Vol.14

Medical Doctor, Doctor of Medicine, Author, Project Professor of the Graduate School of System Design and Management (SDM) at Keio University
Toshiro Inaba（part 2）

The word “out-of-the-box” might be the best way to describe this man. While specializing in the latest catheter-based medical treatment, he has been involved in a wide range of activities to expand the boundaries of medicine and connect it with art and traditional performing arts to help people recover from their physical and mental health. His wisdom as a medical doctor and the knowledge of art he absorbed in his youth led to his unusual selection as the art director of an art festival. Around the time when he completed his role as the art director for the third time last year, he quit his career as a doctor. Now, he is exploring a new possibility of medicine and art in a way that is more closely connected to society. Visiting Dr. Toshiro Inaba in Karuizawa, where he lives with his family, we discussed a wide range of themes, including traditional medicine, Eastern philosophy, Shinto, and how to approach beauty care and love.

(Click here for the first half of the interview.)

“Beauty care is not a tool to get rid of one’s inferior complex.” (Shigeta)

Masakazu Shigeta: In my long career in the beauty industry, one of my themes has been how to approach and coexist with the inferior complex. I don’t see beauty care as a tool to get rid of the inferior complex, but there are surprisingly many people who see it that way, and strange attitudes toward beauty care have emerged among them. How should we deal with the inferior complex?

Toshiro Inaba: The beginning of an inferior complex is when you think you are inferior to others compared with them. If so, the first step to dealing with it is to know yourself. You will never reach where you want to go unless you start from that point. This has been repeatedly described by psychologists such as Dr. Hayao Kawai and Dr. Carl Jung. However, not only in the beauty industry but also in the medical industry, there is a tendency to focus on how to make people avoid facing up to themselves. I have the impression that people in both industries try every skill to make people escape from the fundamental problems.

If you really want to support them, you should tell them, “Why don’t you explore yourself? By facing yourself, you will find your hidden attractiveness that you don’t know and know what you really want to have.” I feel a sense of crisis in the strong tendency in both the cosmetics and the medical industries where some people try to do their business by taking advantage of people’s fears and insecurities.

——Dr. Inaba, you have been thinking about health by expanding the definition of medicine to art, music, and languages. If we similarly try to expand the definition of cosmetics, what kind of things can we possibly come up with?

Inaba: Let me go off the track for a while. When I was in medical school, I was impressed by the field of plastic surgery. I had a preconceived notion that plastic surgery means almost the same as aesthetic medicine, and it is the subject where you study cosmetic surgery. Of course, cosmetic surgery is a part of plastic surgery. However, plastic surgery is essentially a technique that aims to restore the original state of people who suffer from physical deformation in car accidents or congenital diseases and prevent them from giving up their lives. The skills also aim to help people so that they change their way of life in a positive direction. You are involved with the human heart, just as depicted in Black Jack, written by Mr. Osamu Tezuka.

Cosmetic surgery is a very specialized part of it. It has an aspect where patients pay money to meet their desires; on the other hand, there is another aspect where doctors perform surgery and give advice by seriously thinking about how the patients can live as they want and find it easier to live by getting back the confidence. The latter is what medical science should be. We should approach the mechanism of the heart that creates desire rather than taking advantage of it.

If cosmetic surgery is something that approaches the heart of patients in that way, it is a medical practice in a broader sense, without a doubt. However, there are the devil’s whispers at the same time, and it is dangerous if they fall onto the side of desires and money. I have heard many young doctors choose cosmetic surgery as their career, lured by favorable payment. Of course, if they work with the motivation to face patients and put themselves in the shoes of patients, it would be a great path. You can choose whatever path you want as long as you do not deviate from the right course to contribute to people’s happiness. It is an excellent act of altruism if you can make people who originally could not live with confidence able to live in a positive way through plastic surgery.

Shigeta: I have always said that the essence of beauty care is to think about how to reset the skin to a neutral state. If you focus on applying localized care, not only is it against the laws of nature, but there is a risk from a dermatological perspective. You repeatedly apply makeup and remove it, and what is worse is that year by year, the number of UV rays increases while the humidity decreases. Under such circumstances, there is almost nobody who can keep the skin in a neutral state. So, it must be better to shift your focus to returning to a neutral state first and think about what you do next after you have returned to the state.

