Driven by profound anger at the blatant absurdities carried out in broad daylight despite having paid over 17 billion yen in taxes and more than 10 million yen annually in property tax to Osaka City, the author recounts the moment he resolved to write “while walking.” Disgusted by television’s shallow narratives and superficial public sentiment, he reflects on the necessity of quiet refuge for the weak, the unbearable loss of peace for sensitive souls, and the truth that those who truly transform history—from Engels and the Buddha to Christ and modern thinkers—are not those trained in schools, but poor individuals who possess nothing yet pierce the very core of their age.

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2010-07-23

The moment I first decided, in the form of a blog, that “if this is how it is, then I must write while walking,” was born of my profound anger at the fact that such utter stupidity was being carried out openly in broad daylight, even though I had at times gone as long as a year with only two days off from work,
worked like a draft horse, as one might put it,
paid more than 17 billion yen in taxes in various forms,
and even now continue to pay more than ten million yen every year in property tax to Osaka City.

Yesterday, believing that I had finished writing the first chapter, I even thought to myself that, for something written while walking, I had done quite well indeed,
but when yesterday (even though the outcome was just as I had predicted) on the TV sports news I heard things like,
“Japan’s proposal receives a favorable response,”
my heart truly grew weary.

[Omitted in the original]

Yet even fledgling birds and lion cubs that still require the protection of their parents need a quiet roost.
For a boy endowed with sensitivity commensurate with his abilities, the loss of peace becomes unbearable in exact proportion to that sensitivity.

In later years, when I came across Engels’s words, “I did not learn Marxism at school; I learned it through my own household,”
I realized that this is precisely what it means to be a person who transforms an age.

The Buddha (Gautama Siddhartha) was surely the same.
And I believe Christ was so as well.

One may be able to make money with knowledge learned at school,
but one cannot pierce an age, alter it, or create history through such learning alone.
The words of Kazuo Takahashi that I cited earlier—
“In every age, those who have created and transformed that age have been poor scholars possessing nothing at all”—
are meant in exactly this sense.

(274) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube