This “Amphibiology* Lectures” have developed over five periods up to now; the Term One, the Term Two, the Term Three, the Term Four, and the series on “A Step into the Old” (most of them are Japanese version only so far).
(*: I coin the term which means the study about amphibian)
I spend for 8 years to do the five-period-development from September 2005. In terms of age, the eight years from 59 to 67. As it were, it was the first product of “the second lap of life” after the life-stage-milestone at sixtieth birthday, so called kanreki.
Merely listing up them in time order, however, may not bring facts of its development well. Then, if I try to characterise roughly the development, the first term discussed on the geographic “amphibians”, and from the second term to “A Step into the Old” did on meta-amphibians which I added imaginations and ideas to the first term.
In other words, after passing such hop and step stages, although I am not sure whether it will be a real jump, the development is entering into the third step as if I am about to “sail to new waters” as the heading shows.
If explaining the first three stages in a bit detail, they had been developed together with emerging of the concept of “amphibious” which derived from physical duality or binocular vision as a result of geographical movements. In terms of period, it happened up to July 2008.
The step stage came up together with the launch of my sub-website; “Individual Republic,” and with the start of series of memoirs; “Mutual Encounter”. Consequently the physical development in the hop stage became to add chronological and historical dimensions. Further, from around mid-2009 when the tripartite “Mutual Encounter” completed, metaphysical aspects were applied to them. And in August 2010, a serial novel; “Meta-family + Cross-exchange/Accident” also began to publish in my website. Yet, with the progress of the translation of “Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy” written by David Bergamini, the Term Four attempted to analyse Japan itself. From the end of 2012, the eries; “A Step into the Old” which focused on the change on my body started.
Through those stages a learning system which I coined “amphibiology” has evolved from the geographical starting point to the historical and ideological aspect secondary and to the physical ecology aspect finally.
And then now, these developments are progressing into a further stage.
If one calls the geographical development as the first century of the development, the historical, ideological and metaphysical development can be see as the second century, then, the coming stage which is about to should be called as the third century.
How would I mention it, it is not clear at the moment. However it may be no doubt that the third century is applied on top of the “amphibiology” which had developed in the past two centuries.
In this context, I am going to discuss the unknown area in a series of articles named as the “Amphibiology Lectures: Third Century”.
As the first issue, I’ll try to argue its out-line here.
First of all, I would like to review the concept of “amphibious” per se.
This concept is a product of my experiences in the past days. So it may be called as “wisdom” of my life. If putting in short, it can be mentioned like the following.
As I used the words “binocular vision” above, the concept is related to why human beings have two eyes. In other words, because of having the pair of eye, we can have subtle difference among incoming sights through both eyes which are placed with a certain distance in our face. By sensing the subtle difference we can have three-dimensional ie a stereo effect of the world. Let’s call it “binocular vision effect”.
It is the sensory effect of human, anyhow. I, however, have experienced it in the wider context. For example, when I quited my job which was the first job after graduation, I experienced a “binocular vision effect” in my social status by experiencing a kind of career drop-out. After that, I had a job of a trade union which gave me another “binocular vision effect” in political area by standing on the side of working class.
At the mid-thirties, I also had a geographical “binocular vision effect” when I challenged middle-aged overseas study in Australia by experiencing clear and many differences which were found between two countries. And then, I experienced another “binocular vision effect” which based on historical differences unlike the physical one until then. I further had another “binocular vision effect” in terms of life stage by having the opportunity to read my notebooks which I had noted over few decades.
In such different ways, those “binocular vision effects” with many variety of backgrounds brought me “amphibiology” as a systematic product of the experiences. And I also has found that it was working as a methodological principle to systematise those experiences.
Thus, “amphibiology” is the system of view of value which has acquired by the variety of experiences. In other words, it is the stereo view of life developed by the physical and mental movements.
As a result of the stack experienced through such method, a new dimension is emerging. This is the “third century” which I am going to discuss.
As you realise, this methodology, which is not taken by following to any existing view of value or theory and logic, is rather a practical outcome which there were practical needs of life at first, and was born out of the burdens to work in the needs.
Waters of the new voyage which is about to be launched in this way is, whereas this may be an abstractive expression, very the “amphibiology” evolved in the coordinate with a movement axis and a fixed axis.
In this context, the fixed axis means, as mentioned above, the dimension of diverse movement starting from the social and geographical movements and the metaphysical movement which is added to it.
In contrast, the fixed axis is something unmoved which cannot be escaped, which you cannot ignore that the more repeate to do such movement the more think about it, and which it is related to yourself and the surrounding of you. It, in a sense, can be called “Japaneseness,” but if you conclude so, it may be too decisive. On the other hand, the unmoved things include the base of nature as the mother for the earth.
Alternatively, it also can possible to symbolise those axes by the terms; nomadic and feudal. In other word, it is the difference between the view of value to moving without fixing, and the view of value which one rely upon his destiny onto the nature and a local environment by being rooted in land and culture.
Or when you set up the coordinates macroscopicly, the two axes are defined by the different historical “amphibious nature” such as Eastern versus Western or Japanese versus Angro-American.
Or when you think it philosophically, it is said that deterministic versus selective, or, rational versus anti-rational, or even you can devide science versus non-science.
Finally, there is a fundamental question that whether it must be dichotomy, i.e. it should not be seen as an alternative selection. In other words, such an appearance seeming an alternative selection must be just an apparent one. Rather it canbe the intrinsic fact that the both must be contained rather than selected.
Any rate, in the next issue, I am going to describe a few different type of people under the theme of the question with the heading of “Amphibiology Lectures: The Third Century”.