Modernity Not Overcome: The Absent Origin and Subjectivity—Letter Mysticism and Science

Contents

• Introduction
  • Section 1: Opening
  • Section 2: Previous Research and Background
  • Section 3: Theoretical Framework and Method
• Main Argument
  • Part I: East Asian Letter Mysticism
    • Section 1: Western Esotericism
      • 1. Esotericism
      • 2. Western Esotericism
      • 3. Letter Mysticism
    • Section 2: Does It Exist in East Asia?
      • 1. Candidate Cases
        • A. Phenomena in the Domain of Writing
        • B. Are They Esoteric?
      • 2. Is There Something Distinctly East Asian Here?
        • A. A Distinctive Quality Latent in Writing
        • B. Is It East Asian?
    • Section 3: The Esoteric in East Asian Writing
      • 1. Elements of Early Modern Enchantment
      • 2. Elements of the (Post)modern Occult
      • 3. Elements of Inner Traditions
    • Interim Conclusion: An Esotericism That Fills Everyday Life
  • Part II: Attachment to the Time of Modernity
    • Section 1: The Absent Origin
      • 1. Chinese Mythological Studies
      • 2. Divine Time and the Time of Chinese Characters
      • 3. Temporal Genealogy and Its Place
    • Section 2: The Absent Subjectivity
      • 1. Speaking On in an Abandoned Land
      • 2. The Impossibility and Incapacity of Reaching the Third-Party Instance
      • 3. The Birth of the Subject and the Difficult Birth of Subjectivity
    • Section 3: The “Esotericism—Religion—Science” Model
      • 1. Absoluter Geist and Scientific Progress
      • 2. God Is God, Humanity Is Humanity
      • 3. What Remains Is the Esoteric
    • Interim Conclusion: Modernity Not Overcome
• Conclusion
  • Section 1: All Too Unmodern
  • Section 2: Toward a Long, Narrow Road and an Open Sky
• Sidebar: A World of Sorcery and a World of Abundance
• Contributions and Limitations
• References

Introduction

Section 1: Opening

It is plain that, in modernity, East Asian modernization has consisted in imitating the West. To break out of this condition and attempt the future anew on our own terms within a postmodern world that includes postcolonialism, it is crucial that we look back and identify premodern elements. These are precisely what our long history has lacked. They are not something that performs as something else and is thereby called an “overcoming of modernity.” They are, rather, modernity not overcome.

One important element in modernity not overcome is the esoteric. If we examine the modern West, an important feature of its system of knowledge is the sequence “esotericism—religion—science.” A deep understanding of science and religion is not the same as a deep understanding of esotericism. Why have we lacked a clear conception of the esoteric as a field in its own right? I want to answer that question by examining phenomena that arise among us, especially in the domain of writing.

Section 2: Previous Research and Background

The discussion draws on Masachi Osawa’s sociology, social history, and philosophy; Shizuka Shirakawa’s study of writing; contemporary Western philosophy and history of science; the academic study of esotericism; and mythological studies conducted within China. Specific works appear in the references.

Section 3: Theoretical Framework and Method

I refer to the academic study of esotericism developed in the West in recent years and use its models of esoteric characteristics to identify and analyze phenomena that belong to East Asian letter mysticism. I then set the substance of East Asian letter mysticism against the characteristics of science as a defining feature of modernity. This allows me to ask why the paradigm shift from esotericism to religion to science did not appear in East Asia, and, finally, how the factors behind that absence continue to hold the region in a condition of modernity not overcome.

Main Argument, Part I: East Asian Letter Mysticism

Section 1: Western Esotericism

1. Esotericism

As Wouter J. Hanegraaff observes, esotericism has traditionally been studied within the field of religion, and even today it remains difficult to define. As research has advanced, attention has turned to things long ignored by both the public and the academy, including esotericism itself.

Among its salient features is that it belongs neither to science nor to philosophy; yet it is also highly inappropriate simply to regard it as religion.

Examples include the magic of Harry Potter, the alchemy of Fullmetal Alchemist, and H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Real, nonfictional examples include knowledge of the Kabbalah in Judaism, esoteric Buddhism in Japan, and Daoist thought about immortals in China.

