This essay reflects on Motomu Nishibe’s serialized writings and the philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset.
Through the concept of the “minority thinker” and “true happiness,” it connects personal experience, intellectual discipline, and a new articulation of elite theory.

2016-10-14.
Readers of keen discernment around the world must have noticed it.
As for why I began reading the essays serialized by Motomu Nishibe in the monthly magazine Seiron—which are by no means easy to read.
For example, when he begins an article in a certain issue by writing about the death of his wife, he writes throughout with the self-discipline of what Ortega calls a thinker of the minority, yet to me it is painfully clear how deeply he loved his wife.
The phrase “what Ortega calls (true happiness)” had caught my attention.
One reason was that it was also a thematic phrase in the song “Kowarekake no Radio” by 徳永英明, which I had posted from YouTube several times and disseminated to the world.
Since Tokunaga Hideaki is surely not a singer-songwriter in name only, I found myself thinking that although unlikely, there must be some possibility that he had read Ortega’s books.
The other day, when I searched in order to properly confirm “what Ortega calls (true happiness),” I came across a paper by 大町公, now a professor at 奈良大学, titled “On the ‘Minority’ in Ortega” (held by Nara University).
He was a scholar who had graduated from the Faculty of Letters at 京都大学.
Reading his paper, I came to a realization.
As I have already written, a mentor from my alma mater once told me, “You must enter Kyoto University, remain there, and stand bearing Kyoto University upon both your shoulders.”
That mentor had aspired to Kyoto University, but due to various circumstances entered 東北大学 and became a world history teacher at my alma mater, which was also his own.
I came to know that his advice to me had been entirely correct.
This was because, having lived my life as a businessman, I was naturally an unknown figure in the world of discourse, and as readers know, I was forced by circumstances to appear in the world of the Internet.
Before long, I wrote an elite theory and a labor theory.
That these were things no one had ever written before, and things no one had ever been able to write before, must have been noticed by men of keen insight around the world.
I wrote an elite theory that is no less compelling than Ortega’s own.