Essay Philosophy 2: Yoshio Kataoka's Motorcycles

Let's find some more of Yoshio Kataoka's essays that pique our interest. This time, just like in the previous article, the essay is about thoughts surrounding machines.

A single motorcycle saved a modern person from anxiety

The next essay is about motorcycles. The book introduced is 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. It describes the experience of the author, Robert Pirsig, who, at the age of 39, took his 11-year-old son on the back of his bike and traveled from Minnesota to California by motorcycle.

Like the Volkswagen mentioned earlier, this essay is also a story about the interaction between machines and humans.

Through his relationship with his motorcycle, Robert describes how he integrated various sensations and knowledge within himself, not only pursuing the rational system of the machine that is the motorcycle, but also grasping something certain within himself, and succeeding in self-treating his own mental illness.

Robert says this:

Unlike a car, a motorcycle is not a closed room. Nature dissolves into your body.

Before I knew it, I had become convinced that real life was in the hustle and bustle of the city, and that the countryside was merely a boring backdrop to urban life.

Yoshio Kataoka says this:

When the motorcycle and I become completely one, that is truly the real, good, and Zen-like path that I must attain.

In this essay, Yoshio Kataoka points out the reason for aiming for unity with a motorcycle. It is that modern people are born with an anxiety that their inner selves will remain empty forever. This is the important point. The motorcycle exists as a machine that resolves this anxiety.

And he also points out that by continuing this journey with a motorcycle, one should learn the characteristics of modern people.

The characteristic of being a complete good-for-nothing who knows nothing and cannot do a single certain thing. Perhaps, even back then, one should know that one possesses the characteristic and trait that it is actually quite difficult to grasp the true know-how of living or its essence using only the information and know-how provided by the city, advertising media, and mass communication. Surely, he is issuing such a warning, isn't he?

Perhaps unity with a motorcycle exists as a machine that transcends that.

I don't have a large motorcycle license, but when I was a student, I rode a friend's 750cc bike on campus. On the campus road as dusk approached and the people were gone. It was huge, and this machine, which swayed depending on how I shifted my body weight, felt like a tremendous monster. I almost tipped over. The surrounding scenery and I were both different from usual. What I felt at that moment, for an instant, was the sensation of being alive right now. That is certain. There may indeed be a slight detachment from the present in riding a motorcycle.