2. Western Esotericism

Are there principles by which we can identify this content called esotericism? Wouter J. Hanegraaff proposes three models: Early Modern Enchantment, the (Post)modern Occult, and Inner Traditions. Alongside these stands “the Rest of the West: Judaism, Christianity, Islam”—that is, esotericism within religion.

These are the principal features of Western esotericism. My argument takes the first three models, rather than esotericism within religion, as its criteria.

3. Letter Mysticism

Letter mysticism is a concept that will recur throughout this essay. Before applying Hanegraaff’s three models to East Asian letter mysticism, it will help to say a little about its Western counterpart.

In a broad sense, esotericism is the idea that human beings can connect with God, or with a higher will, by some means;¹ letter mysticism is the idea that writing can serve as that means.

One prominent Western example is Islamic letter mysticism, on which Toshihiko Izutsu was a major authority. Since his research is only loosely connected with this essay, I will not pursue it here. A nonreligious example of letter mysticism is magic. Unlike an incantation, certain forms of magic require particular signs to be written in a particular place before the magic can be activated. Phenomena resembling these magic-activating inscriptions will become a focal point later in this essay, so I note them here in advance.

Section 2: Does It Exist in East Asia?

1. Candidate Cases

A. Phenomena in the Domain of Writing

Many things in everyday life deserve to be reconsidered. Here are a few examples.

We often encounter remarks such as: “Reading this sentence healed me,” “I was moved by these words,” or “certain writing has the power to change reality.”

When people visit a shrine or temple, they write their prayers and their names in the blank space on an ema votive plaque, or on its reverse, in the hope that doing so will make their wishes come true.

Having offered examples from the real world, let us turn to fictional ones by comparing two games that have recently become enormously popular: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. When a character in Elden Ring drinks from a Flask, imbibes the Wondrous Physick, or consumes a bolus, auras of different colors appear around them. In Sekiro, however, what appears is not merely an aura but a Chinese character. The character 危 (“danger”) appears above the protagonist when he faces a perilous attack; 死 (“death”) when he dies; and 回生 (“resurrection”) when the Dragon’s Heritage revives him. Other examples include 治 (“heal”), 鬼仏見出 (“Sculptor’s Idol found”), and 防 (“deflect”).

B. Are They Esoteric?

Do these phenomena meet our definition of the esoteric?

From the standpoint of contemporary psychology, language is simply a means by which human beings, as social creatures, exchange messages. It possesses no further physical power. Reading a sentence cannot close a wound, nor can words move a person who does not move themselves.

The example of hanging an ema at a shrine plainly involves a religious feeling or intention on the visitor’s part.

The most interesting comparison is between Elden Ring and Sekiro. When blood loss occurs in Elden Ring, the words “Blood Loss” appear onscreen. Unlike the characters in Sekiro, this message is not integrated with the player character. It can be hidden with the rest of the interface without fundamentally obstructing play. Remove the 死 from Sekiro, by contrast, and the player can no longer read the timing of resurrection properly; play itself is impaired.

These Chinese characters do something different from an ordinary interface. They are central visual elements in the game and connect directly to its narrative.

As stated above, the esoteric is the idea that one can connect with God, or with a higher will, through writing. What we can say with confidence is that the examples above unconsciously seek a power beyond physical force. In other words, what they seek is not a power of this world. It is a power outside science—and in that sense it may be called esoteric.

2. Is There Something Distinctly East Asian Here?

A. A Distinctive Quality Latent in Writing

The previous subsection argued that esotericism exists in East Asia as well. But is it particular to East Asia, or common to scripts throughout the world? Let us consider the properties of Chinese characters.

The alphabet and Chinese characters are probably the world’s most widely used writing systems. In sharp contrast to alphabetic writing, Chinese characters can be “recognized at a glance but not read.” This is true in China and Japan, as well as in Southeast Asia. The quality is often called “ideographic.”

