Masaya Chiba, an expert on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, has written best-selling works of philosophy and award-winning queer fiction. His writing hasnโt been translated into English yet, so we connected with one of Japanโs most notable contemporary writers to uncover his perspective on art and life.
Making philosophy fun
If Masaya Chiba’s books didnโt make philosophy fun, they wouldnโt be selling more copies than every other philosophy book on the Japanese market. His latest release, Gendai Shiso Nyuumon (โIntroduction to Contemporary Thoughtโ) โdescribes the essence of contemporary thought in an unprecedented way.โ Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, LacanโChiba breaks down the whoโs-who of postmodern and post-structural philosophy. He explores deconstruction, power, exploitation, difference, psychoanalysis, and more, directly applying the concepts to everyday life in a way thatโs almost astonishingly easy to understand.
โThe concepts are abstract in themselves. But I connect them to human relationships, to everyday human life,โ Chiba says. โI believe that ultimately, the biggest of questions are reflected in mundane, incredibly small details of everyday life. So I try to analyze the minute as much as I can.โ
Chiba has written a whopping seven books in the last four years. There’s Gendai Shiso Nyuumon, two Akutagawa prize-nominated novels. He’s penned best-selling books of philosophy about Deleuze, about how to study, about meaninglessness. He’s even written an American travelogue. He regularly publishes philosophy essays in peer-reviewed journals in Japan. He even does some music on the side. Itโs an impressive resume boosted by a substantial social media following to boot.
โResearchers are writers by nature,โ Chiba says. โItโs not just about thinking inside your own head but making things. Thatโs why Iโm also interested in making art and music. Not obeying the set rules is at the center of Deleuzeโs philosophy. Itโs about combining all sorts of things and experiencing connectivity among them. A philosophy of creativity.โ
The path to Deleuze
Masaya Chiba grew up as an artist and became interested in contemporary art as a high school student in the mid-1990s. But a high school teacher got him interested in art criticism. This was just as Windows โ95 came out and the internet became a phenomenon in Japan. โThatโs when I started to focus on writing instead,โ Chiba says. โI wanted to do art criticism at first, but I realized I had to study conceptual theories and moved over to philosophy.โ
In college, he studied anthropology and began researching the French structuralists and post-structuralists, with the inscrutable and near-incomprehensible Deleuze looming large. He was aware of Deleuze since high school. In fact, he had three heavy volumes of Deleuze sitting in his room since that time, waiting for him to develop the knowledge and background to break through the wisdom hiding within.
Deleuze is known for his bold attempts to rethink metaphysics and his intimidating writing style that keeps readers on their toes. โThereโs no strict hierarchy in Deleuze โ it goes all over the place, expanding horizontally,โ Chiba explains. โFor me, one of the important themes in Deleuze is that there arenโt distinctions between things in the way we typically imagine. In fact, many things are connected.โ
Before the internet, high culture and pop culture were vastly divided, without much of a bridge between them. So in the context of Deleuzeโs philosophy, an online age seemed to offer the potential for connectivity.
But instead, as social networking increased, connectivity became too extreme. โRather than boosting creativity, we started to feel pressure and judgment from others, effectively suppressing creativity,โ Chiba says. โAs I started to read Deleuze deeper, I realized he wasnโt saying that connectivity was strictly a good thing. He saw the dangers of an over-connected โsociety of control.โโ
Lately, Chiba has reconnected with his intellectual roots by thinking and writing more about art. Chiba sees art as revolutionary in a society focused on efficiency, where people want to do everything they can to be productive and avoid unnecessary tasks. โArt doesnโt have a specific objective,โ Chiba says. โThe art is the objective in itselfโa non-objective, so to speak.โ
Fiction, philosophy, what’s the difference?
Chiba didnโt write any novels until his editor suggested he give it a shot. But they quickly became a new kind of vehicle for exploring the same ideas he takes an interest in philosophically.
Just as his essays incorporate figurative language and refuse to be purely logical arguments, his writing grapple with plenty of philosophical ideas. Deadline, his debut, and Overheat, his latest, are both intense first-person, nearly stream-of-consciousness journeys amidst the philosophy, relationships, desire, queerness, and memories that emerge from the midst of changing life. The first focuses on an upcoming mastersโ thesis deadline, and the second on a move from Tokyo to Osaka.
Stylistically, Chiba is influenced by Samuel Beckett and the diaries of Paul Klee, who both intrigued Chiba with the extreme simplicity of their prose. โI wanted to write simply about things that happened, plain descriptions,โ says Chiba. โSo I used my memories from Tokyo as a basis for the story and started to write.โ
Chibaโs fiction is notable for its queer themes. His interest in sexuality is a core motivator behind his writing. As LGTBQ people have been gradually (albeit at a much slower pace than the West) accepted in Japan, Chiba says he wants to focus on complex problems, not advocate for simple “acceptance.”
โItโs important to recognize that there are fundamental differences in life and society being queer,โ Chiba says. โThe โnormal life courseโ doesnโt apply in the same way. With literature, I can express the incredible complexity of sexuality, the negative aspects of desire.โ
What’s next?
Chiba recently finished a novel to complete the loose trilogy formed by Deadline and Overheat, scheduled to come out in Japan next year. Moving forward, he plans to think about a new fiction project and advancing philosophical writing around the theme of time and temporality.
While his short story โMagic Mirrorโ received a French translation, his writings have yet to get English translations. โItโs very complicated so it would be difficult, but Iโd love to see my book on Deleuze, Ugokisugite ha Ikenai (Don’t Move Too Much) translated into English,โ Chiba says.
Masaya Chibaโs open romp between philosophy, fiction, and art offers up powerful possibilities for free and empowering ways to live life. Hopefully, weโll see his ideas, which are already exerting a real influence in Japan, expressed in English in the coming years.
