A few days before Independence Day, I saw the news that a Tibetan man had self-immolated in front of the United Nations headquarters. He carried the Tibetan flag and left behind a desperate appeal for the freedom and dignity of his homeland before setting his body on fire.
I talked about it with someone.
That person said: no one should do such a thing. When someone does, people pull away before they can feel sympathy. It looks frightening. It looks like dangerous ideology. Some will distance themselves, wondering what kind of people would go that far.
It sounded cold. But the reaction may not be unusual.
When faced with pain too intense to understand, people do not necessarily ask why someone was driven that far. They react instead: frightening, keep it away, do not let it enter my life. And the moment fear sets in, people can tilt not toward “we must save them” but toward “someone should manage them.”
Self-immolation should not be glorified. Burning one’s own life to make an appeal is far too painful a method.
But the story cannot end there.
Why did the voices of the living not reach us?
Why did it take a death to become news?
Why are small nations, peoples, and cultures required to be attractive in order to be found by the world?
—
On another occasion, I heard the opinion that cool countries are strong.
Stylish, somehow. Likable. A country people would hate to see disappear. Countries and cultures that make people feel this way are strong in international society — so the argument goes.
The political scientist Joseph Nye called this “soft power”: the ability to attract others through the appeal of culture and values, rather than coercing them through military or economic force. Film, music, food, fashion, tourism, design. The power to make outsiders like you can, in fact, become a nation’s survival strategy. Some countries have cultivated their cultural industries as national strategy and gained real presence in the world.
As a description of reality, I think this is largely correct.
But I should be clear about what “cool” means here. It is not a question of the depth or beauty of a culture itself. It does not mean, in any sense, that Tibetan culture, faith, and language are not cool. They are deep, strong, and beautiful — more than enough. But theirs is not the kind of legibility that mass media and social media can pick up in an instant, be amused by, share, and turn into a meme.
The “cool” the world picks up is, most of the time, easy to translate. It makes a good picture. It fits a short video. It takes a caption. Even a dangerous act, if it carries romance, adventure, rebellion, or a stylish gesture, quickly takes the shape of entertainment.
The day before the self-immolation, news of a couple climbing the spire of the Empire State Building was racing through the city. On an antenna more than four hundred meters above the ground: a banner proclaiming love and peace, a marriage proposal, a photo of the ring, an arrest, footage looping across social media. Though it was an act that put lives at risk, it instantly became a story — enjoyed, shared, consumed half as a meme.
The next day, in front of the United Nations, a man set his own body on fire.
Both were acts that pushed the body to its limit. But the world received them in entirely different ways. One was met with “amazing,” “insane,” “romantic.” The other was too heavy — people lost their words, or looked away.
What cannot become entertainment is not therefore light. It is too heavy to be consumed.
There lies the cruel sorting of this world.
“Cool countries are strong” is, in a world that sorts this way, probably true. But follow the logic to its end, and it comes to this.
If a culture is not cool, does it deserve to perish?
If the world does not like you, are you not worth protecting?
May a culture that cannot make itself attractive in the market simply disappear?
Of course not.
There is a language. There are graves. There are prayers. There are families. There is food. There is the memory of a land. There are people simply living there.
That alone should have been enough.
I used to think the United Nations was the place that protected such things. But the real UN is not a world government. It is a gathering of sovereign states — bound by the interests of great powers, bound by the veto, able to speak the language of ethics but with little power to enforce it. A mechanism that protects small nations and peoples regardless of economic power, military power, or “coolness” does not yet exist in this world.
I think one should be built.
But to build it, the consent of the great powers would be needed all over again. There lies the hopelessness of this world.
—
A few days later, Independence Day came to New York. It was the country’s 250th birthday, and the city had become one enormous celebration.
In the daytime there was a parade of tall ships, warships, and fighter jets, gathered from around the world for the occasion. The fighter jets were beautiful. Having felt that left a faint guilt behind.
A fighter jet is an instrument of war. It is state violence, intimidation, the crystallization of a military industry and a national budget. Even so, the line of the aircraft cutting through the sky was beautiful. The sound, the speed, the presence — all of it overwhelming.
Beautiful.
Then what kind of beauty is it?
When something built for killing is beautiful, what are we supposed to do with that beauty? Is the fighter jet without sin? I thought of The Wind Rises. The context is different. But the sense that the beauty of a flying machine cannot be separated from its being a weapon of war overlapped, just a little.
How much does a single flight cost? Tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps. Military power in the sky. Warships on the water. Beautiful tall ships. People dressed in the flag. The festivities of Independence Day.
It was an enormous production: a state showing how it wants to be seen.
At night came the Macy’s fireworks. Enormous, composed, televised, sponsored, with ticketed seats — the official production of a nation called America celebrating itself.
They were fireworks that said, “Please, watch.”
A state’s fire, made to be seen.
But what moved me that night was elsewhere.
—
Along the bay in Queens, wild fireworks were going up.
Residents on the roadside kept sending fireworks into the night sky. Maybe fifty dollars a box. Dangerous. Loud. Probably half illegal. And yet that fire carried a strange pressure and energy.
A family had stopped their car in the middle of the road to watch.
Young people gathered in thin summer clothes, as if it were a festival.
A man went on fishing, unbothered.
In an empty park, an old man drank beer, shirtless.
All of them were watching the fireworks. No one had been invited as an audience. Ordinary residents, simply there, watching wild sparks.
They looked stronger, more emotional, more beautiful than any fireworks I had seen in my life. My chest still stirs just remembering them.
The fireworks I had watched in Japan were beautifully managed. A set time, a set place, master craftsmen, composition, and order even among the spectators. That is truly beautiful. The Macy’s fireworks, too, are beautiful in their own way, as a state production.
But the fire in Queens was neither.
No sponsors, no composition, no broadcast, no seating. It was not made to be shown to anyone. That night had no representative. If the Macy’s fire said, “Please, watch,” this fire said only, “We are here.”
An unmanaged human festival still remains in this city. Nameless residents, with no one’s permission, send fire into the night sky. Something that is not cool, not a product, not an official production of any state can still be overwhelmingly beautiful.
All of it was in the sky that night.
A state flies fighter jets across the sky. Lines up warships on the water. Launches enormous fireworks. It stages its strength and its beauty with vast money and technology.
Meanwhile, residents on the roadside buy cheap fireworks and fire them into the sky on their own. There is no statement. No representative. No organized ideology. Only the sense of “we are here,” and it was overwhelming.
—
In front of the United Nations, a man turned his own body into fire.
On Independence Day, a state staged itself with fighter jets, warships, and fireworks.
And in a corner of it all, the nameless residents of Queens kept launching wild fireworks, like a fire that would not end.
They must not be spoken of as the same fire.
They must not be placed side by side as the same beauty.
Even so, through those few days, I kept thinking about fire.
The fire of a voice that cannot reach anyone, burning its own body.
The fire a state launches to display its strength.
The fire that leaks out of nameless residents, simply because they are alive.
And it was the fire of the nameless residents that seized my heart and did not let go.
That night, I was saved by the fact that the world is not yet fully managed. Saved by the fact that human beings can still celebrate without permission. Saved by the fact that existence shines even when it is not cool, not a product, not officially approved.
It was a precarious, coarse, incorrect happiness.
But it was, unmistakably, happiness.
People represented by no one, asked by no one, firing light into the night sky.
It was not cool.
But it was alive.
Recorded on July 5, 2026