redesign their lives and their possibilities and move into the future at an accelerating pace, while the other group will be those whose bodies and minds are dominated by chronic dopamine excess and who will end their lives without ever once reclaiming themselves. In such a situation, it is obvious that the point that links these two groups in the middle will become crucial, and although the names may differ, we are likely to see the successive rise of new kinds of philosophies and religions.

Of course, as everyone knows, merely saying “introspection” does not make it easy. Introspection is not a matter of momentary pleasure (dopamine bursts) but something that continues throughout a lifetime, constantly transforming. No matter how historically renowned a Buddhist monk or Shinto practitioner may have been, they, too, were buffeted by the trends of their times; yet by refusing to abandon introspection and by designing the future from within themselves, they became pioneers—and we should not forget this. Especially today, when neuroscience and related fields have advanced so dramatically, it is extremely difficult for individuals to break free from dopamine worlds built by exploiting that knowledge. From another angle, the various events taking place in the world today all have the effect of amplifying dopamine: they can trigger dopamine even in people who have no direct connection to those events, and we now live in a remarkable era in which the resources thus extracted (time and money) can be centrally collected.

This is why, at the micro level of everyday life, people keep insisting that we should quit social media or at least keep our distance from it. Social media is curious in that, for people like me who do not use Instagram, X, TikTok, and the like and who do not even have accounts, access is simply not granted in the first place. Yet for the majority, the world has become one in which they cannot live without social media. In fact, anyone who has traveled in Japan will know that in Japan—arguably at the forefront of the dopamine world—it is extremely difficult to find genuinely good food. Inhabitants of the dopamine world happily enjoy Japanese food, proud as the country is of having the largest “number” of restaurants in the world, without worrying about such things, but the reality is that the quality of food in Japan has extremely serious problems; in substance, it is an “overflow of crudity.”

If you try to find delicious treats in Japan that are gluten-free and made without dairy products, refined sugar, or additives, you generally cannot buy them in the big cities. In most cases they are produced by individuals living in rural areas who run small shops or sell from mobile stalls without permanent storefronts, so their business days and locations change frequently. Whenever I visit different regions, I make a point of going to such places as well, but what I sometimes find troublesome is that their business information is basically only available through Instagram. To me this structure feels strange: even when our goal is to maintain or improve health, there is a system in place that functions almost like an initiation ritual, requiring us to step into the dopamine world of Instagram, and even the people engaged in promoting health have, in fact, not yet escaped from the dopamine world. After about five years of traveling, I have come to feel that this is where we see the grim reality of so-called organic culture in Japan.

In today’s world, where 99% of humanity is dopamine-dependent to some degree, our top priority is not “introspection” itself but, before that, to reassess our diet and, over years, restore our health. Before we have reclaimed this physical and mental health, no matter how many meditation techniques we experiment with, we are not even prepared to remove the noise, and genuine introspection is impossible. Modern humans are saturated with toxins in their bodies—pesticides, additives, chemical compounds, and so on—so we must first regain our original ability to excrete them, and then, starting with our diet, rethink our entire way of living so as to minimize the amount of toxins we take in. In a sense, this is the contemporary form of shojin (精進), disciplined self-cultivation. At any time in history, to practice shojin is to resist and oppose the spirit of the age, and I cannot help but feel that continuing this discipline is the path that leads to introspection. Whether or not one is Japanese is not the issue here; rather, this should be located as a problem at the scale of humanity.

From yet another angle, the structure of today’s dopamine world feels very much like the system of Disneyland. In Japan, it has been about ten years since younger generations became addicted to Disneyland, but that addiction is not just simple escapism. For most young people, it is because Disneyland meshes extraordinarily well with the dopamine world that is their entire reality.

