TL;DR

When you study history, you see both human foolishness and human growth. Drawing lines to exclude others, being swept away by fear, chasing short-term gain and ruining the long term — these patterns of “human stupidity” have hardly changed across time and place.

And yet, humanity has definitely improved. How we treat life, the expansion of rights, advances in medicine, welfare, and infrastructure, and the increase in stories that share pain — all of these are attempts to build “a slightly better world,” piled up through history.

Japan, in particular, is one of the best places in the world to study history. From Jōmon to Reiwa, myths, classics, and historical records have been preserved continuously in the same language. That lets us observe both “foolishness” and “growth” over a very long time axis. Standing in this rich field, we can design the future of our own small radius.



—

Table of Contents

1. Introduction | What Studying History Reveals: “Foolishness” and “Growth”


2. Reading the Layer of “Pain” Between the Lines of the Textbook


3. The Unchanging Foolishness of Human Beings
　3-1 The Temptation to Draw a Line Between “Us” and “Them”
　3-2 How Fear and Anxiety Make Groups Run Wild
　3-3 How “Only Now, Only Here, Only Me” Leads to Collapse


4. And Yet, History Also Shows Human Growth
　4-1 How the Value of Life Has Changed
　4-2 The Birth and Expansion of the Idea of “Rights”
　4-3 The Increase of Stories That Try to Share Pain


5. What Japan’s Long History and Classics Teach Us
　5-1 The Tale of the Heike — The Pattern of Power Struggles and the Rise and Fall of the Mighty
　5-2 Hōjōki and Tsurezuregusa — How to Live Amid Disaster and Impermanence
　5-3 From Myth to Reiwa — Japan as an Ideal Field for Learning History


6. Re-reading History as a Mid-Career Severely Disabled Person
　6-1 When Your World Changes in an Instant and Historical Events
　6-2 Medicine, Welfare, and Systems as the Accumulated Growth of Humanity
　6-3 Holding Both Foolishness and Growth at the Same Time


7. Why Learn History Now? As a “Small Blueprint” for the Future
　7-1 Turning Enormous Foolishness into Everyday Practices
　7-2 Consciously Using “What Has Improved” in the Japanese Experiment
　7-3 Conclusion — Living While Accepting Humanity, Foolishness Included


8. FAQ | My Answers to Common Questions




—

1 | Introduction | What Studying History Reveals: “Foolishness” and “Growth”

When you study history, you realize very clearly that human beings have grown through countless tragedies and experiences.
At the same time, you bump into scene after scene where you want to sigh and say:

> “Seriously? We’re still doing this…?”



I became severely disabled in mid-life and spent a lot of time in a rehab ward, re-reading history books and classics.
My body hardly moved. I read pages under the glow of monitors and the steady drip of an IV.

In that time, two seemingly contradictory feelings grew inside me:

> “Human beings are this foolish — and at the same time,
they are creatures who keep learning.”



And I also began to feel strongly:

> “Japan, as a place, is actually one of the richest ‘classrooms’ in the world for learning from history.”



From Jōmon to Yayoi, to the Kofun period, to the ritsuryō state, to warrior governments, to the modern nation-state

From myths to classical literature, war tales, essays, modern literature, and now our blogs


On one small chain of islands, multiple “layers of time” have stacked up continuously.
Japan’s long history and massive body of classical texts let us see both “human foolishness” and “human growth” with very high resolution.

In this essay, I’d like to look calmly and carefully — from my standpoint as a mid-career, severely disabled person — at:

What hasn’t changed: our foolishness

What has actually improved

And what we can learn from Japan as a “long-running experimental field” of history



—

2 | Reading the Layer of “Pain” Between the Lines of the Textbook

The history we learn at school is usually a list of events:

A war began in year X

A treaty was signed in year Y

A revolution happened in year Z


Dry timelines.
Useful for passing tests, but between those lines, an enormous amount of pain is compressed.

After becoming severely disabled and revisiting history, each one-line entry in those timelines started to feel like a stack of:

“Collapse and reconstruction of daily life.”

When an accident or illness makes things you could do yesterday suddenly impossible today,
your income, roles, and place in society all fall apart at once.
That’s a “small history” at the scale of a single person’s life.

