EXCERPT This text appeared in Japan as a belated preparatory issue (no. 0) of the journal of criticism Genron launched by our company Genron in November 2015, while also being the final issue (no. 5) of the ‘bookazine’ Shisō chizu ß, also launched by Genron in January 2011, arriving after a three-and-a-half-year gap, and is also a book of philosophy that I wrote during winter 2016–2017. Whether we call it a book, a magazine, or a monograph is a matter of channels of circulation, and isn’t really what is essential. It is a work of philosophy. And although I am a critic, I do think about philosophy. My first work was published in 1993. It was an essay on the Soviet anti-establishment writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. For a quarter of a century since then, I have thought about many different things. I have especially thought about the nature of the philosophy truly needed in the twenty-first century world, a world inhabited by the internet, terrorism, and a great deal of hate. My conclusions at this particular moment in time are recorded in this book. Over the past quarter of a century, I have engaged in a diverse range of projects, ranging from philosophy and social analysis to subculture criticism and writing fiction. For that reason, people have received my work in diverse ways, and at times it has been the subject of pointless misunderstandings. The present book was also written in order to correct this situation. It is therefore constructed in a manner that connects my past works to each other. One should be able to read this book as a sequel to Ontological, Postal, or Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, or General Will 2.0, or Weak Links. You might even be able to read it as a sequel to my novel Quantum Families. …