7. Universality exists within individuality・・・The universal can only be seen in the individual
When I wrote Yatsu no Nihon no biishiki (Eight Japanese Aesthetic Sensibilities), I didn’t go around collecting people’s opinions on the subject, I simply observed myself to perceive the aesthetic sensibilities that I, as a Japanese person, had inside. It is inside yourself where you can find other people, the reason being that universality exists inside. In fact, it is only inside yourself where you can see universal ideas. The shortcut to the discovery of universal designs is designs that are only for yourself. The meaning of “Individuality through Universality” is that the universal exists there latent inside the individual person (you) present at the individual place (here) at the individual time (now).
Recognizing that any given moment of an encounter with another person will never come again, the Japanese saying ichigo ichie teaches us that this time, this person, and this place are everything. Eternal time, endless of space, and all of humanity converge at this single point.
Society does not exist outside the self. Your social nature is there inside your consciousness. Tokyo is not something seen from a bird’s eye view. Tokyo is what someone in Tokyo sees from where he stands now. All of Tokyo is concentrated into that small portion of Tokyo. The perception of a long expanse of time extending from the past into the future is an illusion. In this now moment the past is contained as memory and the future exists as foresight and dreams. It is this moment where we find all time.
The only way to know humanity is to know individuals. The long history of humanity is contained within the genes of each individual. You won’t find out what a human being is by gathering together a mass of people and cross-examining them. The information is not outside, it is inside.
Tokyo exists as immediate body sensation. A person exists inside the person’s mind.
To love humanity is to love the person standing before your eyes. You can’t love time if you don’t love this moment.
In the same way that you won’t discover what human beings are by contemplating humanity, you cannot discover universality by searching for it directly. To know humanity look at a single person, and to know the universal, look at something individual to a single person.
This is what it means to search for universality in individuality. It is in the individuality that the universality exists.