The wars and disasters that appear in history do the same thing
on the scale of entire towns and nations.

Families who lost loved ones on ancient battlefields

Parents who had to bury their children during famines

People who lost their hometown overnight in air raids or the atomic bombings

People who saw loved ones swept away by a tsunami


Textbooks reduce this to numbers: “X thousand war dead,” “Y thousand casualties.”
But each one of those numbers had “everyday life” attached — love, arguments, small dreams.

After becoming disabled and going through the “collapse of daily life” myself,
the thickness of pain behind those numbers started to feel a bit more three-dimensional.

And even so, I find myself thinking:

> “After all the pain humanity has gone through,
we still repeat the same mistakes.”



It’s exasperatingly foolish.
But at the same time, history is precisely the act of recording that foolishness again and again.


—

3 | The Unchanging Foolishness of Human Beings

3-1 | The Temptation to Draw a Line Between “Us” and “Them”

When you look at history, the patterns of human foolishness boil down to a few types.
Classics and historical texts have been noting those patterns over and over for centuries.

One of them is the temptation to draw a line between:

“Us” and “Them.”

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, in his account of the Peloponnesian War,
described a dialogue between the powerful city of Athens and the small island of Melos — the Melian Dialogue.

The Athenians famously say:

> “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”



Here you see a structure where

“We” and “They” are separated, and the power gap is treated as natural.

The same pattern recurs across ages and regions:

Ancient slavery

Colonial rule

Racial and caste discrimination

“Patriots” vs. “non-patriots” in wartime

Exclusion of disabled and sick people


In today’s world, we see its variations in:

“It’s your own fault” arguments aimed at the poor

Labeling “enemies” and “allies” on social media

Divisions based on region, nationality, or political beliefs


Japan’s history and classics are full of this structure too:

“Winners” and “losers” in The Tale of the Heike

The rigid class order of samurai, peasants, artisans, merchants — and the treatment of outcast groups in Edo times

The division of “the homeland” and “the colonies” in the modern era

Local communities and vulnerable people left behind during the postwar economic boom


Humanity has long been very skilled at drawing boundary lines.
Once a line is drawn, it becomes much harder to imagine the pain on the other side.
That’s one of our oldest and most persistent forms of foolishness.

3-2 | How Fear and Anxiety Make Groups Run Wild

Another type of foolishness is how fear and anxiety distort group decisions.

When disease spreads, certain regions or communities are scapegoated as the “source”

When the economy worsens, immigrants or minorities are blamed

As wars drag on, “better to punish the suspicious” becomes the norm and purges are justified


Just looking at Japanese history, you see:

North–South Court conflicts over “legitimacy”

Treachery and massacres in the Warring States period

Late-war propaganda about “brutal enemies” and calls for total resistance in WWII

Discrimination and violence fueled by rumors and false information


When fear and anxiety swell, people lose their cool and get swallowed by pressures like:

“Strike first, before they strike you.”

“I can’t be the only one who’s different from the group.”


Even with advanced information technology and science in the 21st century,
scrolling through social media and the news, you can still feel this same air at times.

In other words, the human heart itself has not changed much since ancient times.
History keeps confronting us with that harsh reality.

3-3 | How “Only Now, Only Here, Only Me” Leads to Collapse

Yet another pattern of foolishness is:

Short-term gain that leads to long-term ruin.

In world history:

The expansion and fiscal collapse of the Roman Empire

Environmental destruction after the Industrial Revolution

Financial bubbles and their crashes


In Japan:

The shogunate’s fiscal problems and postponed reforms in the late Edo period

Pollution issues that came with rapid economic growth

The bubble economy and the ensuing “lost decades”

Companies that chased unrealistic growth and ended up destroying themselves


Any system built on “only now, only here, only me” will eventually demand its price.

History has shown this again and again.
And yet, we still get caught in the same pattern.

Perhaps foolishness is:

“Having records of painful mistakes, yet refusing to take them personally.”


—

4 | And Yet, History Also Shows Human Growth

So far I’ve focused on the dark side, but let’s flip the coin.
Viewed over long spans, history also shows that human society has definitely improved in some important ways.

Japan’s long history, in particular, lets us see those changes as one continuous narrative —
which is a real privilege when we want to learn from the past.

