Thank you for reading From the Tideline. With this post, From the Tideline ends its run on Substack. I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, every reader who has read my newsletter since I started it at Shitsurae in December 2024. Thank you, truly.
I have now moved all of my newsletters onto a system I built myself: my photo blog TAKAHIRO MITSUI, which goes out in five languages, my Japanese-language TM MAGAZINE, and JIHAN JINKO, the company I finished registering only yesterday. Now that generative AI turns out information in vast quantities, I want to step half a pace away from the existing platforms instead of continuing to hand my days over to them. I want a place where my work is neither compressed nor converted to suit the platform owners, and where I can grow my relationship with you directly. That is why I am moving.
■ The new publication: Project 2049
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Project 2049 is a weekly essay by the thinker Takahiro Mitsui, delivered every Friday at 5 p.m. JST. It offers a quiet hour with essays drawn from deep reflection and first-hand sources.
The structure stays the same as From the Tideline, in two sections: LIVING QUESTIONS and JAPANESE THOUGHT.
It is paid only, at $10 a month. Back issues are $2.50 each.
The sample issue, Vol.0, published today, is free to read in full.
Vol.1 will be delivered starting Friday, October 9.
■ To paid subscribers
Through Substack’s process, all paid subscriptions to From the Tideline will be canceled. You will be refunded automatically for any time you paid for but have not yet received. Substack will notify you by email, and you do not need to do anything. Thank you, truly, for your support all this time.
■ About subscribing
The Substack subscriber list will not be moved to the new place, so your subscription will not carry over automatically. If you would like to keep reading, please subscribe to Project 2049.
■ About Vol.0, today’s sample issue
In Vol.0, published today as the sample issue, LIVING QUESTIONS begins with Yohaku, the empty space that started to grow inside me after I left the platforms, and from there reads our time as one in which time and space have begun to dissolve, through the anemoia (nostalgia for an era one never lived through) of young people who come to Japan longing for the Showa era, and through the dissolution of the self that psychedelics bring. JAPANESE THOUGHT argues that it is not Western “transcendence” but “diving deep,” dissolving the split between subject and object, that lies at the heart of Japanese cultural sensibility, and that this is what Japan can offer the world in the years ahead.
■ Next: Vol.1
The first issue, Vol.1, arrives on Friday, October 9, at 5 p.m. JST. In it, I will reveal what “Project 2049” stands for. I look forward to meeting you again in the new place.
Takahiro Mitsui