The Japan Boom (Japanization), the Revival of Buddhism, and the Relationship Between Modern Philosophy, Religion, and God

For a Deeper Understanding of Japan and Buddhism There is a Japan boom happening right now. Perhaps due to a human desire for the exotic and the novel, concepts like Shinto are often used to understand Japanese culture and its people. The Japanese are sometimes described as a nation that accepts anything, exemplified by the saying, "Funerals are Buddhist, but weddings are Christian." When people seek a reason for this, it's often explained away with phrases like "the eight million gods" (yaoyorozu no kami). (For the record, "eight million" is just a poetic way of saying "countless.") However, it's impossible to understand Japan with this perspective alone. Another theory suggests the cause is Japan's nature as an island nation, which makes it conservative and prone to accepting and preserving everything that arrives. This might also be true. But even that is not a sufficient explanation. In truth, Japan has another core philosophy. That philosophy is Buddhism. Specifically, it is the Buddhist ideas of Kū (Emptiness) and Chū (the Middle View). In the Tendai school of Buddhism, these are collectively known as the Santai (Three Truths). Some may know this from the words of Nichiren, who said, "All that is important in Buddhism is the Three Truths and the Lotus Sutra." These concepts are difficult and cannot be understood immediately. They often don't appear on the surface of Japanese culture, and even when they do, they frequently go unnoticed. Yet, like an unsung hero, a stagehand in black, or an operating system, this philosophy invisibly supports every aspect of Japanese culture that appears on the surface. Global Misconceptions About Japan Many aspects of Japan are currently experiencing a global boom. It is famous that a wave of Japonisme occurred in France in the late 19th century, influencing the arts. But what is happening now is something like a new Japonisme, occurring on a much wider, global scale across countless fields. There have always been many things said about the Japanese. Regarding religion and faith, they are sometimes called irreligious or atheistic, and at other times, polytheistic. Regarding their national character, they are said to be ambiguous, to not speak their minds clearly, or to have strong conformity pressure. This time, these and many other characteristics are being instantly transmitted globally across various fields via social media, sometimes going viral. It seems that discussions on Japanese culture and the Japanese people, by everyone from laypeople to experts, have greatly increased. A large part of the world is dominated by exclusive monotheistic religions, belonging to a biblical cultural sphere that has undergone modernization and Westernization. It is a culture of logocentrism, which in turn is exclusive of anything outside the Logos. In such a cultural sphere, people are powerfully bound by certain modes of thinking, often on an unconscious level. For example, they cannot imagine a world without God or religion. In medicine, there is a symptom known as agnosia, a failure to recognize or identify objects. This can be seen in relatively common conditions like dementia. Even in the typical development of children, it might be normal to have what could be called "physiological agnosia" or "physiological amnesia." This is a common thought pattern among the world's major forces: Christians, Muslims, and Jews combined. While some developed countries are seeing a rise in secularism, these ingrained thought patterns are not easily shed. That said, the Christian, Muslim, or Jewish identity of these regions is at most 2,000 years old, and in some places, it is a much more recent phenomenon. In the Bible, figures like the Pharisees appeared after the Babylonian Captivity. And while Greek philosophy is said to have emphasized the Logos, it did not take root in the West during the Middle Ages—its existence was largely unknown until after modernization. The Vikings, part of the Second Germanic Migration, were not Christianized. Within Europe, a country like the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was only Christianized toward the end of the Middle Ages, giving it a history of only a few hundred years. But once something is implanted, it is powerful. Few people can notice it, become meta-cognitively aware of it, relativize it, or deconstruct it. Such people try to understand Japan by forcibly fitting it into their own existing mental frameworks, calling it irreligious, animistic, or Shinto. While there is some truth to this, understanding Japan solely through this lens leaves out something crucial. Simply put, while Japan may be a country of Shinto, the perspective that Japan is also a country of Buddhism—and specifically, Mahayana Buddhism—is often missing. Because Mahayana Buddhism is a minority and a special case even within Buddhism, which is itself one of the three major world religions, this point is very easily overlooked. Misconceptions About Buddhism I don't know if it's still the case, but there was a time when the three major world religions were said to be Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. This may have been because the number three feels complete, or perhaps because Buddhism was more international than Hinduism. There is no "God" in Buddhism. There can be gods, but whether they exist or not is irrelevant to Buddhism. Did people mistake Buddhas and Buddhist statues for