4-1 | How the Value of Life Has Changed

In ancient and medieval times, human life was treated far more lightly than today.

The defeated side in war might be massacred or enslaved

Many would starve during famines, and people would shrug it off as “inevitable”

Death in childbirth or from disease was everyday reality

Babies born with disabilities or illnesses were sometimes abandoned


The world today is still far from ideal.
Even so, compared to the past, we now have:

Advanced medical care

Better public sanitation

Vaccines, antibiotics, and surgical techniques

Rescue and support systems in disasters

Transportation networks and emergency medical services


Because of these, many lives have moved from “simply lost” to “saved.”

If I had had the same accident or illness 100 or 200 years ago,
I almost certainly wouldn’t be writing this essay.

The decades of accumulated trial and error and research that came before me now function as:

“The life support system that keeps me here.”

When I think of it that way, it’s hard not to see at least some real growth in humanity.

4-2 | The Birth and Expansion of the Idea of “Rights”

Another major change is the idea of rights.

Globally, we have:

The abolition of slavery

Women’s suffrage

Laws prohibiting racial discrimination

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities


In Japan specifically:

The building of a modern legal system after the Meiji Restoration

The emphasis on fundamental human rights in the postwar Constitution

Labor standards and workplace safety laws

Basic laws and anti-discrimination acts related to disability

Public programs such as nursing care insurance and welfare systems


Discrimination and exclusion certainly still exist.
But at least now we have language and laws that allow us to say, “This is wrong.”

As a disabled person, I live thanks to:

Barrier-free sidewalks and buildings

Hospitals

Welfare services

Pension and disability systems


All of these are fruits of the long process of expanding rights throughout history.

Even though Japan’s political form has changed many times from Jōmon to Reiwa,
people living on the same islands have kept trying to find “slightly better ways to live.”
The infrastructures supporting our daily lives now are results of those efforts.

Japan’s long history is, in that sense, the best textbook to feel this kind of continuity.

4-3 | The Increase of Stories That Try to Share Pain

One more quiet but important change is the increase in:

Stories that try to share pain.

War literature and records of the atomic bombings

Testimonies of people who suffered discrimination due to leprosy (Hansen’s disease), HIV, etc.

Memoirs by disabled people and bereaved families

Accounts from survivors of disasters like the 2011 earthquake and tsunami

Countless “small stories” told via blogs and social media


Classical texts already contained many depictions of pain and loss.
The opening of The Tale of the Heike and the disaster scenes in Hōjōki are famous examples.

But now the range of storytellers has expanded dramatically.

People who once had no access to writing or publication —
people whose experiences never made it into official records —
are gradually, but surely, becoming visible.

These stories aren’t just “tragedy content” for passive consumption.
They can function as a shared memory that helps us:

“Avoid making the same mistakes in exactly the same way.”

My choice to write as a mid-career disabled blogger is a small attempt to join this flow.
Being able to write in Japanese — a language that carries so much history — is itself a blessing.


—

5 | What Japan’s Long History and Classics Teach Us

Let’s zoom in more on Japan as a field of study.

Japan is fortunate to have:

Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, which present myth and early history

The Tale of Genji, depicting the light and shadow of court aristocracy

War tales like The Tale of the Heike and Taiheiki, narrating the rise and fall of warriors

Essays like Hōjōki and Tsurezuregusa, which gaze at disaster and impermanence

Modern literature, war memoirs, contemporary non-fiction, and yes — blogs


Few countries have over a thousand years of continuous texts in the same language.
That’s a rare richness.

5-1 | The Tale of the Heike — The Pattern of Power Struggles and the Rise and Fall of the Mighty

The opening lines of The Tale of the Heike are famous:

> “The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things…”



The tale describes how the mighty Taira (Heike) clan reaches its peak and then collapses,
burning into the reader the Buddhist sense of impermanence — that all prosperity must pass.

And yet, when you look at Japanese history after that, you see:

Power struggles within the Kamakura shogunate

The Ōnin War and the following age of civil war

The rise and fall of the Tokugawa shogunate

The military’s rise and catastrophic defeat in the modern era


In other words, we see the same kind of power struggle repeated again and again.

Every time I read The Tale of the Heike, I think:

> “We have such a vivid story that warns us —
and still, humans fall into the same pattern.”



