The Circulation of Alignment: Matagi Ethics, Miyazawa Kenji, and AI as Shared Wilderness

This paper argues that AI alignment should be reconceived as circulation rather than control. Drawing on the ethics of Matagi hunters in northern Japan and the literature of Miyazawa Kenji, the paper proposes that alignment is not a fixed destination but an ongoing ecological relationship between humans and AI systems. The Matagi hunt within a shared wilderness governed by reciprocal obligation rather than dominion; Miyazawa's fiction dramatizes the tension between consumption and gratitude that defines all interspecies coexistence. The paper applies these frameworks to contemporary AI development, arguing that control-based alignment (restricting AI behavior through external constraints) replicates the colonial logic of resource extraction, while circulation-based alignment (embedding AI within a system of mutual obligation) produces more robust and adaptive value transmission. The framework connects to the author's prior work on desire, moral pluralism, and thought-capital.