One thing I wish to unveil in this series over the course of time is the realization that the forms of illusion we live with in the modern era are not historically universal, but rather quite specific. We tend to pride ourselves on the idea that the world and thoughts we have reached are historically superior; while this attitude cannot be entirely dismissed, there is no doubt that it is somewhat immature. Personally, I believe there is no era where exploring one’s own origins is more important than now. This is because I see that actively shifting our focus to face the concealed the real itself, without getting entangled in the context of identity crisis as a social phenomenon, will become a root for surviving the turbulent times ahead.
The problem of origin is a process accompanied by the pain of thoroughly excavating one’s own abyss. The truth of origin, achieved by diving deeper and deeper toward the last Utopia left for humans begins first and foremost with gazing intently at one’s own existence. This is because when one thoroughly gains insight into the individual illusion that constitutes one’s existence, one inevitably grasps the complex modes of communal illusion and pair illusion psychologically. At this juncture, many people tend to look outward rather than at their own origins, finding comfort in escape; however, whether in anthropology or any other field, it is self-evident that one must explore one’s own origins before investigating ancient civilizations. In fact, origin investigations of other countries conducted by foreigners are destined to have their sloppy structures exposed by local scholars in later generations. This is because a person who has not thoroughly examined their own origins fails to notice the first limit held by communal illusion: that it is impossible to gain insight into another country without doing so. Since they are unaware of this fundamental premise, any research they conduct on another country’s origins will inevitably be reclaimed within the realm of the signified. Even if such research becomes an artifact displayed in a museum, it does not speak the truth. This impossibility of reaching the truth from the outside is not a problem unique to the modern era, but has already appeared as a problem of the same quality since ancient times.
In my case, I am diving in by placing that origin in Japan, but this type of problem was already exposed at the time of the Gishiwajinden [魏志倭人伝], a section of the Book of Wei, which is a Chinese historical text recording the appearance of the oldest Japan. As we have seen throughout this series, taking even a single ancient word of the local Japanese tribes, “Wan,” reveals immense complexity. The dimension of Wan, which was the word for the local tribes to say “us,” was transformed through ancient Chinese envoys into the characters [倭] or [委] as bureaucratic and academic terms of the dynasty. Eventually, when these characters were re-imported to the Japanese side, the sound transformed from the former Wan into Wa through the medium of the written character. However, if we alter the ancient sound world based on these characters, regulations arise that limit our ability to grasp the world prior to writing. As known in Japan through the concept of Kotodama (spirit of words), a pluralistic world existed in the sound itself in ancient Japan. Yet, once even a single sound comes to be treated as a written character, it inevitably undergoes alteration in meaning subject to the regulations of each era. This implies that a type of ideology intervenes in that sound through its carriers, and the sound of Wa is a material that typically narrates that history. In a sense, the sound of Wan can be said to be the oldest material on the Japanese side regarding that alteration.