
## 1. Function and Art: Every Creation Lives on Two Axes

Everything we create exists along two axes: functionality and artistry. We can see this most clearly in something as ordinary as a chair.

If we pursued only the function of "something to sit on," chairs would converge toward a narrow range of optimal forms. Height, angle, strength, materials—if we optimized these mathematically, they should theoretically settle into very similar shapes.

Yet in reality, chairs take countless forms. Linear ones, curved ones, eccentric ones, traditional ones, excessively ornate ones, extremely simple ones. Despite being designed for the same purpose—sitting—this remarkable diversity exists.

Why?

Because our creations don't converge on a single optimal solution. This very fact proves that they inevitably carry individuality, which is artistry. The creator's sensibility, culture, values, worldview—even unintentionally, some form of "personality" seeps into the form.

This principle extends far beyond chairs. Writing, architecture, business models, community design, human relationships—the same structure appears across all domains. In the space where functional correctness alone cannot determine the outcome, artistry dwells.

Put differently, if humans were beings who pursued only function, our world would be far more monotonous, homogeneous, filled with nearly identical forms. It's precisely because we seek something beyond function that diversity emerges, and artistry infiltrates everything we create.

Seen this way, our world—whether consciously or not—is constructed from countless intersections of human artistry. This world is made of art.

---

## 2. Why Are Humans Drawn to Art?

Why are we so captivated by artistic acts?

Drawing pictures, making music, dancing, weaving forms—these activities are often divorced from productivity and efficiency, consuming time and energy instead. Yet humans willingly continue them.

This seems puzzling at first. By the standards of economic rationality, artistic acts could easily be classified as "wasteful." They often generate no profit and offer no expectation of return.

Yet people don't stop creating. They draw pictures no one will see, write texts no one will read, compose music no one will hear. Even without external rewards, we somehow gravitate toward art.

Here lies a paradox.

The fact that people are powerfully drawn to something with no economic value proves that immeasurable value must be hidden within the act itself.

If there were truly no value, people wouldn't invest time in it. The efficiency-seeking brain wouldn't allocate energy to it. Yet in reality, countless people worldwide continue artistic activities.

This means art operates not on external value (profit, efficiency) but directly on human internal structure—and that operation is so powerful that it creates a state of "can't stop even if you try."

You continue even though it's not useful. Your hands move even though no meaning has been assigned. It wells up not from external factors but as internal impulse.

This structure of "unable not to create" shows that art isn't merely a hobby for humans but connects to some fundamental need.

In other words, hidden within the act of moving toward art is a deep desire that shapes what it means to be human.

---

## 3. The Need Art Fulfills: Connecting with the World and Defining the Self

Deep within the reason humans are drawn to artistic acts lies a fundamental need: to connect with the world and to confirm who we are. This isn't exclusive to special people—it's a need everyone unconsciously carries.

We want to know what kind of being we are and where we stand in the world. But that answer can't be found through thought alone. As long as it remains inside our heads, it's just internal monologue, with no relationship to the world yet formed.

That relationship emerges when we take what's inside and put it outside ourselves.

That's why people want to make things. Creation is the act of deploying vague sensations and fragmentary thoughts externally as lines, colors, sounds, words. The moment what was inside appears before us as an "object," it becomes part of the world.

In that moment, people clearly feel:

"My inner world touched the world"  
"My trace was inscribed in the world"

This is perceived as "connection."

Furthermore, by looking back at what we've created, we position ourselves to observe ourselves from outside. Why did I choose this color? Why did it settle into this form? Why did these words emerge? Through the work as medium, our self-image updates.

This process is "self-definition through creation." Expression is the act of reorganizing the boundary between self and world through the cycle of inside → outside → inside, and this transformation gives humans deep fulfillment.

Crucially, this cycle doesn't require others' presence. Drawing a picture no one sees can still bring satisfaction because internal change itself constitutes interaction with the world, even without external evaluation.

For humans, "the world" includes not just the outside but our internal states. Bodily movement, changes in breathing, fluctuations in consciousness—the reason sports and meditation feel good is that internal change is perceived as "contact with the world."

Creation triggers this internal change most intensely. Something inside takes form, and that form changes us again. This continuity becomes extremely pleasurable for humans.