In an ideographic system, a single graph functions as the smallest unit of meaning. This differs from English words, although English also has affixes below the word level that carry meaning. Moreover, the meaning conveyed is for the most part independent of how the character is pronounced. The meaning of a Chinese character is strongly connected to its visual form. This is the distinctive quality of the script.

B. Is It East Asian?

As noted above, Chinese characters are ideographs whose meanings have no basic correspondence with their pronunciation. In Western alphabetic writing, by contrast, the order of letters and a limited set of pronunciation rules make it possible to distinguish both the pronunciation and meaning of a sentence. In this sense, the features of Chinese characters may be called distinctly East Asian.

We may therefore conclude that East Asian writing does possess a character both esoteric and distinctive.

Section 3: The Esoteric in East Asian Writing

1. Elements of Early Modern Enchantment

As I have said, it is extremely difficult to distinguish esoteric ideas with any clarity. This is because, for now, such ideas remain concealed within a “religious supermarket.”² To distinguish these phenomena, Wouter J. Hanegraaff proposes the following three models.

The keyword in Early Modern Enchantment³ is enchantment: the conferral of magical power on something. “Early modern” names an age in which modern science takes the dominant position, while enchantment asserts the power to generate phenomena that deliberately resist the scientific worldview. The scientific setting is crucial. In an age without science, enchantment would instead be the prevailing paradigm of thought. Alchemy in Newton’s age, on the threshold of the Scientific Revolution, was a dominant intellectual current alongside a science not yet fully born.

The world today is contemporary⁴—that is, modernized. Let us analyze phenomena that occur around those of us who live our days within it.

In the anime Noragami, writing is the key to the protagonists’ bond with their Regalia. When Yato summons Yukine in the form of a sword, he uses a character for “snow” that resembles seal script. Yukine is the spirit of a person already dead; Yato is a god; and the sword, as a Regalia, wields a power absent from the scientific world. We may therefore call this esoteric thought that takes the Chinese character as its medium.

Another useful comparison to Hanegraaff’s account is a shot in the opening sequence of Jujutsu Kaisen in which characters burst outward. Like Noragami, the work is set in a modernized, scientific world. What issues from the wound is not simply bodily fluid that sustains physical functions but a purified aggregate of resentments invisible to ordinary people. This aggregate resembles what Hanegraaff calls Living Nature.⁵ What it contains is not like the parts of a giant clock: it is a formless life force.

The same is true of the exorcism scene in the first episode of the television drama Kotodamasō: a text containing Chinese characters becomes an indispensable medium for expelling a curse.

A fundamental premise and defining feature of modern science is the uniformity of nature,⁶ the idea that everything, from past to future, obeys constant laws. The divine instruments of Noragami, the characters bursting forth in Jujutsu Kaisen, and the text in Kotodamasō all oppose this principle.

2. Elements of the (Post)modern Occult

The keyword in the (Post)modern Occult⁷ is occult, meaning “hidden” or “unseen.” Unlike Early Modern Enchantment, which points to a power that can be summoned into reality, here what is concealed is the invisible source of that power. Whereas the uniformity of nature extends “from past to future,” the source of esoteric thought “has no clear history, or lacks historical depth.” Indeed, the absence of history is precisely what allows esoteric knowledge to remain esoteric.

As the Jujutsu Kaisen opening “Kaikai Kitan” unfolds, many written characters appear. Beyond the premise-defying motion of the Living Nature discussed above, the strongest impression they convey is an absence of time. One reason is the “needlessness of reading” in ideographic writing. Unlike alphabetic words, which take a certain amount of time to read, these characters do not yield their meaning through being sounded out. Grasping them is therefore a visual process—light travels at roughly 300,000 kilometers per second, making the interval vanishingly short—rather than an auditory one, constrained by sound’s roughly 340 meters per second. A second reason is our limited knowledge of the genealogy of Chinese-character scripts, from oracle-bone inscriptions to the present. Chinese characters have a history of nearly two thousand years, and the other scripts that preceded them several thousand more; yet our study and understanding of oracle-bone script,⁸ the source of that genealogy, span barely a century. This too may be called a cause of concealment.

