Kokology Questions Poem by Hajime Midori

1. You are in an old, abandoned building where no human has set foot for years and have discovered a staircase leading underground. Slowly you make your way down, counting the steps as you go. One step… two… three… How many steps is it to the bottom of the stairs?

2. The underground room is pitch black. Then, from the darkness you hear the sound of another person. Is the person weeping softly? Moaning wordlessly? Is it a voice speaking to you?

3. How do you react on hearing the sound of this other person? Do you try to search out the source? Is your first instinct to run up the stairs without looking back? Or are you paralyzed with fear and frozen where you stand?

4. You hear a person now calling your name and see a figure descending from the light at the top of the stairs. Who is this person coming down the stairs?


Abandoned buildings and underground rooms are highly symbolic of buried memories and old psychological scars. All of us have had an experience we’d rather not recall or a heart-break we thought we’d forgotten. But the memory is not so easily erased, and the things we hoped to forget linger for longer than we’d like to admit. Your responses to this situation show how you deal with painful memories of the past.

1. The number of steps to the bottom of the stairs indicates the impact of the psychological scars you are bearing. People who said there were only a few stairs feel little adverse effect from the past. But those who described a long staircase leading deep into the earth carry correspondingly deep wounds inside.

2. The sounds you heard out of the darkness reveal how you got through bad experiences in your past. Those who said they heard weeping have been comforted by others in times of trouble and recovered with the help they received. The people who took care of you in their kindness have helped you become the person you are today. The tears you cried were not in vain. People who heard wordless moaning went though hard times in their past alone. The moaning you hear in the dark is your own buried pain. Perhaps the time has come to open the door and let the sun shine in. Things won’t look so bleak in the light of day. Those who heard a voice speaking to them wear their old scars like a badge of honor, refusing to think of them as wounds. Nietzsche said “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” And you seem to have taken this philosophy to heart. But be careful not to let this harden you to the feelings of others.

3. Your reaction to the sounds in the darkness shows how you deal with the painful aspects of your own past. If you went out to search for the source of the sound, it’s likely you show the same take-charge attitude in your own life. By facing your problems head on, you’re bound to discover solutions. Those of you who ran straight back upstairs without confronting the sounds have a history of ignoring problems in the hopes that they’ll just go away. That approach may work sometimes, but don’t be surprised when the trouble stays around longer that you anticipated. Sometimes you need to stand and face your fears. If you were frozen in place with fear, it may be that you have unresolved conflicts in your own past that continue to haunt you and keep you from moving ahead with you life.

4. The person who appeared at the top of the stairs calling your name is someone you feel you can rely on in times a trouble. The name you gave is the person you believe will comfort you and help to heal your wounds.