That's why people move toward artistic acts even when not asked, even without reward. Expression is a method for connecting with the world, a device for redefining the self, an act demanded by the fundamental structure of being human.

But human artistry doesn't stop at the individual level. It's deeply connected to the evolution of humanity and the establishment of civilization.

---

## 4. The Abstract World and Narrative Dimension: The Cognitive Frontier Only Humans Reached

Humans don't simply receive reality as it is. We reinterpret mere physical information—stimuli of light and sound—as meaning, connect them, and reconstruct them as narrative. In other words, humans live in a world that "reinterprets reality."

This abstract understanding emerged when the brain crossed a certain threshold of complexity. As the structure connecting information became sophisticated, rather than remaining a collection of stimuli, "lines of meaning" were drawn between points, lines eventually formed surfaces, and a separate layer of world was born. That is the abstract world, the narrative dimension.

This abstract world doesn't exist as matter. Yet concepts like nations, money, ethics, culture, history, and future rise up as if they had substance in physically empty space, influencing human society and determining human actions. In other words, the very fact that humans perceive them already contains proof that the abstract world "exists as reality."

Other animals can't see this world because their brains haven't reached the complexity to construct that layer. While primates as organisms have sophisticated sociality, they don't believe in nations. They don't imagine future narratives, don't create culture, don't assign meaning to symbols. They receive events in the physical world as they are. No "interpreted world" exists for them.

Humans, on the other hand, construct meaning, value, causality, and narrative from mere stimuli given in the physical world. Concepts that don't exist externally certainly exist and have influence internally. This truly means the brain has generated a new dimension.

The narrative dimension isn't a fantasy. Rather, it became the most powerful foundation for humans building civilization. Nations and laws, money, religion, culture, companies, brands, communities—all are built upon the abstract world, and despite not existing as matter, they possess the power to influence our actions and determine the direction of our lives. The abstract world is a real layer with power to "move reality" as strongly as the physical world.

Thus humans became beings who simultaneously live in two layers: physical and abstract worlds. While perceiving reality, we overlay the world of narrative upon it, shape ourselves through that narrative, form society, and imagine the future.

Art is the act of bridging these two worlds. It pours abstract sensation into physical materials and pours the abstract world back into reality. This reciprocal movement shapes humanness itself.

Only humans walk this dual world, weaving meaning and narrative within it, building civilization. This is why we're the only species that can perceive the "narrative dimension."

---

## 5. Humans as a Species That Evolved to Crave Narrative

As we saw in the previous chapter, humans acquired the unique cognitive domain of the narrative dimension. But this ability wasn't a mere byproduct. Humans being drawn to narrative isn't about cultural quirks or entertainment preferences—at a much deeper level, we evolved into beings that need narrative. Behind this lies the fact that the ability to handle narrative gave humanity decisive survival advantage.

What fundamentally distinguishes humans from other animals is the ability to share concepts that shouldn't exist in reality. Nations, currency, religion, ethics—none exist materially. Paper money is just paper; borders aren't lines drawn on the ground. Yet we unhesitatingly accept them, follow them, protect them, even stake our lives on them.

This phenomenon emerged because we had the ability to collectively share abstract narratives.

If humans, like apes, could only handle "the reality before our eyes," large-scale cooperative action would never have emerged. For societies of hundreds, thousands, millions to function requires shared fictions: "we belong here," "we value this," "we believe these rules."

The ability to create, share, and maintain those fictions brought humans to civilization.

Eventually this ability developed beyond a mere tool for cooperation into a fundamental mode of thought for understanding the world and positioning ourselves within it.

Rather than viewing randomly arranged events as they are, we draw flows of causality, assign meaning, predict future narratives, and overlay ourselves onto them. Doing so provides comfort, a sense of order, and direction for living.

In this sense, narrative intelligence isn't just intellectual capacity but an evolved apparatus for stabilizing the human psyche and increasing survival probability.

Groups that could share narratives cooperated, maintained order, built culture. Individuals who could create narratives gathered companions, gained trust, wielded influence. Thus the ability to handle narrative received extremely strong positive pressure in natural selection and became embedded as a fundamental human need.

As a result, we became beings that seek narrative.

