article
-
The well is poisoned now with AI slop, but even years ago when I was looking online for information on Shu Ha Ri, there were plenty of mentions but it was all extremely shallow. There were hot takes from martial arts sites and almost clueless discussions about agile software development. True, they mentioned the concept but not where it had come from, or really any context. They were skimming the surface of a very deep pond. I wanted something more substantial and so I started researching.
-
To this day there is no accessible introduction to Shu Ha Ri, and nothing in print with credible references that you can follow up yourself if you want to. So I saw a gap that was begging to be filled.
-
No one else had done it. I mean I’m not the world’s greatest expert on Japanese culture, but no one else wrote the book on Shuhari. My first draft was written in 2015 and I gave the world another 10 years to write the book on Shuhari. No one did, so in July 2025 I published my own book myself. Ironically, another introduction to Shuhari was finally published, in Spanish, two months later.
-
I had a bee in my bonnet, put there by the literature on learning. It’s heavily learner-focused, which is fine, but very often it misses out entirely any mention of the role of teaching, which is not fine. This seems plainly weird, and in my own small way I wanted to make a contribution to correcting this. Learners need teachers, and what’s more, the teachers need to be humans, not bots. I saw the Japanese concept of Shuhari as a way of emphasising this point, that learning and teaching are two sides of the same coin.
-
Following on from this last point, I wanted to present a different approach to learning theory, one with is about social interaction, not just neuroscience. Understanding the brain is great, obviously, but learning and teaching takes place in an environment that extends well beyond the individual brain.
Artists Books at the NSW State Library
I visited the State Library in Sydney recently, where I was inspired by an exhibition on artists’ books, called Paper Universe: The Book as Art. It’s open till 3 May 2026 and is well worth seeing.
There were books on display too about how to make your own books, which I also found inspiring.
And when I looked in on another exhibition about housing in Australia, I couldn’t help noticing that the Sirius Building, a famous brutalist landmark in Sydney, looks an awful lot like a set of books lined up along a shelf. I’ve never heard anyone say that this was the architect’s intent, but you can judge for yourself.
Photo of the Sirius Building by Katherine Lu - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p…
I guess I have made my own book: I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
And for all the Writing Slowly goodness you can sign up to the weekly digest.
Why I wrote the book on Shuhari and what’s in it for you
Well, a book doesn’t just write itself, but why should I be the one to write it? What made me decide to write an introduction to the Japanese concept of Shuhari? There were several reasons and here are five of them.
So anyway, I did the research, I read scores of books and articles, I took endless photographs (of which readers only get to see the best ones), I chased up obscure references, many in Japanese, with which I needed to gain at least a basic familiarity, and I visited Japan. Oh, and I wrote the book, designed the cover, and published it.
The result is Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, For Artists and Fighters. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
One reviewer said:
”Simple in its structure, yet profound in the information it conveys, SHU HA RI is a must read for anyone wanting clarity on a tried and true approach to teaching and apprenticeship. A great resource for teachers, but also anyone interested in learning how to honor the teachings of precious masters while respectfully forging ahead.”
—-
Now read:
Japanese Shu Ha Ri: Is it better than Western learning methods?
There’s a fundamental flaw in how we learn about expertise.
Mastering any skill the Japanese way.
And of course, my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and FIghters.
Some urgent notemaking questions find answers
From time to time I attempt to answer questions about note-making on Reddit.
It’s a tough job with few perks, but someone has to do it and for no obvious reason that person is me[^1]. So here’s a fresh bunch of my recent comments, with a disclaimer that, field-tested as they are, they’re not guaranteed to make you rich, famous or even mildly handsome, even if that’s how it’s worked out for me. I guess life is unfair like that.
Anyway, here goes.
Fear of AI is nothing new: Promethean shame in a time of technological change
Günther Anders (1902-1992) is a 20th century philosopher for our time, which is fitting since he saw himself as uncomfortably ‘too early’ for his own.
