“Why did I talk so much about freedom during the war?” he said, “it was just words. On the contrary, I was just stuck in my attitude. The more I tried to fight the trend, the more I became locked into a narrow frame of mind, unable to breathe deeply.” ’²Tsuda Itsuo, One, Chap. IX, Yume Editions, 2016, p. 67. The following lines state that ‘[a] truly free man does not discuss freedom, just as a healthy man does not think about health.’ These very words seem to be echoed by Chinese poet Bai Juyi’s verses: ‘Those who speak do not know. Those who know do not speak.’ Tsuda also traced these verses in three of his calligraphies (see Itsuo Tsuda, Calligraphies de printemps (op. cit.), p. 284), quoted them verbatim in The Non-Doing (Chap. XVII, 2013, Yume Editions, p. 180), and evoked them in The Way of the Gods (‘I work in the hope […] another kind of freedom.’, Chap. VII, Yume Editions, 2021, pp. 53–4).

Why was this freedom nothing more than a word for Noguchi? Had he perhaps changed his opinion about the nature of the wartime regime? It is unlikely, but that is beside the point. The question is what we mean by freedom.

Tsuda Itsuo returns repeatedly in his books to the idea of freedom

For Tsuda, modern man ‘has fought some tough battles to acquire his right as a Man. He has obtained some liberties and keeps on struggling to acquire more. But one day he finds that these liberties only concern material conditions external to him.’³Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Chap. I, Yume Editions, 2013, p. 15 So human beings often fight for freedoms in the plural, which are conditioned. ‘The fixation of ideas that guides us in the organisation of life, can also work against us by imposing unpredictable constraints upon us. Freedom becomes a fixation that fetters us. The more freedom one has, the less one feels free. Freedom is a myth.’ ‘We struggle against constraints to acquire freedom. Freedom gained never fails to produce other constraints. There does not seem to be any definitive solution. For the freedom we seek is primarily a conditional freedom. We do not possess any idea of absolute and unconditional freedom.’⁴One, op. cit., Chap. III, p. 24

“Conditional freedom”, almost an oxymoron, if this phrase were not used in law language. We are conditioned by the linear time of clocks, by the social organisation of work and by the market that urges us, with increasingly sophisticated and invasive advertising techniques, to satisfy needs that are mostly induced. Among the abundance of things on offers, available online or otherwise, ‘we find everything except desire. So we choose the chef’s recommendation, the advice of people who aren’t paying for the meal, the seductions of advertising, the clamour of the opinion leaders.’ ‘Certainly we have the freedom to choose, but it is a negative freedom: the freedom to accept or reject what on offer. As for the positive freedom, that of creating, we have neither the intuition nor continuity to enjoy it.’⁵Tsuda Itsuo, The Science of the Particular, Chap. IX, Yume Editions, 2015, p. 76

Tsuda points out the possibility of “letting go” of everything that is apparent freedom, choices imposed on us by the market, consumable goods, marketable goods, however difficult this may be for civilised man, who is afraid of losing everything if he renounces his possessiveness. By letting go, we can ‘finally see the All that is ours; the sky, the earth, the sun, the mountains and rivers, without our having to put them in our pocket.’ We may feel ‘the desire to know true freedom.’ ‘Nothing external, such as money, honour and power, can bring us true Freedom, which is an inner sensation and does not depend on any material or objective condition. One can feel free under the worst kind of duress, and a prisoner at the pinnacle of happiness.’ ⁶Tsuda Itsuo, The Dialogue of Silence, Yume Editions, 2018, pp. 85-6

The deep desire for another kind of freedom arises together with an inner conviction, which in reality is rediscovered, found again because it has been in every human being since the beginning, since conception. But its rediscovery is not possible as long as we remain on the “path of acquisition” that is the norm in our society, where ‘[a]ll these accumulations weigh heavily on our destiny.’