Since his arrival in the U.S. in 1961, ARAKAWA Shusaku has continued to spark debates through the exhibitions he has held all over the world, his book collaborations with Madeline GINS titled The Mechanism of Meaning and To Not to Die, and projects like “Ubiquitous Site / Nagi’s Ryoanji / Heart” (1994) and “Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro” (1995). In contradistinction to the dead end faced by Western modern rationalism, ARAKAWA proclaimed the need for Japan to construct new Japanese paradigms based on the key concepts of the body (e.g., phantom limbs) and sacred sites.

With this line of argumentation, ARAKAWA advanced hitherto approaches to issues of the body. As a concrete example, he showed slides of a proposal for an “architecture” project now being considered for the Tokyo Teleport Town (Waterfront Subcenter). There was an open panel discussion following the lecture, joined by TSUKAMOTO Akiko, professor at Tokyo University [so in original], KUDO Jun'ichi, critic, and MARUYAMA Hiroshi, architect. MARUYAMA emphasized that in any discussion of civilization there is a need for historical perspective, and he criticized ARAKAWA for drawing overly hasty conclusions. A member of the general audience also pointed out that ARAKAWA’s criticism of the West was grounded in Western logic. However, ARAKAWA attaches great importance to the realization of actions that are not confined to ideas, so for him this line of criticism belonged to another dimension. ARAKAWA made a powerful appeal to the panelists and audience of over 200 people, including architecture specialists, when he said, “I don’t have time! Someone has to do this. If I take action first, someone will follow me. After that, I want you to construct the words and ideas.”