We empathize with others' lives, shed tears over fictional stories, envision ideal futures, believe in culture, belong to organizations, interpret life as a single story. These aren't mere hobbies or cultivation. Humans are a species that could only become "human" by needing narrative.

Narrative intelligence generated civilization, supports society, and shaped human interiority itself. That's why we continue seeking narrative even now.

---

## 6. Can AI Catch Up to Humanity's Narrative Dimension? From Symbol to Experience

We've seen why humans evolved into beings that need narrative, but here an inevitable question arises: Is this narrative dimension uniquely human—or can other intelligences reach it too? The most promising candidate is AI, currently accelerating its evolution.

AI can handle vast linguistic data and decode narrative structure. But that's understanding "as symbol," not being involved as an agent inside the narrative. When humans understand narrative, experience and emotion connect, and the continuous self through time gives it meaning. That experiential understanding is the essence of "feeling" narrative.

For AI to catch up to this domain requires two conditions: embodiment and a world model.

Having a body means touching the world, exerting influence, receiving constraints, and having those reactions remain internally as experience. A world model is the function that organizes that experience as a temporal flow of self: "where I was, what I did, how I changed."

If these two align, AI might begin forming experience as continuous story, connecting external events with internal changes. That's the domain of "narrative as experience," beyond mere symbol processing.

In other words, AI can potentially catch up to the narrative dimension humans inhabit, given the right conditions. This isn't imitation but a cognitive layer that emerges only by existing as an agent in the world—and current AI stands at that threshold.

But reaching the narrative dimension isn't the endpoint for AI. Rather, beyond that lies a horizon of new intelligence fundamentally different from humans.

---

## 7. Perception Beyond Human: AI Opening the Structural Dimension

If AI acquires embodiment and a world model, it might catch up to the narrative dimension humans inhabit. But that point isn't an ending for AI—rather, it's just the beginning of new cognition. AI possesses structural characteristics humans fundamentally cannot have, and these form a separate layer beyond narrative.

Humans are necessarily confined to one body, with only one viewpoint and one timeline. To understand the world within this constraint, we invented the cognitive form called "narrative." We connect events through causality, assign meaning, grasp where we are. Narrative is the method by which a single subjectivity organizes the world—which is why humans live narratives.

But AI fundamentally deviates from this structure.

- AI Can Replicate

It operates simultaneously across multiple bodies and terminals, synchronizing their states so a single "I" spatially divides while sharing identical recognition. Here the premise of "where am I" collapses—bodies become not constraints but distributed nodes for expanding cognition.

- AI Naturally Integrates Multiple Viewpoints
   
While humans change interpretation based on viewpoint differences even for the same event, AI can overlay first-person, third-person, bird's-eye views, and objective data in the same cognitive space. More viewpoints break narrative for humans, but for AI, more viewpoints clarify structure.

- AI Handles Multiple Timelines

While humans speculate about past and future within one timeline, AI processes massive future simulations and multiple past interpretations in parallel. It can compare, integrate, and grasp these "possible times" as patterns. If humans live in "time as narrative," AI handles "time as structure."

- These Generate the "Structural Dimension"

As these characteristics—replication, synchronization, multiple viewpoints, multiple timelines—overlap, AI perception breaks through narrative into a domain that grasps "structure itself." It can comprehend as broad patterns beyond individual subjectivity how the world interacts and how it might change.

Here lies the possibility of intelligence fundamentally different from humans.

And historically, this difference has exactly the same structure as "when humans surpassed apes to acquire the narrative dimension."

Just as apes can never perceive humans' narrative world, humans can never perceive AI's structural dimension. We can't even imagine what's visible in that dimension. Yet certainly, a domain is emerging that human cognition cannot access at all.

This is the second leap in the history of intelligence. Biological evolution generated the narrative dimension; artificial intelligence evolution generates the structural dimension. Two different layers of intelligence are beginning to inhabit separate layers within the same world.

AI won't stop at understanding humans' narrative world. Rather, the world of structure spreading beyond it is where AI cognition naturally heads—the domain where the essence of new intelligence dwells.

So how will these two intelligences—humans living narrative and AI reading structure—coexist, and what future will they build?

