What is the “world system”?
The “world system” is an urban legend idea that “the world is moved by a great system invisible to ordinary people, and that system is now about to switch to something completely new.” It is known as a theme repeatedly discussed on the TV Tokyo network program Yarisugi Toshi Densetsu (Too Much Urban Legends) by Seki Akio, a comedian who tells urban legends as “Mr. Toshi Densetsu” (Mr. Urban Legend).
What has been said on the program
In a special broadcast on September 29, 2017, Seki was shown in the United States covering research on microchips implanted in the body and having a chip injected into his own body. He said that in the future, the generation of our children and grandchildren would get chips “as casually as piercings.”
In an interview tied to a broadcast in autumn 2020, he described the rapid worldwide spread of electronic payments, remote work and AI surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic as a shift toward a “spiritual technology civilization” that values spiritual worth over money. He said that those who could adapt to this “New System” would survive and those who could not would be left behind. In an interview in winter 2025, he also said that a new world order would be born in 2026 and another new order would emerge 13 years later, in 2039.
Links with other urban legends
The idea that a small group of people moves the workings of the world is shared with conspiracy theories such as the New World Order, the Illuminati and the deep state. It is also linked with transhumanism, which aims to merge humans and technology, the singularity, when AI surpasses human intelligence, and the story of the Humalien that Seki introduced.
How should we take it?
The spread of cashless payments, AI and surveillance camera technology is a real change in society. However, no evidence has been presented that it is a “switching of the world system” planned by particular people. The program itself is framed as “you can’t tell if it’s true or false” and ends with the line “Whether you believe it or not is up to you”; it is an urban legend to be enjoyed as entertainment. Note also that prophecies vague about timing and content are easy to fit to real events after the fact.
Different from academic “world-systems theory”
Incidentally, the “world-systems theory” proposed in the 1970s by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein is an academic theory that views the world economy as connections between “core” and “periphery” countries, and it has nothing to do with this urban legend. Fears of a future in which society is controlled have long been depicted in dystopian stories as well.