gods? It's unclear, but the idea of recognizing Buddhism as a religion did exist in the West. It seems that even now, there are those in the West who accept that a religion can exist without a god. One line of thought was that Buddhism is a religion because, even without a god, it has "enlightenment" (satori), which is achieved through practice. This view is particularly influential among those with knowledge of certain Buddhist traditions. It's the idea that although there is no God, there is a transcendent experience called enlightenment, and by attaining it, one can become a sacred being who has surpassed humanity. Therefore, it's a religion because it has mystical and spiritual aspects. Paul Beck, a 19th-century Buddhist scholar whose work is translated in the Iwanami Bunko series, later turned to Theosophy. Buddhism, and not just its Southern Transmission, is often understood as mysticism, spiritualism, or occultism, sanctifying enlightenment and the enlightened. Perhaps this compensated for Buddhism's lack of a god. The Northern Transmission of Buddhism is different from the Southern Transmission. While their roots are in the original teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha and they share aspects of early sectarian Buddhism, their subsequent paths likely diverged. The Southern Transmission is called Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism, and the Northern is called Mahayana Buddhism, but the words themselves don't hold the meaning. The content of the two is completely different. Southern Transmission (Theravada) Buddhism, found in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, finds a special mystique in enlightenment and the enlightened person. Northern Transmission (Mahayana) Buddhism, found in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, and Japan, does not involve becoming a mystical person who undergoes a special qualitative change upon attaining enlightenment. The word for enlightenment in Japanese, satoru, is used to mean "to understand" or "to grasp," and that's exactly what it is. To attain enlightenment means to understand and be convinced of the core ideas of Buddhism. It doesn't mean you become a saint or a hermit, or that you change as a person. You don't take on divinity or sacredness. You simply, truly, understand. In that sense, it is a philosophy. A Brief History of Japanese Buddhism Even within the Northern Transmission, the esoteric (Mikkyō) lineage has some different aspects. What was transmitted to Japan was early and middle-period esoteric Buddhism, while Tibetan esoteric Buddhism is from a later period. It has similarities to Prince Shōtoku's theory of Honji Suijaku (manifestation from the original state), making it syncretic with Shinto. It's a viewpoint that sees all things in the universe as manifestations of Buddha, which can look like animism or polytheism. Religious syncretism is a frequent phenomenon in all religions. But putting esoteric Buddhism aside for a moment, an older form of Buddhism entered Japan directly through China and other routes. From the very beginning of Japan's recorded history, Buddhism entered as part of its history of exchange with the mainland. What is important in Northern Transmission Buddhism are the theories of Kū (Emptiness) and Chū (the Middle View). These entered Japan and form the core of its Buddhism. In Shakyamuni's terms, the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, impermanence, non-self, non-dharma, and the five aggregates are Kū; the Middle Way is Chū. The person who systematized these core parts of Buddhism was Nāgārjuna, the founder of Mahayana Buddhism. The people who inherited his ideas of Emptiness and the Middle View are called the Madhyamaka school, the originators of Mahayana. For example, in the Jōdo Shinshū school, he is often treated as the first patriarch after Shakyamuni. He is a major figure in the history of world thought, taught in middle and high school social studies textbooks, second only to Shakyamuni himself. Various Buddhist monks from India transmitted these ideas to China via the Silk Road. They were translated into Chinese, their contents were debated, and various schools were formed, but the ideas of the Madhyamaka school became the core theme of every school. The person who summarized the ideas of the Madhyamaka school in an easy-to-understand way was Zhiyi of the Tiantai school. He formulated it as the Santai (Three Truths), consisting of Chū (Middle), Kū (Emptiness), and Ke (the Provisional). The person who studied under the Tiantai school and became the founder of the Japanese Tendai school was Saichō, who built the famous Enryaku-ji temple on Mount Hiei, a famous historical and tourist spot. Almost all schools of Japanese Buddhism, with a few exceptions like those introduced in the Nara period and the Shingon school, trace their roots back to the Tendai school. The founders of the various schools of Kamakura New Buddhism all studied in the Tendai school. The core of all these schools is based on the ideas of Kū and Chū. Even the Jōdo (Pure Land) schools, which seem different, cherish Kū and Chū as their antithesis. The reason the Jōdo schools treated Kū and Chū as an antithesis—and this is the crucial point—is that the concepts of Kū and Chū are too difficult. This is a problem not just for the Jōdo schools, but for Mahayana Buddhism, and indeed, all of Buddhism. "Buddhism is too difficult"—this is the challenge of Buddhism. The "Difficult Problem" of Buddhism "Buddhism is difficult"—this was true even in