Abstract
When reading haiku poems in English, the knowledge that surface subjects (and personal pronouns) are not obligatory in Japanese is indispensable for interpretation. Considering the geographical and temporal distribution of the overt grammatical subjects, it is suggested that the emergence of the concept of ‘ego’ in Western Europe may have something to do with the appearance of the obligatory use of overt grammatical subjects, especially in English, French and German, in the medieval period. The fact that Descartes himself seemed to have stuck to the overt subject ‘ego’ even in the Latin version of his famous theme, i.e. Ego cogito ergo sum instead of Cogito ergo sum, is also thought provoking.
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