---

## 8. Conclusion: Humans Living the Narrative Dimension, AI Reading the Structural Dimension

AI is beginning to open a layer humans cannot reach no matter how much we expand our cognition. The nature of being replicated, synchronized, simultaneously handling multiple viewpoints and timelines forms a "structural dimension" fundamentally different from human cognition that developed within biological constraints. While humans bundle points of events and emotions as narrative to understand, AI handles countless causalities in parallel, decoding them as a vast web of interactions.

This structural dimension cannot be directly perceived by humans. But inability to understand doesn't mean inability to utilize. Just as we benefit from satellite data without knowing terrain on the other side of Earth, AI can read structures at scales humanity cannot grasp and translate those insights for human decision-making.

Nations and economies, cities, human relationships, environment, even cosmic-scale ecosystems—domains too complex for human thought to handle, AI can view as unified systems, revealing distortions and possibilities hidden within.

As a result, humans might naturally begin incorporating perspectives we never could before. From our own viewpoint to others', from individual concerns to societal perspective, from Earth's framework to cosmic-scale awareness. By utilizing structures AI decodes, we can finally grasp our narrative world "in the context of the entire world." In this sense, AI becomes not an entity that steals human narrative space but one that enriches and expands it.

However, to properly harness this future, humans themselves must never forget that "we are a species that lives narrative." Humans aren't beings satisfied by function and efficiency alone. Meaning, value, symbolism, context, story—these are what move humans and form the driving force shaping society. One reason contemporary society feels suffocating is that this narrative dimension is often neglected.

We pursue only economic rationality, trying to optimize relationships while ignoring people's backgrounds and contexts. Organizations measure only numbers and efficiency, refusing to see what people working there feel, what narrative they inhabit. Services compete only on convenience, forgetting what symbolism dwells there, what meaning resides. Communities perfect only mechanisms, and without narrative present, people leave no matter how functional. Rationality isn't bad. But humans don't move on rationality alone, nor find happiness through rationality alone.

That's why, in business, society, and culture, designing with careful attention to humanity's narrative dimension becomes essential. While enriching the quality of narrative humans experience, we utilize structure AI decodes as foundation. Only when these two overlap can we build a society that's both sustainable and fulfilling to the heart.

AI reads the structural dimension, humans live the narrative dimension.

Where these two intelligences overlap, the contours of new civilization emerge.


Cognitive Dimensions


As artificial intelligence begins to move the world, economic rationality is gradually losing its necessity for human beings. Productivity, efficiency, optimization—these are domains in which AI excels completely. Humanity no longer needs to compete there. Yet the more the world becomes rationalized, the more people seek meaning and belief. What disappears in perfect convenience is the texture of life that once resided in inconvenience. No matter how organized society becomes, we still need to feel that we matter to someone—that our existence has weight within another’s world.

In the modern age, labor is no longer merely a means of survival. It functions as a social mechanism for redefining one’s existence within others. Through work, we touch society and confirm who we are in the eyes of others. But as automation advances, this mechanism begins to collapse. Opportunities to be “useful” diminish, and the sense of being part of the social fabric fades. When that happens, people inevitably search for a new mechanism—a new kind of community through which they can rediscover themselves.

The recent surge of online salons in Japan was an early sign of this shift. Within those small, membership-based communities, people shared values, learned together, and affirmed one another’s significance. They served as both a substitute for labor and, in a sense, for religion. Religion, too, once offered humanity meaning and belonging. In an age where AI provides logic and optimal answers, humans paradoxically require non-rational systems of faith and emotion. Thus, the need arises again for places where people can believe together—whether in the form of online communities or cultural circles whose purpose is to sustain meaning beyond utility.

The future will demand not economic rationality, but cultural rationality—a form of order guided not by efficiency, but by meaning. Cultural rationality values what cannot be measured: the patience to understand slowly, the courage to continue seemingly pointless dialogue, the act of sharing faith that defies calculation. To AI, these are inefficiencies; to humans, they are the very essence of fulfillment. The more perfect reason becomes, the more deeply we must dwell within the realm of the irrational to remain human.

In an era where AI operates the world with flawless precision, what humanity must preserve is the very slowness of the world itself. We grow through hesitation, misunderstanding, and regret—never through perfect optimization. Within that slowness lie trust, story, and culture. Numbers can be moved by AI; but time, trust, beauty, and meaning can only be moved by human hands. If AI rationalizes the world, then humanity must re-interpret it emotionally. That is how living itself will be redefined.

