Reverse Illumination #15 | Sitting at the Same Table

2026年10月19日 17:00

Five minutes on a Sunday evening.
A perspective that might make the coming week look a little different.

Two people who once found themselves on opposite sides of a disagreement meet again after several years apart. Reading about their reunion made me think about something.

How do we live alongside people whose views differ from our own?

Introduction

Recently, I read an article about a conversation between Hiroki Azuma, a Japanese philosopher and writer, and Daisuke Tsuda, a Japanese journalist and media commentator.

The two parted ways following disagreements in 2019 and remained distant for several years. Then, in June 2026, they appeared together again in a conversation on YouTube, roughly seven years later.

The article described their reunion as a reconciliation.

But what interested me was not so much whether they had made peace with each other.

It was the fact that they had returned to the same table, even though their differences had not necessarily disappeared.

Talking Without Reaching Agreement

When disagreements become serious, we sometimes reconsider the relationship itself. We may create some distance or stop communicating altogether.

There can be good reasons for doing so. At that particular moment, stepping away may be the most reasonable choice.

In Azuma and Tsuda's case, their renewed conversation did not necessarily mean that they now agreed on everything. Nor can we know, from the outside, whether their relationship had returned to what it once was.

Still, they found themselves speaking to each other again.

Perhaps agreeing with someone and being willing to speak with them are two different things.

We can listen to another person's views without accepting them. We can remain committed to our own position while making room for someone else's voice.

A Life That Is Reasonably Long

During their conversation, Azuma made a remark that stayed with me. He suggested that life is short, but also reasonably long. Long enough, perhaps, for people to spend ten years in disagreement.

I found that an interesting way to think about time.

We often hear the phrase the 100-year life. It usually brings to mind longer careers, lifelong learning, retirement planning, or maintaining our health as we age.

But what about our relationships?

If we disagreed with someone in our twenties, must we maintain exactly the same distance from them in our fifties? Someone we once felt unable to speak with might become a person we can approach differently ten or twenty years later.

Time does not necessarily resolve disagreements. Sometimes it makes our differences even clearer.

And yet, there may come a day when we feel ready to speak again.

Sitting at the Same Table

Thinking about this also led me beyond personal relationships, toward a similar question in society and in relations between nations.

How do we engage with those whose positions or interests differ from ours?

If agreement becomes a condition for dialogue, the number of people we can speak with becomes very small.

At the same time, sitting at the same table does not mean that anything has been resolved. A conversation may end with both sides holding exactly the same positions as before.

Even so, the possibility of speaking remains.

Reading about Azuma and Tsuda's conversation made me think again about the role time plays in how we relate to one another.

In Closing

We often describe relationships in simple terms: getting along or falling out, understanding each other or failing to do so.

But perhaps there are many other ways for relationships to exist between those extremes.

We may disagree. We may keep our distance. Yet we still live in the same society, sharing a life that is short, but reasonably long.

And somewhere along the way, we may find ourselves sitting at the same table again.

In other words, how do we live alongside people whose views differ from our own? Perhaps this, too, is one of the questions we face in a life that is reasonably long.

Reference

This essay was inspired by an article in AERA DIGITAL about the reunion of Hiroki Azuma and Daisuke Tsuda after seven years.

The original article is in Japanese and can be read using your browser's translation feature.