From my own critical standpoint, I see contemporary Japanese culture itself as moving within this dopamine-world structure. Strictly speaking, no such singular entity as “Japanese culture” has ever existed; rather, what existed was a restless mass of countless cultures, each nurtured in a specific place in its own pluralistic way—and at Shitsurae I repeatedly argue precisely this point. The greatest postwar thinker, Yoshimoto Takaaki, described this structure in terms of “自己幻想／self fantasy,” “対幻想／mutual fantasy,” and “共同幻想／collective fantasy” but he stopped short of fully systematizing it into theory. The person who took on the formidable task of theorizing these concepts was my most beloved philosopher, Yamamoto Tetsuji. I always maintain that there can be no genuine understanding of Japan without understanding this man. Even now, as he approaches the age of eighty, Yamamoto continues to sharpen his thought every day and publish one ambitious work after another in order to fulfill his mission. In this way, Yoshimoto’s The Theory of Collective Fantasy (共同幻想論) is being given theoretical form by Yamamoto, and as we enter an era in which people emerge who can make use of that theory, what is currently understood as “Japanese culture” will collapse, and an essential Japanese culture will come to the fore. This is the very realm in which I myself am constantly thinking and acting, and it will still require a good deal of time; but that essential Japanese culture has already begun to move.

From this perspective, there may never have been an era in which it was more crucial than now to avoid having one’s life damaged or squandered by being misled by the external dopamine world, and instead to turn inward and reflect on oneself. The intensity with which one confronts oneself and designs one’s life (one’s possibilities) from within is entirely different from the structure of a world that has been systematized to trigger dopamine in the masses all at once; put differently, what is at stake in each case is how we relate to our own uniquely individual dopamine profile. This is true of Japanese culture as discussed above as well: even if we speak of “the dopamine world” in the singular, dopamine metabolism differs from person to person. More than “individualization,” the basic rule of the dopamine world is not to let people become aware that they differ from one another in this way—but it is possible to break out of that rule. The reason is that the system’s architects have so far only been able to construct the dopamine world as a single, uniform framework, and the project of recapturing everyone into fully individualized dopamine worlds has not yet been completed. That completion, however, is only a matter of time. Before it is realized, the most important condition for surviving a future even more demanding than the present will be to deepen our understanding of these mechanisms as thoroughly as possible.

What we therefore need to understand in advance is our own dopamine metabolism. By understanding our own genes and becoming intimately familiar with how we metabolize dopamine, it becomes entirely possible to step away from and create distance from the dopamine world. As noted above, escaping from this dopamine world is at the same time an escape from “Japan,” “the Japanese,” and “Japanese culture” as they are conventionally framed, and it provides the basic foundation for looking at Japan, Japanese people, and Japanese culture in their true sense. This is the starting point, and it is here that the genuine greatness of Japanese culture unfolds without limit.

Seen from another angle, however, if the architects of the dopamine world were to obtain the genetic information of the people they have drawn into their world, they could update the system so that those people would never again be able to escape. In other words, before they complete such a system, we, at the level of individuals, need to prepare by thoroughly understanding our own genes and metabolism and deepening the kind of introspection that corresponds to them. The futures of those who undertake this preparation and those who do not will diverge at a level far beyond the “polarization” that is currently being discussed; the difference will extend to a dimension that touches on the very risk to life. If, in the coming years, the dopamine world is updated before individuals have had time to prepare, we will arrive at a near future in which it is no longer possible to step outside it.

Because this may still feel abstract, let us consider matcha (抹茶), which is generally regarded as a symbol of Japanese culture. Today matcha is consumed worldwide. When I was in Bangkok this month, I saw products with “matcha” on the label flooding the city, and visitors to Japan consume matcha to an extent that could fairly be called an addiction (it is not even widely known that Japanese people themselves do not drink nearly that much matcha). Over the past month my younger brother, who lives in Europe, has been back in Japan with his girlfriend, and she too, coming from Europe, drinks matcha on a daily basis and has become addicted.

Now that matcha is known around the globe as a representative of Japanese culture, have we ever really thought about what its substance is? What I want to ask is whether matcha truly had such a close relationship with Japanese people that it could be said to represent a Japanese culture that encompasses all Japanese.