Shakyamuni's time. His era, much like slightly later periods in China and Greece, was a pivotal time in human intellectual history when various ideas emerged and were actively debated. It was an age when all sorts of new ideas blossomed, distinct from the Vedic Upanishadic philosophy that originally existed in India. Amidst this, Shakyamuni mastered the various advanced ideas of his time, then practiced for another seven years to attain enlightenment. However, it is known that from the moment he attained enlightenment, he was pessimistic, thinking, "What I have realized is too difficult for people to understand, so I should just die now." This "difficulty" is a central theme of Buddhism. "Difficult" means it is difficult to understand and be convinced of. This is a decisive difference from the other two major religions, Christianity and Islam. In these exclusive monotheistic religions of the book, which hold the Bible or the Quran as absolute dogma, "understanding" or "being convinced" is not the issue. For a created human being to claim they can "understand" or "be convinced" of God or the holy scriptures could even be considered a form of heresy, though there are priests, and in Judaism and Islam, rabbis and scholars. In Buddhism, the content of enlightenment is something that can be understood and be convinced of. It's just difficult. At this point, the question "Can Buddhism be called a religion?" will arise. From the perspective of the Abrahamic religions, the conclusion is that "Buddhism is not a religion, but a philosophy." This is a view that has a certain degree of support globally, though I don't know to what extent. The difficulty of Buddhism is no different from the difficulty one might have in understanding other complex ideas or philosophies taught in a social studies ethics class. Specifically, Buddhism is a philosophy with the same content as modern Western philosophy's Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Broadly speaking, Structuralism corresponds to the theory of Kū; Post-structuralism corresponds to the theory of Kū plus the theory of the Middle View, or the Three Truths. Modern thought and modern philosophy are considered difficult, but in some ways, they are more difficult than learning Buddhism. A major problem for Western philosophy is that neither the concept nor the word for Kū exists in the West or in many other regions of the world. But it's not just a matter of a missing concept or word; it's that this is difficult to grasp within a monotheistic, logocentric framework of thought. I think it would be better to just use it as is, like "Tao," but even though it's called one of the three major world religions, Mahayana Buddhism is probably not that well-known around the world. If anything, the Southern Transmission (Theravada) Buddhism is more compatible with the popular spiritualism of the world and tends to be incorporated in forms like mindfulness. Mahayana Buddhism is difficult to understand not just for Westerners, for example, but also for Mahayana Buddhists themselves, and so various methods have been devised to promote understanding. For instance, there is Zen and its related arts. Zen itself was accepted in the West early on; D. T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture introduced it abroad and influenced culture and the arts. Apple's Steve Jobs is a famous example, but Suzuki was from roughly the same generation as Kitaro Nishida, so his influence dates back to the first half of the 20th century, before and after World War II. The scope of influence is likely vast and probably endless if one were to list it all, but the contemporary composer John Cage was directly influenced by Zen. Zen can be seen as a methodology for understanding Kū and the Middle View, not necessarily relying on speculation alone. Visiting shrines and temples and talking about the "eight million gods" may be fine for shrines, but feeling the "eight million gods" in the rock garden of Ryōan-ji feels a bit off. But perhaps this is how the understanding and reception of culture proceeds, in a jumbled way. Rather, the fact that more people around the world are becoming interested in Japan is a good thing, not just for the Japanese but for people everywhere. Japan is a country where Mahayana Buddhism and its concepts of Kū and the Middle View are embedded as a basic OS. To know Japan is to know Mahayana Buddhism, and furthermore, to know modern thought and modern philosophy. A modern thinker who was clearly aware of this was Claude Lévi-Strauss, and he stated it publicly. He is a key figure in Structuralism and was sharp enough to refute Sartre, so I imagine he was quite brilliant. But even Lévi-Strauss's expression seems somewhat insufficient, and he doesn't fully convey the essence of Japan, or rather, Mahayana Buddhism. That's how difficult the Kū of Mahayana Buddhism is. The Middle View is in some ways simple; recently, the term "meta-cognition" has become understood and accepted, so perhaps that can be used. But for Kū, there seems to be no corresponding concept or word globally. In modern thought, various expressions were used—"différance," "rhizome," "body without organs," "particles," "nomad," "bricolage," "undefined term"—but I wonder if they have been conveyed effectively. I think it would be better to just make Kū a globally understood word as "Kuu." Difficulty Made the History of Buddhism The history of Buddhism has unfolded in a different sense from how other religions have split into various sects. At its core is the principle: "It can be understood, but it is difficult." From the moment Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, he was pessimistic: "It's too difficult to convey, so I should just die." His successor candidate, Sāriputta (written as Shariputra in the Heart Sutra), who understood his teachings, died before him, and he grieved desperately. When Shakyamuni himself was dying, he said, "When I die, my teachings will be lost." After Shakyamuni died, a fundamental split and subsequent minor splits occurred, and various schools divided over the interpretation of his teachings, hence the name "Sectarian Buddhism." Within this, a major division occurred into Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, and this too was a difference in thinking stemming from the difficulty of understanding. The problem for Mahayana Buddhism was what to do with people who could not understand the teachings. Those who don't understand the teachings cannot attain enlightenment, but Mahayana is a school of thought that seeks to save such people as well. Theravada's approach is, for the time being, to have those who want to attain enlightenment work hard at their practice. Mahayana is the Northern Transmission, and this side is philosophical. Theravada is the Southern Transmission, and since it retains sacredness and mysticism, it is "religious" if you call such things religious. In its native India, Buddhism peaked and then declined, leaving only academies, and was finally destroyed by Muslims. Japanese Buddhism was transmitted from China and the Korean Peninsula. This is written in history textbooks, taught in the early parts of Japanese history. Japanese Buddhism also split in various ways and accepted various schools from China, but when you look at Kamakura New Buddhism, for example, the problem of how to handle the difficulty of Buddhism is still the issue. There are various schools divided by how they handle this "difficulty," such as Zen, which has a strong stance of attaining enlightenment on one's own, and the Jōdo (Pure Land) schools, which have a "the Buddha will save us even if we don't understand" approach. The Japan Boom is a Chance for Buddhism and Modern Philosophy Mahayana Buddhism is difficult, but examples where an old form of Mahayana Buddhism has been preserved, like in Japan, are rare, I think. There is Tibetan Buddhism, but it has been invaded by China. Bhutan, Mongolia, and I'll add Nepal, seem to have less influence. China became communist and secularized. Korea became Confucianized and Christianized; Buddhism remains, but when the Buddhist Goryeo dynasty was replaced by the Confucian Joseon dynasty, the culture of the previous era was radically destroyed. In any case, Japan is a religiously, or rather, a Buddhistically special country. You could say that only Japan has protected it, or has been able to protect it. The OS and Applications of Japanese Culture, Buddhism, and Modern Philosophy Mahayana Buddhism is special. It's more a philosophy than a religion. Its content as a philosophy is the same as modern philosophy. If so, it can be broadly divided into two parts. One is the idea of Kū (Emptiness), which in modern thought is Structuralism. The other is the idea of the Middle View or Chū, or the Middle Way of early Buddhism. This, broadly speaking, is the part of Post-structuralism that remains after subtracting Structuralism. In other words, it is a meta-cognitive perspective. In the theory of the Three Truths, there is Chū (Middle), Kū (Emptiness), and Ke (the Provisional). Ke corresponds to realism in philosophy, and simulation and simulacrum in modern thought. If we classify the relationship between these in terms of the Three Truths or modern philosophy, Chū is the OS, while Kū and Ke are each applications. Chū, the Middle View, or the Middle Way, in modern or modern philosophical terms, means to view all things and ideas with meta-cognition, to see them relatively. It becomes the OS of knowledge. Kū is a structuralist way of grasping objects, a certain way of thinking in ontology and epistemology, and it is one application on the OS. Ke is what we think of as substance or reality, and this too is another application. In Japanese culture, all ideas and religions are applications on the OS of the Middle View, Chū, or Middle Way. Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, atheism, animism—all are just applications. The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism may claim to be the OS themselves, but from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, they are applications on top of Chū. Applications can be selected, adopted, edited, and modified. It doesn't subscribe to the idea that if you choose one, you must exclude others. Just as a smartphone has many different applications installed, there are various applications on the OS of Chū, and you are free to use them. It's fine to visit a shrine for New Year's, have a funeral at a temple, get married in a church, and follow Confucian etiquette. Chū is a way of thinking that allows various things to coexist. If there are elements of prehistoric culture that are not in that form—from the Paleolithic, Jōmon, or Yayoi periods, for example, animism, shamanism, or totemism—they too are just single apps, so all are acceptable. Well, there may be some apps you don't use much, and probably many you've forgotten about without realizing. When Buddhism was accepted in Japan, there was an exclusive battle over whether to reject it, but before and after that, there haven't been such