The Book, AI, and Me
What a 43-year-old web designer is thinking in 2026
I’m writing a book right now.
A book.
“Book” covers a lot of ground. Novels and stories, business books, technical manuals. Encyclopedias, magazines, picture books. And the forms vary too — commercial publishing, self-publishing, e-books, and the independent kind, like zines and dōjinshi.
I love books. I’ve had a hand in publishing a few. Some carried my name; for others I only helped with the insides.
A few of them sold.
They reached places I never could have imagined. That was a great joy — and also a discovery: knowledge, once put into order, travels farther.
But there was a shadow side. The self swells. People call you “author,” “sensei,” and against your better nature you get a little carried away. Income rises. People gather. Work multiplies.
Nothing wrong with that. Good things, surely.
True enough.
And yet — every era has its current.
The book I wrote was a technical one, on web technology. Until recently that was “work a step ahead of the curve.” People told me I had foresight. I was probably getting cocky.
Then one day you notice: what you’re standing on isn’t bedrock. It’s a small sandbar. Somewhere along the way the luggage piled up, and you’re holding more than you can carry. Your body is heavy. You can’t get off. And the sand under your feet is almost gone.
I was born the second son of a small rice shop in Nagoya.
When I was a child, rice was sold under a state monopoly — only licensed shops could sell it. In a country where rice now turns up as a prize at pachinko parlors — the pinball-like gambling arcades you find on every corner here — it’s hard to imagine, but that era existed, and our family business did well because of it.
Then rice was deregulated. How heavily that policy fell on my grandfather and father, I — a child at the time — couldn’t grasp. I was told it was hard. But it had nothing to do with me. The only trace it left: years later, when I’d lost sight of my future and offered to take over the shop, my father said, “there’s no money in it — don’t.” So I went looking for my own road, and here I am.
Thirty years on, a wave of the same shape is breaking over me.
This time it isn’t policy. It’s AI.
The skill I’d worked so hard to build. I thought I had “a trade in my hands.” I’d published a book that sold, handled big projects, won an award. I thought I’d finally reached solid ground.
There was no solid ground.
A website that takes me a month — out of pure curiosity, I tried building one with AI. I had the idea at ten at night. Four hours later, at two in the morning, the design and the build were all but done. A month, against four hours. It had already come that far.
I’ll be honest: building a website with AI, there’s resistance in me. I want to keep the sanctuary intact. You probably do too. But when you realize the flower that bloomed in that sanctuary withered long ago — what are you supposed to do?
So I changed the question. Not “will AI replace me,” but “what can I do with it.” Ideas I’d kept warm. Projects I never had time for. Things my skills couldn’t reach. I tried them, one by one.
It surprised me. It felt like my own reach had been extended.
But AI doesn’t solve everything. If anything, it asks what’s inside you. Experience, judgment, taste. Without those, you don’t even know what to ask it for.
AI is something like an excellent colleague. Not someone to work into the ground, but someone to think alongside.
And so, now, I’m writing a book.