#memes though

"Teinen" (諦念) is a philosophy that Mori Ougai adopted over time and wrote about extensively, both directly and indirectly. I am not a scholar of Buddhist philosophy (where this idea originated, as filtered through China to reach Japan), and if you google "what did Mori Ougai mean by the concept of Teinen" you'll see Japanese readers and literature students are pulling their hair out about it to this day. I'm going to take a stab at it and you can take it from there. Please feel free to add additional context or corrections, or to also argue about what you think he meant by this if you also want to do the extra homework lololol

Simply put (I think), this concept seems to be learning to see the world for what it is, instead of what you wish it would be, and adapting yourself to do the best you can within this reality. It allows you to focus on what needs to be done right now. Mori used the German word "Resignation" (レジグナチオン - yeah same as English) as his personal translation for it, but it has less a feeling of 'giving up' as it is 'adaptation' or 'detachment'.

There seems to be an element in the concept of teinen of learning not to get so personally angry or moved by things that happen, but to accept them with equanimity. If you trace the term 'teinen' all the way back to Buddhism, it's the equivalent of the Pali term sammā saṅkappaā, which is 'correct thought/attitude' in the Noble Eightfold Path.

Mori had struggled his entire life to reconcile various contradictory feelings and aspects within himself, in particular the pursuit of happiness vs duty. The eternally thwarted sense of happiness and fulfillment, for him, might be romantic, or philosophical, or to choose to be an writer instead of a doctor and bureaucrat, or Western vs Eastern schools of thought, or free thought vs tradition. He knew very well what he wanted, but there were always so many things he had to do instead. At times these thoughts got fairly bleak:

"What had I been doing all my life? I had been toiling away at my studies as if constantly whipped on by something. I believed I was building myself up so I would be able to be of some service, and it was just possible that such an aim might in future be fulfilled to some extent. But I felt that all I was really doing was emerging onto a stage to act out some part like an actor. I felt that something else must exist behind this role I was performing. I was under so much pressure there was no time for it to awaken. Studying as a child, studying as a student, studying as an official, studying abroad; it was all just this act. However much I longed to wash off this painted mask of mine, come down from the stage for a moment, and think about myself in peace; however much I hoped to catch a glimpse of that something behind it all, I kept on performing role after role, the director's whip at my back. That this role was life itself was unthinkable. Surely what lay behind was real life. Yet while I kept on hoping and praying that this something would wake up, it would always subside back to sleep. The strong feeling of homesickness that I felt at such times - like the action of the waves on water-weed always echoing back to its roots despite the fact it has been carried far away - that certainly did not feel like an act performed. [...] And then at other times, on those nights when I could not sleep, I sometimes worried whether I might not perhaps end my life still playing on the stage like this.... ...Without exception the extinction of the self is always seen as the greatest, the deepest agony of all. But if the self just ceases to be, how can that be agony? If one died by the sword no doubt there would be a momentary sensation of physical pain [...] but there is no suffering merely because the self is extinguished."

(Mousou, trans. Richard Bowring)

The concept of 'teinen' was therefore how he 'resigned' himself to or accepted his fate and focused on excelling at his apparent destiny instead of angsting about it. He wondered if inner peace involved a kind of psychic suicide, but he was not afraid of death even if he did not crave it.

According to one of the sources I read, he especially developed the concept of teinen after socialists (and suspected sympathizers) were arrested and executed in 1911 for plotting to assassinate Emperor Meiji (High Treason Incident) which led to the expected government crackdown on free speech and 'subversive ideologies'. Mori was not a leftist radical but as an artist he was deeply distressed by these new government policies that involved banning books and arresting innocent people for thoughtcrimes - "If we call art dangerous, then we ought to consider the pursuit of learning dangerous" (Tower of Silence) - but he was limited on how directly he could object because of course he was also a high-ranking military officer. So this was another time where he was torn between two different roles that felt irreconcilable, and this constant feeling of unhappiness was so strong that he had to find his own answer to it that he articulated in essays and stories as teinen.

The philosophical arguments about whether teinen means giving up on your dreams and calling it detachment, or whether this means achieving inner peace by adapting to reality instead of swimming upstream in vain, are really interesting but way beyond the scope of this anime soundtrack trivia post lololol. Mori Ogai's fiction and essays are often overtly philosophical so readers have strong opinions one way or another about what (they think) he said.

If you want to read some of the stories where he more indirectly talks about his feelings that led him to adopt this mindset, Mousou (Daydreams, 妄想) that I excerpted above is interesting, and there was a really helpful analysis in the foreward "Saiki Kooi and other Stories" pp 15-16 (David Dilworth, J, Thomas Rimer ed.) which point out specifically how this idea is reflected in both Maihime and Vita Sexualis if you have read those:

(So sorry, it'd be really long to type these out for screenreaders but if someone really needs it)

Hilariously, in "My Point of View" he also uses the word to describe why he Doesn't Care what critics think about the quality of his writing or whether the critics think he's better or worse than any other specific writer. He has learned to accept the world with serenity, including stupid critics, and is Above All That Now.

Pretty interesting soundtrack title, huh? All of that Mori-specific context packed into one specific word! Kafka-sensei has referenced at least four Mori Ougai works (that I'm aware of) in BSD Mori's design and character now.

OK, to go to the complete opposite end of complexity, track 15 is called 我輩はヌコである (Wagahai wa NUKO dearu).

Natsume Souseki's novel is entitled "吾輩は猫である" - Wagahai wa NEKO dearu." It's spelled subtly differently but why is that? (and it's not a typo)

Short answer: It's a 2chan meme lol

According to niconicopedia, in 2003 there was a manga called "Neko Kissa" (Cat Cafe) which had a chapter where the main character misspells it as "Nuko Kissa" and calling cats "nuko" became super-popular on 2chan. So once it escaped containment, "Nuko" became a new internet slang for a cat...especially if you were on 2chan in 2003 as sensei apparently was.