Inaba: That is similar to the Shinto idea we were just talking about. People deviate from their original state before they know it. That is why you must work to return to its normal state. If you can do that regularly, you can stay true to yourself. The same can be true in medicine; if you keep adding things in an unusual state, it only amplifies the false pictures and fiction, and you end up going in the wrong direction. Subtraction is much more important than addition. I feel a sense of crisis because the current Japanese society is moving in the direction where the gap increases.

——What are the reasons that make it difficult for people to go back to the zero or neutral state? Does it have something to do with the situation where people take in too much artificial information?

Inaba: Absolutely. We are gradually losing touch with the natural state of the Earth. I think it is important to think about what the neutral state of nature on Earth is. I feel very strongly about it when I am in an urban area, and the same is true for the human body.

“I feel a little sad if people in current society are losing the value in being in love with others.” (Shigeta)

Inaba: I am currently thinking again about hot spring therapy, and I want to connect it to a new activity in a way that translates it into the context of the present.

——I think it is one of the themes of the Yamagata Biennale 2024, held in the Zao Hot Spring area last year. Did you have any new insight through the activity?

Inaba: I felt the weight of the history. While the history of the current medical system is 150 years at most, the history of the Zao Hot Spring area as the place for hot spring therapy is more than 1900 years. You can feel the weight of history everywhere in the area’s layout, and you can also find it in the establishment of commons in public baths. However, it is a pity if people see the area through the filter as an area that has fallen into disuse, ignoring the culture with the history. I rather felt hope in the place because it was as if the time there had stopped.

It is true that it is the norm to move by car these days, and the majority of people come to the Zao area directly. It is totally different from the old lifestyle, where people came across the mountains on foot to heal their bodies and minds. Compared with the past, the necessity of having the Zao area as a place for hot spring therapy is less important than it used to be. However, that is why we need to reinterpret the context once again and think about how to connect and arrange it to the present without missing the essence, and one of the ways for us was through art.

Shigeta: I have one more thing I want to talk about with you. It is about the state of being in love. Falling in love with someone can be a factor that disrupts your neutral state. Sometimes, you have to change your character to be liked by other people. On the other hand, it is said that young people these days are not interested in being in love less and less. I am not saying that being in love is a good thing, but with the divorce rate increasing, if people these days are losing value in being in love with others, I feel sad. I would like to know what kind of role the act of being in love can have for mental and physical health and happiness.

Inaba: Dr. Carl Jung once said human being can never meet their own soul without the existence of the opposite sex. It is a concept called anima or animus. He said the soul appears in the form of the opposite sex. Then, what does it mean to “meet your soul?” I think it means you encounter something you really want. By encountering the opposite sex as a different existence, you can encounter an unknown side of yourself, and it takes you to a higher stage. Through such essential transformation, you can find a new value in what you have never before. In other words, it is as if the world shows another form. We should conceive love and romance in that way, and if we trivialize it to the problem of mere desire, it is nothing but the same as the copulation of animals.

Young people these days seem to be bored with consuming desires in the flow of consumer society. I don’t think they place much value on seeing the opposite sex as the target to fulfill their desires. On the other hand, when I watch the news, I feel society goes in the opposite direction. Therefore, we have to tell them that being in love with someone is a matter of the human soul. People need love and romance to face their own souls.

“Modern medical science does not deal with the fundamental practices of maintaining one’s physical and mental health through purification with water.” (Inaba)

——You said on social media that you are “interested in water” at the beginning of this year. Does that also have something to do with people’s health and happiness?

Inaba: I have always been interested in Shinto, Shrine, and Buddhist temples, and I want to connect them to primitive medical practices this year. In Shinto, there are traditional practices such as Misogi and Harai, or purification of your body by water, to restore the body and the mind to a normal state. I think these acts can be deeply rooted in hot-spring therapy.

