Work

This book is not a practical guide to becoming a “Kakkoii” man or woman. Rather, its purpose is to explore the very concept of what “Kakkoii” actually means.

The idea of “Kakkoii” has exerted tremendous influence in a world shaped by democracy and capitalism, serving as a powerful force of mobilization and consumption. Put simply, without understanding what “Kakkoii” is, we cannot truly comprehend the cultural phenomena of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Everyone feels they intuitively knows what it means to be “Kakkoii.” Yet, when several people begin to discuss who or what is truly “Kakkoii”, agreement proves elusive—and sometimes the debate even ends in argument.

So, what exactly is “Kakkoii”?

Since childhood, I have admired those who seemed “Kakkoii,” though no one ever explicitly taught me what that meant. That fascination has deeply influenced the formation of my personality. And yet, I have never encountered a book that squarely addresses this most fundamental question.

This absence has left a significant gap in my ongoing inquiry into identity—“What is the self?”

Moreover, beyond my personal curiosity, our society in the twenty-first century appears trapped in a kind of confusion and stagnation, precisely because it has failed to clearly articulate the value of “Kakkoii”—a concept that dominated the latter half of the twentieth century—along with its possibilities and its problems.

For that reason, I decided to write this book: to examine this seemingly simple yet profoundly complex concept. It struck me as an unavoidable task for anyone seeking to understand what it means to live in the modern age. After all, today, there is hardly a single person whose life is untouched by the values of “Kakkoii.”

To think about “Kakkoii” is, ultimately, to think about how one ought to live.

—From the Introduction

Note: In Chapter 5 of this book, there was an error stating that Nazi uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss. In fact, while the Boss company manufactured uniforms as a contracted clothing factory, it was not involved in their design. This has been corrected from the sixth printing onward.