In fact, in the historical research I have focused on so far, I have found no evidence that matcha was historically consumed nationwide in Japan; rather, it seems clear that it was a luxury enjoyed only by a very limited segment of the population. For this reason, I suspect that for most Japanese people matcha has not contributed all that much to health, and that in many cases it may actually have negative effects. Considering that the majority of Japanese people did not historically have the custom of drinking matcha, this is a hypothesis worth taking seriously. What I want to draw attention to here is EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), which is abundant in green tea—the highest-level category that includes matcha. In recent years EGCG has attracted attention from many angles, including its antiviral properties, but the question is whether green tea, which contains far more EGCG than imported black tea or oolong tea, is really so beneficial for Japanese people (and for non-Japanese as well) within the context of Japan’s historical tea culture or “green tea culture” (緑茶文化). Today such claims are widespread, but there is a major pitfall here.

What I especially want to address here is the role of COMT (catechol-O-methyltransferase). Dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine (adrenaline), which are neurotransmitters, are collectively called catecholamines. Dopamine synthesized from dietary phenylalanine follows three main pathways: it “acts at receptors,” it is “taken up again,” or it is “broken down.” There are several pathways by which dopamine is degraded, but the most important among them is the COMT pathway. This is a metabolic route that breaks down dopamine and excretes it in the urine so that synthesized dopamine does not accumulate excessively. In broad strokes, the pathway looks like this:

Dopamine

↓ COMT + SAMe + Mg

3-MT (3-methoxytyramine)

↓ MSOB + B2 (FAD)

HVA (homovanillic acid) → excreted in urine

At this point, COMT is what is crucial for breaking dopamine down into 3-MT, and whether or not there is a mutation in the gene that encodes it becomes an important indicator. One polymorphism that receives particular attention is known as Val158Met (rs4680). When this is the Val/Val genotype (GG), COMT activity is high, dopamine is broken down quickly, and dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex tend to be lower; when it is the Met/Met genotype (AA), COMT activity is low, dopamine is broken down more slowly, and dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex tend to be higher. The GG type is said to be characterized by higher resistance to stress and pain, somewhat poorer ability to sustain concentration, and lower working memory, whereas the AA type tends to have excellent cognitive function and memory, strong working memory, greater vulnerability to stress, heightened sensitivity to pain, and a tendency toward anxiety.

COMT activity types

• High-activity type (HEA)

• Medium-activity type (MEA)

• Low-activity type (LEA)

Looking at the distribution of these activity-type haplotypes, current data show that among Japanese people HEA accounts for about 33%, MEA about 24%, and LEA about 39%, which indicates that Japanese, comparatively speaking, have a high proportion of low-activity COMT types (that is, slower dopamine breakdown), though this varies greatly by ethnicity. The low-activity COMT type tends to maintain higher dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex and, although lifestyle and other genetic factors must also be taken into account, it is generally associated with symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, altered sensitivity to caffeine, and difficulty relaxing (a tendency toward sympathetic nervous system dominance).

For people with this low-activity COMT type, it is necessary at the level of daily habits to avoid factors that inhibit COMT activity, and among the foods that are recommended to be restricted we find EGCG, a component of green tea that is widely believed to have a deep historical connection with Japanese people. Moreover, EGCG is the most potent COMT inhibitor of all. From this, we can see the fundamental truth that there is no health regimen that applies equally to everyone. At this stage, I have come to think that the formula “Japanese = tea culture / green tea culture” is in fact a representative example of a seriously mistaken generalization, and that by carefully reexamining this conventional assumption we may find a clue to the unraveling of what has been taken as the totality of Japanese culture.

For this reason, it is generally said that people with low-activity COMT types should limit their green tea intake to about two or three cups a day, while those without low-activity types can safely drink five or six cups. But this is only a rule of thumb, and I feel it no longer holds in the present day. The green tea that is readily available at the level of mass tourism today is of extremely poor quality. While people with high-activity COMT types may be able to tolerate it to some extent, those with low-activity COMT types need to be much more cautious. If, for example, a tourist with a low-activity COMT type comes to Japan and freely drinks tea every day simply because they are here, the excessive EGCG intake can strongly inhibit COMT, disrupting dopamine metabolism and significantly increasing the risk of physical and mental imbalance.