Another aspect of this concealment appears within Western esotericism itself.⁹ As esoteric thought modernized and expanded beyond religion, Eastern mythology became its guidepost. This, the argument runs, is why orientation—guidance—derives from orient, the East. At this point the ambiguity surrounding the sources of Eastern myth and history exceeded East Asia and became a support for the occult, or hidden, in both an East Asian and a global sense.

This occult character of esoteric thought stands opposed to modern science’s “growth of knowledge.”¹⁰ If the metaphor that enables such growth, from religion through philosophy, is “God’s light illuminates the road before us, and through Hegelian dialectics we will necessarily reach the Absoluter Geist,” then esoteric concealment offers the opposite metaphor: “All is dark where God dwells, yet God’s power is beneath me.” It therefore obstructs the growth of knowledge.

3. Elements of Inner Traditions

“Inner Traditions”¹¹ refers to traditions accessible to only a tiny number of students, and to something within them that never changes, whatever the differences of society, history, or culture. That something is “True Esoteric Spirituality.”¹² Those who receive instruction in it belong to esoteric religious groups.

An example appears in Jujutsu Kaisen. It is not a direct example of writing, but Toge Inumaki’s status as a cursed-speech user is inherited. Unlike the linguistic capacity people possess from birth, it is not universal.

Seen in the real world, Chinese characters may possess a similar quality. Consider Japanese kun’yomi, or native readings.¹³ A character simply stands there while several sets of sounds are assigned to it at once; should we not find this strange? The causes of kun’yomi in Chinese-character writing can be traced to two arguments: that “a writing system so complex and confused, and increasingly confused with time, proved supremely useful in preserving the exclusivity of a scholarly class inaccessible to outsiders”; and that “in every country in the world during the feudal age, literacy was the possession of limited classes, above all of priests.”¹⁴

The arbitrariness of this transmission stands opposed to modern science’s “falsifiability.”¹⁵ Newton’s law of gravity can be tested by anyone in this world. If it proves wrong, the model can be reconsidered and a new one proposed for a wider range of cases. Inner transmission rejects this synchronic universality.

Interim Conclusion: An Esotericism That Fills Everyday Life

Let us review the subject and conclusions of Part I.

First, esoteric thought or esotericism is the idea of connecting with God, or with a higher will, through some means. Letter mysticism treats writing as that means.

Using Hanegraaff’s three models, we have located esoteric phenomena of writing in contemporary East Asia. Whether in spiritually charged kotodama and exorcistic texts, in core elements of anime and games, or in the kun’yomi of language education, these phenomena meet our esoteric criteria. This esotericism exceeds the scientific paradigm of the contemporary world we inhabit and exists in a posture of transcendence.

Part II: Attachment to the Time of Modernity

Section 1: The Absent Origin

1. Chinese Mythological Studies

Put schematically, China has no clearly defined mythological system. Neither the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors nor the stories of Nüwa, Fuxi, and Pangu possess the unity of Greek mythology or a monotheistic tradition. To quote Shizuka Shirakawa, “myth was not transmitted as myth in its own form; for this reason China has often been called a land without mythology, and its myths have been said to be withered myths.”¹⁶ The mythologist Yuan Ke makes a similar observation: “Chinese myths were hidden in ancient documents from the Qin and Han periods; they never encountered a figure like the Greek Homer, and so never formed a long and systematic body of mythology.”¹⁷ The documents that preserve Chinese mythology today are for the most part secondary sources written in Chinese characters, not in oracle-bone script.¹⁷

From these two quotations we can conclude that China did not preserve a clear and systematic body of mythology. The withering of mythology is the withering of a spiritual origin.

2. Divine Time and the Time of Chinese Characters

Let us turn to time.

What sense of time did Protestants possess during the Reformation? According to predestination, we human beings are born bearing original sin. The incarnate Christ accepted our faith through his death, and believers will be saved when the Last Judgment arrives. God is omniscient and omnipotent; from the beginning of the world, God has already known everything. Human beings do not know whether they will receive salvation. They can only continue living out their lives until the final day.¹⁸

The time of Chinese characters is the reverse. It would be wrong to say there is no mythology at all, but that mythology is unsystematic, while the written culture formed around Chinese characters stands at an immense distance from oracle-bone writing as its origin. As a result, the temporal source of Chinese-character culture has remained obscure to this day.

