Chapter 10: The True Meaning of Kuki’s Words “Do Not Let an Encounter Pass by in Vain”

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Suppose you are standing on the station platform as usual, and you happen to pass by a friend you haven’t seen for several years.

“Wow! Meeting you here!” you both say in surprise, and exchange a short conversation.

Afterward you lightly say “I’ll contact you again” and part ways, but later you suddenly think “I wish I had talked more properly…”

Or you meet someone you happened to match with on an app, and your hearts connect more than expected. You feel “This encounter somehow feels special.”

But swept away by busyness, contact eventually breaks off…

Have you had such experiences?

Among the famous words Kuki Shūzō left is:

“Do not let an encounter pass by in vain”
(Aite munashiku suguru nakare)

— The Problem of Contingency

This means “Cherish the people you meet by chance. Do not let that encounter end emptily.”

Up to the previous chapters, we learned that contingency is deeply connected to “freedom” and “beauty.”

But Kuki regarded contingency not merely as something to understand with the head, but as something to be lived in actual life.

The symbol of that is precisely this phrase “Do not let an encounter pass by in vain.”

Letting a person you met by chance (kaikō) end with a mere “Well, it was just by chance” is the same as voluntarily letting go of the freedom and beauty that were given to you.

Let us think with modern examples.

You met someone on a matching app and exchanged messages every day at first, but contact decreased just because you became a little busy, and before you noticed, “read but no reply” continued…

This is exactly the state of “letting an encounter pass by in vain.”

Conversely, thinking “This encounter with this person must surely have meaning,” you gather a little courage and say “Shall we meet again?”

That single sentence sometimes becomes the trigger that gradually changes a life.

Or after exchanging business cards with someone you happened to meet at a work or hobby gathering and saying “Please contact me if anything comes up,” you actually act according to those words.

Such small “sincerity” transforms contingency from “mere chance” into “a part of your own life.”

This part is actually very important.

Behind Kuki’s cherishing of this phrase lies the idea that “Contingency is not merely something that happens; its meaning changes according to how we receive it.”

Treating the person you met carelessly connects to treating your own freedom and possibilities carelessly.

Conversely, treating a chance encounter carefully is the same as living your own life carefully.

Have you not had such experiences?

“I received unexpected advice from someone I happened to talk to, and my life changed.”

“I reunited with an old acquaintance and was able to speak honestly for the first time in a long while, and my heart became lighter.”

“Someone I happened to connect with on an app became a precious friend now.”

Such encounters are all practices of “Do not let an encounter pass by in vain.”

In the busy everyday life, just by stopping for a moment and thinking “I will cherish this encounter,” the density of life surely changes.

In the next chapter, we will think more practically about how to utilize these “chance encounters” in the Reiwa era of SNS and AI.

How to distinguish and cherish “virtual encounters” that increase in the digital world from genuine “kaikō.”

It is a very contemporary theme. Please look forward to it!

Akira

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