In our pursuit of happiness, we often try to arrange the furniture of our lives to avoid the direct light. We seek shade. We install soft lighting. We apply filters. But the Japanese concept of makoto (誠) — sincerity or truth — suggests that there is a profound power in facing the light head-on.
For many of us, life is lived in a soft blur. We scroll through edited versions of existence, communicate through layers of politeness ( tatemae ), and present a polished facade to the world. The sunlight, however, is not polite. It is honest. hizashi no naka no riaru
The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami once wrote about running every day not because it was easy, but because it forced him to face his own physical and mental limits—in broad daylight. That is the discipline of riaru . It requires no audience. It requires no validation. It simply is . In our pursuit of happiness, we often try
You do not need to travel to Kyoto or climb Mount Fuji to find hizashi no naka no riaru . It is waiting in your own window tomorrow morning. Pull back the curtain. Let the sunlight hit the floor. We apply filters
And yet, there is a strange liberation here. When you stop running from the harsh light, you stop running from yourself. You realize that the scratch on the lacquerware is not a flaw—it is a story. The loose thread is not a defect—it is a testament to use. The tired face in the reflection is not a failure—it is a map of survival.
In Japanese aesthetics, we often celebrate the subdued: wabi-sabi , the beauty of imperfection, and komorebi , the dappled light filtering through trees. But what about the real ? Not the curated, the filtered, or the metaphorical. But riaru (リアル)—the raw, unvarnished reality that exists when the shadows are chased away.
That is riaru . It is not always beautiful in a conventional sense. It is the dust dancing in a sunbeam. It is the wrinkle by the eye. It is the empty coffee cup from yesterday’s struggle.