An origin resembles memory.¹⁹ In the modern scientific sense, people predict the future on the basis of what they remember experiencing in the past. Metaphorically speaking, if one has no memory of the past, one may to some extent forget what one wanted to do in the future. In this sense, Chinese-character culture has lost its most important memory: the memory of its own origin, whether true or false. In other words, the memory of the origin that ought to occupy the initial position is absent—and that absence persists to the present.

3. Temporal Genealogy and Its Place

According to the work of the historian and philosopher of science Wu Guosheng, a study of the literature formed in Chinese characters can reveal the temporal consciousness of Chinese-character culture.²⁰

In brief, ancient China possessed both cyclical and linear senses of time. This stands in contrast with Christianity and Indian culture, each of which possesses an extreme and simple temporal model. As noted above, Christianity belongs to an extremely linear model; India, to an extremely cyclical one. It was Christianity’s linear sense of time that gave rise to modern science.

Section 2: The Absent Subjectivity

1. Speaking On in an Abandoned Land

According to Masachi Osawa’s research,²¹ at the time of the Reformation, Catholic and Protestant confession produced opposite results because spoken and written language carried different temporalities and because absolution was either present or absent. The relativization of the believer’s relation to God allowed Catholics to experience, in this world, the psychological effect of being released from sin. Protestant confession, conducted by keeping a diary, required the believer to go on repenting within linear time.

Possessing a spiritual origin in original sin, and repenting throughout one’s life in a diary, gives rise to a distinction between the “I that speaks” and the “I that is spoken” within the diary. By comparison, Chinese-character culture, lacking a spiritual origin—a clear mythological system and a linear sense of time—should not have been able to generate this distinction. In historical fact, the Chinese-character sphere was not the birthplace of the diary as a literary form.

2. The Impossibility and Incapacity of Reaching the Third-Party Instance

The panopticon examined by Foucault was a purification of the king’s two bodies under absolute monarchy. The natural body was extracted, leaving only the body politic, with its disciplinary form and surplus power.²²

The Protestant confession that repents through diary writing represents a continuous interrogation of one’s identity under the rule of “God ≈ the panopticon ≈ the third-party instance.” The diary’s “I that speaks” attains a position almost equivalent to the third-party instance. Ultimately, such equivalence is impossible; nevertheless, through repeated questioning in linear time, the “I that speaks” becomes the instance’s proxy.²³

By contrast, Chinese-character culture combines linear and cyclical senses of time. Even if it can temporarily approach the third-party instance, the influence of cyclical time will return it to where it began. This is not the impossibility but the incapacity of reaching the third-party instance.

3. The Birth of the Subject and the Difficult Birth of Subjectivity

If the time of this questioning contracts to its limit, the third-party instance’s proxy becomes one with the “I that speaks,” which continues to pose the questions. At this moment, the birth of the modern subject is complete.²⁴

Looking back at Chinese characters shrouded in mist, the self-incarnation of the third-party instance was nearly impossible. This does not mean, of course, that people who use Chinese characters cannot embody the modern subject. Such embodiment is possible, but its realization may be the result of borrowing the power of other languages. Spiritually speaking, the difficulty faced by Chinese characters is precisely a difficult birth of the subject. Put differently, the subjectivity that should occupy the present position on the timeline is absent—and that absence will persist from here onward.

Section 3: The “Esotericism—Religion—Science” Model

1. Absoluter Geist and Scientific Progress

As noted above, the growth of knowledge in modern science is connected with Hegelian dialectics. If we ask after the source of the dialectic in turn, we arrive at the birth of the subject within the religious environment described in the previous section. The relation is a metaphorical passage from religion into philosophy. It secured a source for modern scientific progress.

2. God Is God, Humanity Is Humanity

As the age advances, affairs in this world come to be explained by an aggregate of scientific hypotheses regarded as truth. Alongside God’s transcendence, the unfalsifiable is treated as a false proposition, while divine salvation remains unknowable within this world. Humanity’s world prospers as it gazes up toward the distant kingdom of God.

