Some think of him as a retired anatomist par excellence; some revere his knowledge of the human brain; while to others he's simply someone who's nuts about insects.

Takeshi Yoro is definitely all of these things and more, as well as being one of the foremost thinkers on the condition of contemporary Japan.

Back when he was a professor specializing in dissecting cadavers at the Medical Department of the University of Tokyo, Yoro, now 67, came to be widely known as the author of numerous books, including his 1989 "Yuinoron" (Seidosha), in which he proposed that society and the forms it takes are extensions of human consciousness.