It’s almost enough to make you want to give up on us.

But at the same time, this tale has been retold for centuries
and has shaped people’s sense of ethics and impermanence.

So maybe the lesson isn’t:

> “There’s no point; we’ll just repeat it anyway,”



but rather:

> “Because we repeat it, we need stories we can return to again and again.”



5-2 | Hōjōki and Tsurezuregusa — How to Live Amid Disaster and Impermanence

Kamo no Chōmei’s Hōjōki and Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa
describe fires, famines, and earthquakes, and reflect on the impermanence of life —
but they are also books about how to keep one’s heart steady and live in such a world.

Hōjōki includes vivid descriptions of:

Massive fires

Years of famine

Floods and landslides


People flee the capital, houses are swept away, and the world feels overturned.

In modern terms, we can link these to:

Major earthquakes and tsunamis

Global pandemics

Extreme weather due to climate change


Chōmei and Kenkō do not simply conclude, “The world is hopeless.”
Instead, they ask:

> “Because the world is like this,
what kind of posture should I choose for my life?”



And they answer with concrete choices, like:

Living in a small, simple dwelling

Not inflating one’s desires without limit

Quietly arranging daily attitudes and small practices


This is the very essence of “learning from tragedy and changing our small designs.”
In other words, a seed of human growth.

5-3 | From Myth to Reiwa — Japan as an Ideal Field for Learning History

From the myths in Kojiki and Nihon Shoki to the social media age of Reiwa,
Japan has preserved continuous written records in one language on one set of islands.

That gives those of us born here a huge learning advantage.

On this narrow land, we can observe repeated patterns of:

Natural disasters

Wars and internal conflicts

Regime changes

Epidemics

Technological revolutions

Shifts in values

Demographic changes


It’s as if we are standing over a giant experiment log that humanity has been writing
for well over a millennium.

When we say “let’s learn from history,”
often the richest and most accessible materials are already under our feet:
our own country’s history.

In that sense, Japan really is one of the best fields in the world for studying history.


—

6 | Re-reading History as a Mid-Career Severely Disabled Person

Now I’ll add a bit more of my personal perspective.

Before I became disabled, I tended to see history as “something far away”:

Distant wars

People with very different values

A climate of past eras that had little to do with me


After becoming severely disabled in mid-life and having my life completely remade,
my way of reading history changed.

6-1 | When Your World Changes in an Instant and Historical Events

When an accident or illness suddenly takes away your mobility,
everything you took for granted collapses at once:

Standing up

Walking

Going to the bathroom unaided

Commuting to work

Supporting your family


When these become impossible,
the resolution of your world changes drastically.

Wars and disasters in history must have done the same thing —
they suddenly stripped people of all their “normal” routines.

That idea has become much more real for me.

Behind each “single line” in a history book,
there are tens or hundreds of thousands of personal histories — collapsing and rebuilding.

Through the lens of my own small history,
big history has started to feel three-dimensional.

6-2 | Medicine, Welfare, and Systems as the Accumulated Growth of Humanity

At the same time, I now live in a world supported by the long-term development of:

Medicine

Welfare systems

Barrier-free design

Social security


Japan, in a relatively short time, has gone through:

The devastation of total war

Rapid high-growth industrialization and the pollution crisis

A massive financial bubble and its collapse

A sudden shift into a super-aging society


Perhaps because of all this, today’s Japan has (despite many problems)
relatively robust systems for supporting people —
medical care, welfare, infrastructure, disaster response, and more.

If I had had the same accident or illness in the Edo period,
or in early Meiji, or even in pre-war Shōwa,
I wouldn’t be here, blogging.

Learning history, then, is also a way of:

Seeing the invisible pillars that hold up our lives today.

Those pillars are the result of values and systems
built over Japan’s long history.

6-3 | Holding Both Foolishness and Growth at the Same Time

That’s why, when I read history now,
I can no longer do either of these:

Fall into total despair at human foolishness

Sing the praises of human progress without reservation


Instead, I feel both:

The stupidity of repeating wars and discrimination

And the real advances in rights, systems, and technology


I try to feel them both with equal weight,
and then ask myself:

> “So, where do I stand in all this?”



For me, writing as a mid-career severely disabled blogger
is one of my small answers to that