This is something everyone—not only those with specific COMT types—should pay attention to, but bottled green tea beverages sold in convenience stores are developed in the first place to maximize the effects of EGCG, so people with low-activity COMT types would do well to avoid them. The green tea of the past and the green tea of today are entirely different. It may surprise you, but even though there are said to be about 56,700 convenience stores in Japan, I step into one only about once a year, and even then I do not buy convenience-store products (only use the ATM or buy water). Personally, I think that people with low-activity COMT types should basically avoid the easily obtainable kinds of green tea. It would be far better to devote that effort to searching for truly high-quality green tea, and then drink a single cup of the gem you find; I believe that the journey of seeking such a tea is itself a truly wonderful way to experience Japan. Of course, EGCG is not the only COMT inhibitor: chlorogenic acid in coffee, cacao polyphenols in dark chocolate with more than 70% cacao, and red wine are also famous examples.

All of this must ultimately be worked out individually from very complex and diverse factors, but even at a broad level, for the many Japanese who carry low-activity COMT variants, green tea (EGCG) is not something that should be recommended as a symbol of Japanese culture; it is a food that calls for caution. This raises serious doubts about whether there ever truly was a historical custom of “Japanese people = drinking green tea.” In fact, although people commonly speak of a unified “tea culture”, its actual content is far too plural. Historically, the beginnings of tea as a culture are said to lie in Chinese culture brought over from the Tang by Zen monks such as Eisai, and the basic current began in Kyushu. Personally, however, I believe that tea plants were already growing wild in Japan even before that, regardless of whether they were being cultivated artificially or not, and in swidden agriculture, which continued from the Jomon period, I have myself confirmed in Kyushu that tea plants grew up naturally on the burned fields.

Later, as Japanese society shifted from an aristocratic to a warrior-dominated age, Zen, which harmonized well with the philosophy of the samurai, rose to prominence, and in that process tea culture spread to various regions. Even so, the main cultural centers were in western Japan, from Sakai in Osaka to Kyoto, and although production expanded to other regions, the northern limit of tea cultivation lay in Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture, which I visited in late summer. Seen on a nationwide scale, tea cultivation and tea culture were thus extremely limited, and because cultivation methods, processing techniques, and ways of drinking tea differed from place to place, the levels of active compounds such as EGCG likely differed significantly as well.

Taking into account my primary research theme—that Japan was originally home to plural tribal groups that differed from place to place—the genetic relationships themselves varied greatly by region. I therefore imagine that tea culture, too, must have differed according to the locality and the genes of the people who lived there. Even without any knowledge of genes such as COMT, our ancestors likely used sophisticated wisdom to drink forms of tea optimized for themselves, while the tea served to them when they visited other regions may well have been teas that did not suit their own genetic makeup.

In reality, among Japanese people this lineage is connected more strongly not to tea but to the taste of miso soup. Even when we say “miso soup,” it is highly diverse, and there are many people who simply cannot enjoy miso soup unless it has the taste of the miso soup their mother made. The flavor of miso soup has been passed down from mothers to children over generations, and this is a very intriguing example of what might be called “the appropriate taste of miso soup” corresponding to a given genetic lineage. This is why even today many people feel deeply relaxed when they go home from the city and drink their mother’s miso soup. I believe this is a valuable reference point when we try to gain insight into tea culture .

Today I found myself daydreaming about Japanese culture from this genetic perspective, and the question I kept circling around was: “What kind of near-future Japanese culture will be experienced by people who have escaped from the dopamine world?” There may be hints and possibilities for the next future here, and as someone who is in the process of stepping out of the dopamine world myself, I feel this is an issue I need to keep thinking about more and more. Once we have left behind the dopamine-world equation of “Japanese culture = tea,” we will, for the first time, begin to see the contours of an individualized Japanese culture. When we reach that point, we may enter a future in which essential experiences that transcend language become possible. That is the realm of spiritual experience, the final world in which those who have continued their introspective practice gather.

When you visit Japan as a traveler, your experience may be one of being merely satisfied by a fully managed and designed dopamine world, much like Disneyland. Japan is a country inhabited by the residents of what may be the world’s greatest (and worst) dopamine world. If you are interested, I invite you to enjoy dopamine-world Japan objectively, as someone who stands outside the dopamine world.