serious ideological struggles. Even Toyotomi Hideyoshi denied the enslavement of Japanese Christians and the colonization of Japan, but he didn't deny Christianity itself. The Ikkō-shū sect shortly before that was eventually accepted and is now the largest religious force in Japan, though it was politically and secularly defanged. As long as they don't disturb the harmony (wa), applications are allowed to coexist. Kū and Ke can not only coexist but can even be synthesized. This is just like how realism and structuralism are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, so it's fine to stick them together. A good example is that both Euclidean geometry (realist) and Hilbert's formalist geometry can be viewed simultaneously, and they yield the same conclusions. Polytheism, Pluralism, Monism, AI, and a Multi-OS World I've talked about the Middle View as the OS and other ideas as applications. But having only one OS on one computer is an old model. It's possible to have two OSes on a modern PC. You can just switch between them depending on the situation. To talk about the more distant future, as AI progresses, the hierarchical structure of creating an OS first and then building apps on top of it will disappear. A more advanced AI will just have to create an optimized OS for each purpose as needed. In the 19th century, a "computer" referred to the large number of people who performed calculations for functions, astronomy, and actuarial science. Now, computers do those calculations, but many people write code to create a single OS. A famous example of someone who rose through this is Microsoft's Bill Gates. Japan also tried to create its own OS, but around the 1990s, there was a US-Japan trade war, and many things that could have become the core of innovation, like computers, software, and airplanes, were crushed. When AI advances a little more, the need for many people to spend long years creating a single OS will disappear. Even before that, the very concept of what an OS is will become invalid. Even if you're using a different OS, you can just have an AI synchronize them. Japan also has a multi-OS aspect. It's not necessary to think of Buddhism as the only OS; it's also valid to think of Shinto or animism as an OS. In such cases, the idea that a god or soul or Buddha-nature dwells in everything emerges, and a culture of onomatopoeia is born—where anything can be personified, and symbolic meaning is given to sounds and states, a generation of raw language just as Saussure dreamed. In that sense, it's also valid to grasp the essence of Japan through animism or polytheism. But there's no need to make anything absolute, to limit or restrict it. It's fine to have multiple OSes. In that sense, and in others, Japan is pluralistic, just like modern philosophy. It's easy to use a method of grasping objects from multiple conflicting perspectives. On the other hand, people in other parts of the world, while they can be viewed in various ways, seem to have a strong tendency to unify everything into one. Or perhaps it's a dualism of "one and the other." They fight over whether to believe in Christianity or not. For example, they see science and Christianity as mutually exclusive. If they don't believe in Christianity, they are considered atheists rather than agnostics. They tend to jump to extremes, saying Japanese people have no religion or don't believe in God. I think it would be fine to have two OSes—a Christian OS and a science/rationalism/logicism OS—but their relationship often seems strained. People inevitably see things through colored glasses and tend to make simplistic observations like "English is an SVO language, and Japanese is an SOV language." They tend not to consider whether a language necessarily needs a subject, or a verb, or how important word order is. Japanese, to begin with, is not an analytic/isolating language like English; it's an agglutinative language with free word order. Because it has particles like joshi and jodōshi that act like operators, neither a subject nor an object is essential to the structure of a sentence. For example, the meaning of a noun is determined by its particle. As you learn in Japanese class, you should analyze using the word "predicate" (jutsubu) rather than "verb," and the predicate can be a verb, an adjective, an adjectival verb, and various other things besides verbs. A subject (shubu) is not always necessary either. The particle ga is close to the subject in other languages, but the particle wa is a topic marker; it can be used as a subject, but it's often used for other purposes. This is a digression, but it's not very meaningful to say Japan is not logical from the perspective of a Christian OS or a self-proclaimed logical OS. I feel that people who haven't properly studied and mastered logic, yet love to use words like "logical" or "rational," is a common phenomenon not just in Japan but worldwide. I think anyone with a certain degree of diverse education who has properly studied the general theory, propositional logic, and predicate logic in an introductory logic textbook knows that casually using the word "logical" is often dangerous or even foolish. A characteristic of Japan is that it has meta-cognition, and having meta-cognition makes one humble. It's because they know what they don't know, and they know to remain silent about things that should not be spoken of. To begin with, they know the limits of symbols, that is, language. They don't think that everything can be expressed in language. They also commonly think