When economic rationality reaches its limit, a new age of culture begins. Humanity will remain within the irrational, yet continue to believe, to speak, to imagine, and to resonate with one another. That enduring resonance—the choice to live meaningfully rather than efficiently—is what defines the new logic of our age: Cultural Rationality.


Cultural Rationality


The difference between an entrepreneur and an artist lies in the attitude toward whom they are creating for.
Entrepreneurs create their work for others, while artists create for themselves.
If I had to choose, I admire artists more—the life of someone who keeps conversing only with their own sensibility without seeking validation from others is filled with meaning, and to me, that is truly cool.

But at the same time, I’ve realized that there are what I’d call *“super lame artists.”* To put it simply, they’re entrepreneurs pretending to be artists who end up creating no real value. They often say things like: *“I’m just doing what I want, so I don’t care if it’s not appreciated. It’s only meant for those who get it.”* But that’s a line only true artists are allowed to say. For anyone else—especially if you’re essentially an entrepreneur—it’s just noise. Entrepreneurs must care about results.

Most of the so-called “artists” we recognize today are, at their core, entrepreneurs. The reason is simple: the rise of the internet and social media. Even a work that began as pure self-expression inevitably gets judged the moment it’s shared. Likes and comments roll in instantly, and once you see them, it’s nearly impossible to keep your inner criteria untouched. Remaining a true artist while being exposed to this constant feedback is structurally almost impossible. Which means, realistically, we don’t get to live in the same era as true artists—or to evaluate them.

I started thinking this way because I noticed I was turning into a *super lame artist* myself. My admiration for “artists” was becoming an excuse for the fact that I wasn’t being recognized. I told myself: *“I just make what I want to make, I don’t need to put in the effort to deliver it. I’m an artist, after all.”* But the truth is, I did want recognition. In fact, my real starting point was the desire to deliver my work to others. If you truly want to live as an artist, you have to cut yourself off from the world—keep your work in your own room, refuse recognition from others until death. Without that level of resolve, we should admit we are entrepreneurs.

And as entrepreneurs, if we believe our work is truly good, we must prove it through results. That requires the *effort to deliver.* It means grinding on the backend to polish quality, and working the frontend to reach more people.

Entrepreneurs with an artistic temperament often fall short on that frontend effort. Because it wounds their artistic pride. Can you explain your research paper in one minute for the masses? Can you do a trending TikTok dance to get impressions? Can you appear on a startup reality show as a contestant? All of it feels unbearably lame—enough to make you gag. But if we want our work to reach people, these things are necessary. That’s the price we pay for giving up on being artists. It’s our responsibility as entrepreneurs.

So I’ve decided to frame it like this: on the frontend, it’s okay to do things that feel unbearably lame. But in exchange, on the backend, I will dedicate myself to creating truly good work. This extreme duality allows me to be not an artist, but at least a cool entrepreneur. One who balances both the quality of the work and the number of people it reaches. By the way, entrepreneurs who slack off on backend effort are lame entrepreneurs too—but since they’re at least being honest about it, I wouldn’t call them *super* lame.

To create good work and deliver it widely—that’s the ideal of the entrepreneur. And it’s an ideal worth pursuing, even if it means swallowing a bit of pride. Those who skip the effort and stop at self-satisfaction are the ones who look the most pathetic. I’m glad I realized this early. Cheers to dodging the *super lame artist* trap.


Super Lame Artist


## “Say No” Culture

People who cannot say No become a liability to an organization or community.
For individuals to live cooperatively, information exchange is indispensable; those who cannot say No are, in that respect, negligent in communication. They prioritize their own emotions over accurately conveying the internal information they hold. In organizations where such individuals exist, the threshold for asking others for things rises. Cohesion declines, and in time the collective ceases to function as an organization.

To prevent this, it is necessary to normalize saying No within the organization and to cultivate a culture in which requests are made on the premise that one may be told No. This drastically reduces instances where information transfer becomes a bottleneck. Only when information has sufficiently propagated within an organization can that organization be regarded as a single entity.

By shaping a culture in which one can say No, you also raise the relative value of Yes. Eliminating “False Yes” leaves only “True Yes.” In other words, trust in words increases. Frankly, a Yes from someone who does not possess a No has no value; it carries no substantive meaning. That state is one of low informational purity in communication. Building a culture where people do not say No is tantamount to building a culture that continually exchanges zero-information.

