That day, I was reading Keiichi Sokabe's writing. "Toward where the sweet scents linger." Guided by those words, I reached into my bookshelf and pulled out Kohei Kitayama's "Lessons of Nature."

A red apple on a blue cover. Written there in English were the words, THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE. Lessons of Nature. It looks like an ordinary book. But books like this suddenly cease to be ordinary one day.

As I flip through the pages, my past self is there. The air of the room when I bought that book, the anxieties of that time, and the interests that had not yet found their words—all return along with the scent of the paper.

Then, in that flow, I learned of Kohei Kitayama's passing. From Sokabe to Kitayama. From scent to nature. From music to books. From the writings of the living to the words of the departed. It makes one think. This is why books cannot be thrown away. This is why coincidence ceases to be mere coincidence.

Kohei Kitayama has passed away. March 26, 2026, at the age of 76.

Shortly before, I had also come across the passing of manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge. "The Man Without Talent," "Neji-shiki." The person who does nothing. The person who drifts. The person who has slipped away from the center of society. Right nearby, Kohei Kitayama's name also quietly drifted. When such news overlaps, it ceases to be just about one person passing. Some era is quietly, soundlessly folding away.

A volume that should have been deep in the bookshelf somehow disappears from the side of reality. Yet, only the words written inside remain on this side.

I am not knowledgeable enough about Kohei Kitayama to speak systematically. But I have always known his name. And that name carried a certain scent. Native American, Rainbow Warrior, Earth, sky, fire, prayer, ancient wisdom, things that perish, things left behind. Writing this now, it might seem like the vocabulary of spiritual consumerism. But I believe what Kitayama dealt with was not that kind of lightweight, healing packaging.

It was something far more urgent. Things that slipped away from the speed of modernity. Things that did not fit into the catalog of capitalism. Things difficult to explain in urban meeting rooms, yet truly essential for humans to live. Kitayama was the person who translated those things into the Japanese language.

I believe he was not just a translator, but a mediator. He did not simply replace words spoken on another continent with Japanese. He sought to let the wind, the humidity, the silence, and the scent of fire carried by those words flow within Japanese. That is no simple task. Words do not carry meaning alone; they carry the very way we view the world. Therefore, to translate a word is to open the entrance to another world.

Looking at the table of contents of "Lessons of Nature," it is divided into three lessons: Lessons of the Soul, Lessons of the Body, and Lessons of Food.

When we hear the word nature, we immediately think of forests, mountains, and rivers. But the nature in this book is much closer. It is in the soul. It is in the body. It is in the food. In other words, nature is not something you encounter by going somewhere far away, but something already embedded in your daily life. Rather, it is we who have lost sight of it.

There is an expression: to return to nature. But perhaps the nature we should return to is not on the outside; it has been there all along within our daily meals, sleep, fatigue, breaths, moods, and the voice of the body. Lessons of nature are not just about going to the forest. What you eat, how you sleep, where you walk, who you speak with, what you choose not to look at, toward which light you turn your face. I believe all of these are lessons of nature.

Flipping through the pages, deep inside, I found these words:

This book was made with the hope of being useful to those who want to change their current life, for now, in a slightly better direction.

I stopped for a moment here. Not to change one's life. Not to change the world. Not to live correctly. To change current life in a slightly better direction. In this phrasing—"slightly better"—I felt the moderate, thoughtful temperature of Kohei Kitayama's philosophy.

People are not saved suddenly. They do not awaken suddenly. They do not suddenly become one with nature. But perhaps we can turn today's life in a slightly better direction than yesterday's. Changing what we eat a little. Changing where we walk a little. Changing the books we read, the music we listen to, the things we watch before sleeping, just a little. Holding onto anger, but remaining quiet for a brief moment. Before changing the entire world, shifting the angle of our own life just slightly.

Only to that degree. But, perhaps, only things to that degree truly begin. Grand ideologies sometimes take people far away. But words that turn life in a slightly better direction bring people back here. Kitayama's words existed in such a place. While speaking of the sky, earth, and rainbows, they always landed on daily life. That is what makes them wonderful.

There is another phrase that left a deep impression on me.

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

This is often introduced as a Native American proverb. These words strike home deeply in this era. If someone is truly asleep, you might be able to wake them. If they do not know yet, you might be able to tell them. If they cannot see, you might be able to guide them to a place where they can. But there are those who see yet choose not to look. Those who know yet pretend not to know. Those who are awake yet pretend to sleep. You cannot wake such a person.