Modern medical science does not deal with, in a sense, fundamental practices of maintaining your physical and mental health through purification with water. I have decided to work on initiatives to fill the void in earnest this year, and it gave me inspiration at the beginning of this year. Of course, water also has negative aspects, such as tsunamis and floods, but it contains both positive and negative aspects in the natural world. With understanding all the aspects, I want to pursue the new possibility of water that can purify people.

——I feel your attitude of taking things positively from what you just said.

Inaba: I think it is both negative and positive. Eastern philosophy has the concept of Yin and Yang, which suggests that things are based on the balance between Yin and Yang, as described in the cosmic dual symbol. There is Yin in Yang, and vice versa. The symbol shows that it is important to grasp the whole picture, which contains both Yin and Yang. You can say that a positive attitude toward life is accepting both of them. That can lead to a deep understanding of water and life from the macro level to the micro level, including various layers.

——What kind of actions do you think are most effective for returning to a zero state?

Inaba: Bathing in a hot spring is one of them. In the old days, hot spring therapy meant staying in a hot spring and bathing for a week. It might be difficult for people in modern Japanese society to take a week off, but I want people to repeat bathing for 2 or 3 days in a row. It might also be good to go to the Shrine to get purified. The feeling of having a fresh mind is similar to making you in a zero state by washing away all the dirt from your body in hot springs. Washing the body that is exposed to electromagnetic waves in the real world and emptying your brain in the hot spring: I call it “mindfuroness,” or mindfulness obtained by furo (bath). I want people to experience “mindfuroness” by bathing.

“I hope actions that I feel comfortable with result in altruistic actions.” (Inaba)

——Do you have anybody who made a significant impact on your life?

Inaba: (By pointing at the knit sweater he is wearing) For me, that is him. Mr. Tadanori Yokoo. He has had a great impact on me in various ways.

——In your book, you also mention Mr. Taro Okamoto and Mr. Osamu Tezuka. Do you think you are who you are today thanks to the influence of various people?

Inaba: I am always motivated to learn faithfully from those who I become interested in or fond of. It is not like there is only one person I learn from. Once I feel the vibrational energy or wind from those who I have become fond of, I want to absorb many things from them. I want to show my full respect to people who I personally think are my masters, regardless of whether I can actually meet them or not.

——Is there anything common among those you admire?

Inaba: If I had to say, it would be those who have their own aesthetics and philosophy and stick to them. If someone sticks to something, it might look egoistic, but what I mean is not like that. What I mean is that I find people who think about their own happiness and other people’s happiness at the same time in any organization or circumstance without losing focus attractive.

——In what aspects of doctors do you find their aesthetics?

Inaba: I engaged in catheter-based therapy for a long time. The surgery of doctors without a sense of aesthetics is not delicate, and the results are not beautiful, either. I think both skills and satisfaction levels are deeply connected with aesthetics.

Shigeta: As the final question, I would like to know the driving force and motivation behind your curiosity. I am surrounded by people who are motivated to help people and make them happy, just like me.

Inaba: It is an altruistic motivation. All I did when I was working in the medical field was altruistic. However, I am the type of person who does what he wants to do from moment to moment rather than taking action based on certain thoughts or plans in advance. I hope actions that I feel comfortable with result in altruistic actions.

Shigeta: Most people have interests in various topics and choose what they want to do from them. Do you think those actions are pure expressions of their emotions?

Inaba: You need to think about whether it is a shallow desire or a deep desire. On some occasions, you might be influenced by the surroundings. I also think it is important to have the feeling that you want to make people happy. However, if that alone, you might forget to cherish yourself. This has something to do with the reason why I took a distance from the medical industry. The way of thinking in the medical industry is exceptionally altruistic, but I think you are missing the point if you have too strong a belief and sacrifice yourself to do anything for patients. You can call it destructive aesthetics. I don’t think it is correct to devote yourself to others by sacrificing yourself. Only being altruistic or chasing self-interest is not enough, and you can not sustain your physical and mental health without the circulation of the two.

Now, I wish what I feel comfortable with would result in altruistic actions. As I have a deeply-rooted professional ethics as a doctor, I always think about how I can make people energetic or contribute to others. I always find myself thinking about whether there are ways or places that would make people feel more comfortable.

Shigeta: You gave me a lot of hints today. Thank you so much for joining us.