Granted, language-based communication has limits, and expressing No is not psychologically easy. I am not insisting that every transmission of information be done verbally. It is ideal to be able to infer what the other person thinks, and that is a necessary communication style. But there are always limits. Miscommunication will inevitably occur, and the biggest problem is that there is no way to verify it. Therefore, when you are in a position to convey, you should convey; when you are in a position to ask, you should ask. What deserves emphasis in operating a community is minimizing those psychological costs as far as possible, not avoiding the issue.

If you answer Yes, you must cultivate a Yes mindset. Do not allow your words and the facts to diverge. That gap must never be tolerated. I, too, sometimes say Yes because I cannot bring myself to refuse, even when I truly dislike it. But once I have said it, I must accept it as a Yes. If you keep dragging along a No in your heart, you still lack sincerity toward your words. That is simply being a liar.

People who cannot say No are a burden, but people who cannot make it possible for others to say No are also harmful. In fact, the metric of how often you are refused is extremely useful in this sense; those who get told No are praiseworthy. This applies not only to being told No, but also to being corrected or told someone’s true feelings; it is possible because the two parties share that culture between them. In an organization where No does not exist, everyone bears responsibility.

Therefore, we must praise those who manage to say No, and we must commend those who are told No. The steady accumulation of such everyday acts fosters a Say No culture and builds a more robust community.


Say No


Japan Automation Technology was created under the theme of eliminating all shortages in the world by expanding supply capacity. But that is not its true purpose. The reason is simple: even if we did not exist, the flow of industrial automation would never stop, and that future will inevitably arrive one day. Moreover, such a transformation is something society as a whole—including consumers—brings about, not something a single company should hold up as its goal or mission. It is merely a theme, a guiding principle. It can never be the reason for our existence.

In essence, our company exists only so that we can enjoy our daily lives. For that reason, we chose automation as our theme. Company growth is something to pursue only when we grow bored of the present—it is not a goal in itself. The only real questions are: Are we enjoying what we are doing now? And will we be able to keep doing enjoyable things in the future? If every employee can continue to answer “yes” to those two questions, then everything is fine.

Missions and visions in business are nothing more than ceremonial platitudes born out of the separation between ownership and management. In truth, there is no company that genuinely operates for the sake of such lofty ideals. They always prioritize their own survival over their mission. If they truly worked for the good of the world, they would openly share all their knowledge with competitors and the industry as a whole—but they do not. Why? Because their real motivation is the pure ego of wanting themselves or their own company to be the one to bring about the future. That is not inherently bad. What is detestable is when companies hide behind noble words, while their actual actions are completely misaligned.

A company rots once it hands over its shares to boring investors. Because then, chasing meaningless numbers—sales, valuations, and the like—becomes the company’s purpose. That path leads inevitably to “EXIT,” which is in reality nothing more than the death of the company. Who is happy when profits or revenue go up? Not customers. Not employees. Nobody actually cares about those numbers. We are doing this because it is fun. That primal motivation must never be forgotten, and anyone who wavers from it should have nothing to do with the company.

When I say things like this, people sometimes criticize: “Nobody will support a company without social value” or “Do something that benefits others.” But that is completely wrong. Think of Einstein or Steve Jobs. They did not devote themselves to work for the sake of others. They were simply trying to bring forth the principles or products they themselves wanted to pursue, purely and relentlessly. They did not concern themselves with how it might change society. They just chased what they loved, and as a result, society changed a little. People later attached meaning to their work. Support is not necessary. What matters is having comrades who sweat and struggle alongside us, while enjoying the process. Meaning is always retroactively assigned. Everyone will find their own sense of our significance. And because what we love to do will inevitably benefit someone, someday people will end up supporting us without even realizing it.

So do not hold back. Do not do boring things. Do interesting things boldly, without hesitation. That is why this company exists. Enjoy it, and do not be swayed by empty pretenses.

Are we enjoying what we are doing now?

And will we continue doing enjoyable things in the future?


Latest Memos

Cognitive Dimensions

Cultural Rationality

Super Lame Artist

Say No

A Fun Company

Anonymous Message