Takashi Saito's Nietzsche Said It Like This

CHAPTER 1 — Become an Arrow

The Arrow Flying Toward the Overman

For your friend's sake,

you can never adorn yourself too beautifully.

For your friend you must be an arrow flying toward the Overman.

Holding the passion of deep longing,

you must be a dazzling arrow soaring toward the sky.

_『Thus Spoke Zarathustra』

The place I long for is the place where I ought to be: a sentence that fills you with energy just by reading it! When someone asks me for an autograph, I add the message “Be an arrow flying toward the Overman” beside my name. The phrase is excerpted from Nietzsche's words. I take the expression “an arrow flying toward the Overman” as the foundation of my teaching and its spiritual backbone.

The ‘Overman’ (Übermensch) that Nietzsche speaks of is not a word for someone with superhuman strength like Superman, that is, a human being born with outstanding abilities. It means a person who resolves to go beyond who they are now and keeps flying toward the future, or a person who never stops longing for longing. People commonly settle into reality and stop growing once they have achieved a small goal in front of them. Or, even when they have cherished a grand dream, they easily back out in the face of a trivial setback. No matter how extraordinary one's abilities are, the moment one stops yearning for higher ground, one cannot become an Overman.