A central motivation for this manuscript comes from a long‑standing question about how language shapes the way human beings understand existence itself. As a Japanese student, I grew up speaking a language whose structure differs profoundly from the major Indo‑European languages. These differences are not merely grammatical; they influence the kinds of questions that feel natural or even necessary to ask. One example is the classic Western philosophical question: “Does this object truly exist?” For many speakers of English, German, or French, this question arises naturally because their languages contain a single, abstract verb—“to be”—that invites reflection on the existence of things independent of context.
In Japanese, however, existence is not expressed through a single universal verb. Instead, different verbs are used depending on whether the referent is animate (いる) or inanimate (ある). As a result, the question “Does this pen truly exist?” does not feel like a meaningful philosophical puzzle. The pen is simply ある; its existence is taken as a given within the relational field of the speaker. This contrast is not a matter of cultural temperament but of linguistic structure. The grammatical resources available to a language shape the intuitions its speakers develop about what counts as a meaningful question.
This insight becomes even clearer when we look beyond Japanese. Mongolian and Korean, for example, historically lacked a single abstract verb equivalent to the Indo‑European “to be.” These languages developed within nomadic or semi‑nomadic cultural contexts, where existence was understood relationally—through movement, environment, and interaction—rather than as an abstract metaphysical category. In such linguistic worlds, the question “What does it mean for something to exist?” is not a natural starting point for inquiry. Instead, existence is embedded in context, activity, and relation. This cross‑linguistic comparison suggests that ontological intuitions are not universal but emerge from the grammatical structures through which speakers encounter the world.
My theory of Circulatory Existence grew out of these observations. If languages differ so fundamentally in how they encode existence, then the relationship between language, world, and person cannot be linear. It must be circular. Language shapes the world we perceive; the world shapes the person who perceives it; and the person, through use and interpretation, shapes language. This triadic loop is not a metaphor but a structural model that explains how different linguistic communities develop different ontological intuitions without implying that any one worldview is more “correct” than another.
This circular structure first became visible to me through the Japanese distinction between 考える (to reason) and 思う (to feel or intuit). English compresses both into the single verb “to think,” which encourages the assumption that all forms of thinking require language. But Japanese preserves a mode of inner awareness that does not depend on verbal reasoning. This linguistic distinction opened the possibility that cognition itself might be layered, with some forms of awareness preceding language rather than depending on it.
A second formative influence was the circular structure of janken (rock–paper–scissors). Its triadic loop—A beats B, B beats C, C beats A—contrasts with the binary oppositions emphasized in Western logic. When I later learned that similar three‑way games exist across East and Southeast Asia, I realized that circular relational structures may be a widespread cognitive pattern, even if they are less visible in languages that prioritize linear or hierarchical relations.
The third influence came from Yogācāra Buddhism, which teaches that the world we perceive arises within consciousness. This perspective helped me articulate the idea that language, world, and person form a mutually generative loop rather than a one‑directional chain. When these three strands—linguistic structure, childhood relational games, and Buddhist phenomenology—came together, the framework of Circulatory Existence emerged.
The manuscript submitted to Nature Human Behaviour develops this framework into a generalizable theory of Public Existence. It argues that individuals and societies co‑constitute one another through continuous loops of recognition, expectation, and shared meaning. This approach offers a way to integrate insights from cognitive science, linguistic anthropology, and social psychology without reducing one domain to another. By foregrounding circulation rather than linear causality, the theory provides a new conceptual tool for understanding how human behaviour emerges from the interplay of language, perception, and social structure.
Nature Human Behaviour is the ideal venue for this work because of its commitment to interdisciplinary research and its openness to theoretical innovation. My hope is that this manuscript will contribute to ongoing discussions about how linguistic diversity shapes human cognition and how individuals and societies mutually generate one another through continuous circulatory processes.