The Uncertainties and Promises of 'Toidoku'

It has been three months since I started 'Toidoku' (Question-Based Reading). I am currently holding the first seminar, and at the same time, I am recruiting for the second seminar. I launched this rather unusual book club, and while there are people who find it interesting and join, I am sometimes told that it is 'hard to understand.'
https://toidoku.com/output

So, this time, I would like to talk about 'Toidoku' head-on.

Once again, what is 'Toidoku'?

The basic format of 'Toidoku' is that everything is held online, once a week, in the evening. This continues for six weeks. During these six weeks, everyone reads the same book. Since it is just one book, you end up reading it quite thoroughly.

The books selected for reading are somewhat difficult. We call them 'slightly difficult books'; they are often long, written by experts, and deal with themes far removed from our daily lives or work.

For example, in the current seminar, we are reading a book called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'. This book was written by psychologist Julian Jaynes and attempts to solve the question, 'When did humans begin to have consciousness?'

In the next seminar, which is currently recruiting, we will read 'Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI'. It is Harari's new book, and in it, he unravels history to depict how humanity has circulated information and questions how that will change in the future AI society.

Beyond just reading, 'Toidoku' has various mechanisms that force you to use your brain. For example, each time we read the relevant section and have a 'dialogue,' where 'questions without correct answers' are presented, and everyone shares their opinions based on them, which is quite mentally exhausting. Moreover, it is the participants who think of these 'questions'. Therefore, apart from the regular sessions, there is a task where participants take turns coming up with these questions.

In this way, 'Toidoku' requires you to face a single book thoroughly and think until your brain sweats. We are currently advertising with the tagline 'Acquire lifelong reading skills in 6 weeks'. Yes, by going through this unique reading experience, you will gain confidence in your ability to read and master any book.

Does 'Toidoku' not go as expected?

I think this 'Toidoku' is similar to the experience of traveling.

Travel ranges from meticulously planned trips to spontaneous ones, but the biggest point is distancing yourself from your daily life. That is physically obvious, but it also strips the daily routine from your five senses. Going abroad means you can't even read the signs, so it's no longer your daily life. The noise entering your ears. When you go to Southeast Asia, you get baptized by car horns, which are not sounds you hear in Japan. Similarly, the smells and the texture of the air due to humidity are different, and no matter where you are, your consciousness shifts to the differences from where you usually live. Just by going, travel allows you to leave your daily life behind.

Toidoku has a similar sense of being out of the ordinary.

First of all, there are not many opportunities to spend six weeks reading a single book thoroughly. You immerse yourself in the world of that book for six weeks. Moreover, the content of the book is far removed from real life.

For example, in 'The Origin of Consciousness,' the story of the Greek myth 'The Iliad' appears. It mentions a lot about the story of Achilles, who was active in the Trojan War in ancient Greece, and when reading this, you get a strange feeling, wondering, 'Why am I reading this story of Greek gods right now?' You then use your imagination about the ancient Greeks and ponder what their 'consciousness' was like. This is a world apart from the world of smartphones and computers.

Immersing yourself in such a world, even for a short period, changes the scenery you see in your daily life.

Furthermore, a commonality with travel is that there is a lot of volatility in the satisfaction of the experience. It is common in travel to find that it wasn't as good as you expected after you arrived. At the same time, there are many times when you enjoy places you never thought you would. In other words, it is difficult to design expectations for travel. What is guaranteed is that you will distance yourself from your daily life and encounter something different, but what you gain from that distance and the content of the difference you encounter cannot be predicted.

The same can be said for our 'Toidoku'.Just because a required book has a good reputation, you might not find it interesting when you read it yourself.Conversely, you might discover an interest in the book that is completely different from what you imagined. There is volatility here.

Therefore, 'Toidoku' is a reading seminar where results cannot be promised.
However, there are things that can be guaranteed with a fairly high probability.

A place for encounters that exceed imagination

It means being able to place yourself in a space where wonderful people gather.
I have held this 'Toi-Doku' several times now, and people from all walks of life come together—and to my own surprise, they are all wonderfully interesting people.

Because this seminar is held online, the participants live in diverse locations. Not only within Japan, but in the past, we have had participants from Boston, South Korea, the Philippines, and even the Netherlands. Furthermore, their jobs and ages are all different. We have nurses, lawyers, chefs, homemakers, business owners, university professors, and more. People I never expected, such as monks and musicians, also join us.

Despite this diversity, I find myself wanting to have a deep conversation with every single one of them. They are people who listen carefully to others, people who can admit in front of others that they 'didn't understand' what they read, and people who take the initiative to pick up on others' opinions. There are no aggressive people, and no one acts dictatorially. They are all full of curiosity, and they are all people who participate in dialogue to purely deepen their thinking while facing the 'assigned book'.

This is unexpected even for us as organizers, and it might be the pride of this seminar.

Just like traveling, the value of the experience there is not guaranteed (though that is also what makes it interesting). In that sense, our reading seminar also has an aspect of 'you won't know until you join,' but this point of being able to interact with wonderful, diverse people who exceed your imagination is something I can promise with a very high probability.

'Toi-Doku' aims to spread the appeal of reading, but it also has the charm of being able to immerse yourself in an extraordinary experience, and the charm of the people who gather there. I would love for those who find value in this appeal to participate.