This is a disheartening phrase. But at the same time, it is one that teaches us a certain boundary. A person cannot force another to awaken. You cannot forcibly change another's perception from the outside. No matter how true you believe something is, if the other person chooses to pretend to sleep, shouting in front of them will likely change nothing.

That is precisely why words draw close to prayer. Not persuasion, but prayer. Not enlightenment, but keeping the fire burning. Not to wake someone up, but to ensure that when someone eventually opens their eyes, a small light is still there waiting for them. I believe this was the nature of Kohei Kitayama's work. Not grand commands to change the world, but translations to keep the fire from going out. Not words to make righteousness win, but words to avoid forgetting that another way of living once existed.

Among the words left by Kitayama was also this sentence:

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

This is not mere encouragement. Normally, today is just another day of the remaining days, part of the time decreasing toward the end. But in these words, today becomes the "first day." The first day of the rest of our lives. There, the end and the beginning exist simultaneously. Because we know death, today begins. Because there is a remainder, the first is born. Because everything is finite, today returns to us once more.

This is close to the concept of "zero" that I have been thinking about lately. Zero is not mere nothingness. It is not the end. It is the silence before meaning arises, and the place left for beginning again after everything has been stripped away. Kitayama’s words feel as though they stand near that zero. Not keeping death at a distance, but looking directly at it. Yet, not placing only despair there. Seeing the end, and accepting today as the first day. That is strong. And gentle.

The phrase "Rainbow Warrior" also seems mysterious when looked at now. A rainbow cannot be touched. It cannot be grasped. It seems to be there, yet it is not. But when visible, it is indeed visible. Only when droplets in the air align with the angle of light does the rainbow appear. In other words, a rainbow is not an object, but a phenomenon that arises through relationships.

This is similar to meaning. Meaning, too, does not exist there as a fixed object. Someone’s words, someone’s memory, the weather on a certain day, the state of the body, news of the deceased, a book read long ago, forgotten music. When they overlap at a certain angle, meaning suddenly arises. A rainbow cannot be owned, but it can be seen. Meaning cannot be owned either, but it can be received.

Will the rainbow still remain after Kohei Kitayama? Perhaps the rainbow itself remains. The problem, I think, lies in the eyes that see it. Have we lost the ability to see rainbows? Or, even when we do see one, do we immediately take a photo, post it, explain it, and consume it? Before accepting the rainbow as a rainbow, we turn it into content. That is very far from the world Kitayama was trying to convey.

But I also believe it is not entirely lost. When someone passes away, words remain. Someone opens a book. Someone posts that sentence. Someone sees it and stops for a moment. Within the person who read that sentence, something shifts direction just slightly. Perhaps, in that alone, the rainbow still remains.

The rainbow does not remain as a grand movement. It does not remain as an institution or a canon. Rather, it remains as fragments. In someone's social media post. On the pages of an old book. In a translated sentence. In a remembered name. In a brief obituary for the deceased. And in the thin silence that follows after reading it.

Kohei Kitayama was an interpreter of a certain world. That world will probably never return to the center of modernity. But precisely because it does not return to the center, something remains. Deep in the forest, in the corners of bookshelves, in old magazines, in small publishing houses, in someone's memory, in fading words. And a rainbow visible only to those who seek to see.

You cannot wake a person pretending to sleep. But you can keep the fire burning for those who still wish to wake. You can point toward the rainbow for those who still wish to see. You can leave the old words in Japanese for those who still wish to listen. And you can leave a single book for those who want to turn their current life in a slightly better direction.

Lessons of the Soul, Lessons of the Body, Lessons of Food. Nature is not in some distant place outside. It is within our daily lives. Inside our bodies, on our dining tables, within our fatigue, within our anger, within our sleepless nights. Therefore, the lessons of nature are not about escaping from the world. Rather, they are about returning to daily life.

Will the rainbow still remain after Kohei Kitayama? I believe it does. However, it may not be a grand rainbow arching across the sky. A tiny light remaining at the edge of someone's words. A color that suddenly appears within a sentence left by the deceased. A letter from one's past self found in a book pulled randomly from the shelf. A subtle current connecting Sokabe's writing to Kitayama's book. An angle to view today once more as the first day. As long as we do not lose that angle, the rainbow still remains.

And today, indeed, is the first day of the rest of our lives.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-05-21