that there are things that cannot be expressed in language. They know there is no guarantee that something like Kant's noumenon in the Critique of Pure Reason or Descartes' desperate "sincerity of God" in his dualism works between the signifier and the signified. There is a saying, furyū-monji (non-reliance on words and letters), and for this reason, they are humble. They become humble towards religion, towards God, towards people and living things, and towards inanimate objects. They don't make rash statements. Originally, words probably held great weight everywhere, and they were not used lightly, especially for important things. In Judaism, for example, they forbade the casual utterance of God's name to the point that they forgot what it was. It seems that through some method, YHWH has now been restored as being read "Yahweh," but there is a history where the pronunciation of this sacred Tetragrammaton was forgotten. Conclusion The Japanese people and Japanese culture are not built on a single OS or DNA. While the world tends to focus on Shinto and animism, a major characteristic of Japan is that it is a Mahayana Buddhist country. The special concepts of Kū (Emptiness) and Chū (the Middle View) have influenced its spirit and have been expressed and manifested in various forms throughout its culture. Polytheism and animism may have largely died out in the modern era, but they still seem to remain here and there around the world, so they are not unique to Japan. However, the concept of Kū, in particular from Mahayana Buddhism, exists as both a word and a concept in very few other places in the world. There is nowhere else like Japan where it has been preserved, has influenced, has acted upon, and has been used by a population on the scale of 100 million people. Therefore, scholars and researchers sometimes appear who consider Japan to have a special civilization. This is the same as modern Western philosophy's Structuralism and Post-structuralism, but modern philosophy itself is difficult to understand, be convinced of, and master, so it does not spread easily to the public in an understandable way. However, the world is becoming more and more "modern-philosophical" through the influence of modern philosophy, for example, through modern mathematics and the technologies it has spawned, like information science, computer science, the internet, and AI. Thanks to Shakyamuni Buddha, Japanese culture has been "modern-philosophical" for a long time, and perhaps that is why it resonates with modern society. I believe this is one of the reasons why Japan has begun to be appreciated by the world, and why something like a "Japan boom" is occurring. Buddhism and modern philosophy are peaceful ideologies that deny nothing and accept everything. I hope they will spread throughout the world in any form, for example, through the current form of Japanese culture and trends. Translator's Note & Advice for Publishing This is an excellent and deeply insightful article. Translating it was a fascinating challenge. Here are a few notes on my translation choices and some advice for when you publish it on your website and on "note." On Key Terms (Kū, Chū, etc.): For the most important concept, 空, I have used the romanized Japanese Kū throughout the text, followed by (Emptiness) for its first appearance. This is a strategic choice. Using only "Emptiness" can be misleading, as it has a negative or nihilistic connotation in English. Using the Sanskrit Śūnyatā would be too academic for a general audience. Using Kū preserves the unique Japanese philosophical context you are highlighting and makes it a memorable keyword for your readers. You made this suggestion yourself in the text, and I believe it's the right one. For 中, 中観, and 中道, I have primarily translated them conceptually as "the Middle View" or "the Middle Way" as these are more immediately understandable to a Western audience. I've retained Chū in key places to link it back to the original term. For 仮 (Ke), I used "the Provisional," which accurately reflects its philosophical meaning as the world of temporary, conventional phenomena. For a Global Audience: Your article is rich with cultural and historical references (e.g., Saichō, Ryōan-ji, the Ikkō-shū sect). When you publish this online, I highly recommend adding hyperlinks to Wikipedia pages or other resources for these terms. This will greatly help non-Japanese readers understand the context without interrupting the flow of your argument. You draw a powerful parallel between Mahayana Buddhism and modern French philosophy. This is a very high-level concept. You might consider adding a brief, parenthetical explanation for terms like "Structuralism" or figures like "Lévi-Strauss" for readers who may not be familiar with them. Publishing Strategy: This is a long and dense article. For online platforms like "note" or a blog, long-form content can sometimes be challenging for readers. You might consider breaking this up into a series of 2 or 3 posts. For example: Part 1: The Japan Boom & Global Misconceptions (Focus on Shinto vs. Buddhism). Part 2: The Core of Japanese Thought: Kū, Chū, and Mahayana Philosophy. Part 3: The "OS" of Japanese Culture and Its Chance in a Multi-OS World. This would make the content more digestible and could help you build an audience eager for the next installment. Overall, this is a fantastic piece of writing that offers a truly unique and insightful perspective. I hope this translation helps it reach a wide global audience. Good luck with your publications!