The other day, I saw a man without a mask in the station being yelled at by a tall young man who seemed to be highly educated and with a temper.

The young man repeatedly called him not to approach him in a threatening manner, and when the surprised man put on a mask and tried to leave, even threw the words "murderer!" To the man.

Despite yelling, I could see that the young man's body was tense, his hips were stiff, and his mind and body were frightened.

The yelled man didn’t look like a suspicious person, he was just trying to wear a mask to get on the train.

Then I pondered on that, so I would like to share.

On television, the United States reported obligation to wear masks is a violation of the constitution, and few people in the streets wore masks.

Situation is a mask was the same in London, and according to a friend in Milan, most people in Italy no longer wear masks outdoors.

Compared to Europe and U.S, the mask rate in Japan is close to 100%, and not only people walking outdoors, but also people jogging outdoors and people commuting by bicycle wear it.

What is often said about the difference with overseas is the difference in “hygiene”  and entrainment pressure, but I would like to write about this from a slightly different perspective.

In Japan, “physical body” is also referred to as the “Shintai”. Shintai means that the soul and body are separate.

It is a way of thinking that the soul resides in a vessel called the body.

The pre-modern Japanese had a sense focused on the soul separately from the actual body called “Shintai-kan”.  The gap between the body and soul that sometimes occurs has created a great part of Japanese culture.

However, after the Meiji era, with the advent of Western civilization, the Shintai-kan was forgotten.

People feel there is no logical rationality.

This is because it cannot be quantified on a certain scale in Shintai-kan so it cannot be proved by science.

Unfortunately, since modern times, intellectuals have called the unexplained parts as unscientific and have come to reject them.

In other words, in Japan, which has been modernizing and strongly promoting westernization, unscientific things have become targets of termination.

And the flow of such era where people feel emotional through Shintai-kan which goes beyond the scope of science, and for the Japanese who lived with it as a power source, they were forced to change in directions in life style.

Things that cannot be explained, things that cannot be repeated, and things that have no cause have all become non-scientific fields, and the time has come to seal such unscientific sensations even though the Japanese have Shintai-kan.

And the trend of that era rapidly accelerated as the present age of the Internet civilization where electronics developed and digitalization promoted.

If you are interested in this story, we recommend that you experience the Japanese body once at the Komagome rehearsal hall.

Continue to Part 2      5/3/2022