Almost unheard of in the English-speaking world, he was at the centre of German philosophy before the rise of Hitler and the catastrophe of the Second World War. Student of Husserl, Heidegger, and later Tillich, he was a second cousin of Walter Benjamin, a friend of Berthold Brecht and was Hannah Arendt’s first husband. Given this pedigree I found it surprising he was (to me) so obscure. In post-war Germany he was a big deal. Now he’s back in fashion, thanks to the eery prescience of his masterwork, The Obsolescence of Man (vol. 1, 1956, vol.2, 1980) and its clear relevance to the current AI revolution.
Anders coined the phrase ‘Promethean shame’, which is…
Guy Kawasaki says ‘move fast and break things’ is a myth. True! But since he can’t quite escape its toxic allure, I’ll say it for him, loudly and proudly:
Move slow and fix things. [guykawasaki.substack.com]
Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters is available now.
Beginners and intermediate learners fear ‘making mistakes’; experts seldom do. Not because experts don’t make mistakes: they do. It’s just that experts know what to do next.
Here’s Herbie Hancock telling what he learned from his mentor Miles Davis: Every mistake is an opportunity [openculture.com].
Find the right teacher
There’s a Japanese saying that I included in my book:
If it takes three years, find the right teacher.
But sometimes, you just need to get started. Simon Sarris has a great story about this. He decided to build a barn by trial and error, with little previous barn-building experience. But because he was doing this near the road in front of his house, it attracted the attention of a regular passer-by who just happened to know, in detail, how to build barns.
“Mike would have never stopped by if I was not working conspicuously in my driveway, every day, under a pop-up tent. But I was, and he became interested in my progress, and it happens that he has been timber framing since the 90’s. Had I waited for such a teacher—for he has now taught me a good deal—I would have never found him. But I chose to start, and he was drawn to my adventure. Only by virtue of starting the work was the intersection of our lives possible.” - Start With Creation - by Simon Sarris
The moral? If it takes three years, find the right teacher. But if you start your learning journey with action, the right teacher might just find you.
So now here’s a question: Who was the right teacher for you, and how did you find them, or alternatively how did they find you?
(And yes, I have a story about a teacher who found me, but that’s a story for another time.)
Photo by Kazuhiro Yoshimura on Unsplash
Meanwhile, my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, is out now. Please check it out.
Leonard Koren on Life as an Aesthetic Experience
I’ve never been much of a bathing person. Perhaps that’s due to unpleasantly lingering memories of luke warm water in freezing cold bathrooms in the UK when I was a child. The bath was fine enough, but getting out would be a real test. Even bathing, as an adult, in natural hot springs on Orcas Island in the US Pacific Northwest didn’t really do it for me. That was a little ‘rustic’, and not in a good way.
True, swimming here in Sydney where I live is fabulous, especially in the Summer, when the cool refreshment of the ocean waves is totally restorative. But bathing? Not so much. Until a few months ago, that is, when I visited Japan.
The Toe of the Year and the Curious Case of John Donne's Missing Commonplace Book
Last month, while my sister was moving house, she discovered a box of papers she’d never seen before. Inside was a collection of documents, decades old, that our parents must have gathered and kept from our childhood. There in a carefully wrapped pile was a sheaf of my sister’s old school reports. And next to them was a set of poems I must have written way back when I was a primary school student.
Perhaps you’ve had the experience of venturing into the attic or the basement and finding long-forgotten documents like these. But this chance rediscovery got me thinking about just how much has been lost to time.
Mostly we don’t bother archiving, and even when we do, there are later moments when we decide to spring-clean, rationalise, declutter, or tidy up.
These are all euphemisms for destroying the evidence.
Why your note-making tools don’t quite work the way you want them to - and what to do about it
Every so often I stumble upon a really clear articulation of a concept that makes sense of something I’ve been feeling but didn’t previously have a word for. I knew there was something there but I didn’t have the language to express it.
One of the most interesting articles I’ve come across recently is Artificial memory and orienting infinity by Kei Kreutler.
In this particular case the concept illuminated is the subtle, niggling tension between what I want to use my digital writing tools for and what they actually do. My writing tools, and possibly yours too, nearly do what I want, but not quite. What’s that about? Well, on reading this article, the tension became a whole lot clearer.