3. What Remains Is the Esoteric

At the end of Part II, we return to Part I. In a human world flourishing through the uniformity of nature and the growth of knowledge, inexplicable phenomena still remain. What those phenomena leave behind is the esoteric. Just as we do not know whether Judgment Day will come, a day may perhaps arrive when the true nature of the esoteric becomes clear. For now, let us run toward the future with the third-party instance within us.

Interim Conclusion: Modernity Not Overcome

Let us review the subject and conclusions of Part II.

For Chinese characters, their own origin has been obscure and absent. With their mixed sense of time, moreover, they have not yet been able to produce subjectivity. Western culture, which did produce it, invented the model “esotericism—religion—science.”

Conclusion, Section 1: All Too Unmodern

This essay has examined phenomena in the domain of East Asian writing. Using Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s three models for distinguishing esotericism, it analyzed phenomena that can be called East Asian letter mysticism. It also established that this form of esoteric thought fills our lives in a posture of transcendence.

From the perspectives of mythology and of the study of writing and literature, the essay then identified what sustains this transcendent posture: the absence of origin and subjectivity. Finally, taking the “esotericism—religion—science” model as its criterion, it concluded that East Asia remains in a condition of modernity not overcome.

Section 2: Toward a Long, Narrow Road and an Open Sky

As the figure shows, we human beings are walking precisely along this narrow road, which continues to open out before us. The ground represents falsifiable science; what resembles the air is the domain of religion; and what meets the upper atmosphere is the esotericism that remains. At the present stage there is still very little we can touch. Yet one day, I believe, we will set out into that open sky.

Sidebar: A World of Sorcery and a World of Abundance

As the main argument has shown, the East Asian world, which still uses Chinese characters, remains fascinated by their perplexing magical or esoteric qualities. Consequently, our spiritual world has remained in an immature form. This immaturity has produced disasters, as the research of many scholars of East Asia also shows.

Yet the discovery and decipherment of oracle-bone writing may have brought a chance to end this uncertainty. Through Shizuka Shirakawa’s research on oracle-bone inscriptions and other ancient scripts—work that ranges into anthropology and mythology—an abundant ancient world appears before us. The world of thought latent in writing is revived. Read Shirakawa.

Contributions and Limitations

Because many of its supporting arguments have already been developed in other books, this essay has been able to proceed as far as it has.

Its principal contribution is to use Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s research on esotericism to distinguish and analyze esoteric phenomena in East Asia, and then, in dialogue with Masachi Osawa’s context, to derive the condition of modernity not overcome in the East Asian world.

Its limitations are that the connections between its parts remain weak and that it does not pursue East Asian esotericism in depth. Future inquiry should analyze representations at the intersection of esotericism and subjectivity.

References

• Hanegraaff, Wouter J. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury, 2013.

• Osawa, Masachi. “Sekaishi” no tetsugaku: Kindai-hen 1, “shutai” no tanjō [The Philosophy of “World History”: Modernity, vol. 1, The Birth of the Subject]. Kodansha, 2021.

• Osawa, Masachi. “Sekaishi” no tetsugaku: Tōyō-hen [The Philosophy of “World History”: East Asia]. Kodansha, 2014.

• Wu Guosheng. Shijian de guannian [The Concept of Time]. Peking University Press, 2006.

• Yuan Ke. Zhongguo shenhua shi [A History of Chinese Mythology]. Beijing United Publishing, 2015.

• Tanaka, Katsuhiko. Gengogakusha ga kataru kanji bunmeiron [A Linguist on the Civilization of Chinese Characters]. Kodansha, 2017.

• Shirakawa, Shizuka. Chūgoku no kodai bungaku 1: Shinwa kara Sōji e [Ancient Chinese Literature I: From Myth to the Chu Ci]. Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2003.

• Oguma, Eiji. Kiso kara wakaru ronbun no kakikata [Writing Academic Papers from the Basics]. Kodansha, 2022.