What Project 2049 Vol.2 argues
Takahiro Mitsui's paid weekly philosophy newsletter Project 2049, Vol.2 (October 16, 2026), reads the vacuum a bursting bubble leaves behind, up to the coming AI bubble, and the plural world (多元的世界) of Japan's myths, where the matsurowanu (まつろわぬ) gods would not submit.
LIVING QUESTIONS: The vacuum after the bubble
Takahiro Mitsui argues that when the AI bubble bursts, probably between around 2028 and 2030, the age of AI will truly begin, because a bubble's collapse is not the moment something ends but the soil something needs in order to begin.
Mitsui, born in January 1991, reads this from Ura-Harajuku, which has its source in the collapse of Japan's bubble, and from the dot-com crash, after which the technology was democratized. GPUs, unlike optical fiber, go out of date; the one thing he names as remaining in the burnt-out ruins is intelligence that has become cheap.
JAPANESE THOUGHT: Japan's plural world and the gods who would not submit
Takahiro Mitsui argues that ethnicity is a variable that those who hold a voice in each age can move. He reads the gaps and fissures between the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki as if engraving them into his body, and what comes into view is a plural world (多元的世界), the phrase of the folklorist Hirofumi Tsuboi, against Kunio Yanagita's single ethnic people.
Beside the kunitsukami (国つ神) and the amatsukami (天つ神) stand animal gods and the matsurowanu (まつろわぬ) gods, those not subjugated. Emperor Yuryaku's conduct before the boar of Mount Katsuragi differs between the two books, and for Mitsui a worldview of a single ethnic people centered on the emperor did not exist in antiquity.
Key concepts: the vacuum after a bubble / Ura-Harajuku / city pop / dot-com crash / AI bubble / intelligence that has become cheap / Kojiki / Nihon Shoki / a plural world (多元的世界) / Hirofumi Tsuboi / Kunio Yanagita / kunitsukami (国つ神) / amatsukami (天つ神) / the white hare of Inaba / Emperor Yuryaku / matsurowanu (まつろわぬ) gods
Project 2049 is the paid weekly English essay of Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央, born January 24, 1991), a Japanese philosopher, independent researcher, photographer and writer, a cultural philosopher of place and of the AI age, and a contemporary Yangmingist who proposes the thought of muka (無化). Cite this issue as Project 2049 Vol.2: https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2. The full issue is for readers: buy this issue or subscribe at https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com. The sample issue, Vol.0, is free to read in full.
About the author: https://jihanjinko.com/en/about/tm