Our Absurd World
Through the eyes of artists & children
As a psychotherapist who has spent decades working with children, I am always drawn to the ways they perceive the world differently from adults. Recently, I was introduced to a Japanese song through a short cover by my favorite Japanese guitarist and singer Ise Mitsue, an artist known for incorporating pieces from children’s anime into her music. The song, Sayonara Jinrui (“Farewell Humanity”), originally by the Japanese band Tama, is delightfully strange: in one line, it proclaims that “humanity has, for the very first time, arrived on Jupiter.”
At first glance, the lyrics seem absurd, even nonsensical. But that absurdity is exactly what makes the song so powerful, especially when considered from a childlike perspective. Children live in a world where adults’ rules, explanations, and expectations often feel arbitrary or contradictory. The song mirrors that experience, combining cosmic events, everyday objects, and whimsical imagery in a way that is both playful and slightly disorienting. It reminds me of how children navigate a reality that doesn’t always make sense to them, finding patterns, humor, and meaning in their own way. Whimsy itself becomes a quiet strategy of rebellion and resistance.
Writers have long recognized what children know intuitively: that absurdity can be a more honest way of describing reality than logic ever could.
The song’s embrace of absurdity places it in surprising company. Writers such as Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince also relied on whimsy, surrealism, and dislocation to express the strangeness of the world we find ourselves in. Vonnegut bends time and logic to confront the trauma of war. Saint-Exupéry uses planets and peculiar characters to expose the odd priorities of adulthood. In much the same way, Sayonara Jinrui uses fantastical images—humanity landing on Jupiter, the moon falling into an alley—to highlight how reality itself can feel illogical and bewildering. The absurd becomes a way of telling the truth.
On a personal level, the song resonates deeply. It evokes the kind of free and open childhood that many of us didn’t fully experience—one in which imagination, play, and curiosity were allowed to flourish without constant correction or constraint. Its surreal images and buoyant rhythm awaken something that adulthood often presses flat. They invite us back into curiosity rather than control, wonder rather than certainty. In doing so, the song does more than describe absurdity. It restores a way of seeing that leaves us feeling wonderfully alive.
Here’s the official version from YouTube:
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