Book Review: The Little Book of Ikigai - The secret Japanese way to live a happy and long life by Ken Mogi

Can a Japanese mindset help you find fulfilment in life? Based on this book - the answer is "no".

The Little Book of Ikigai is full of trite and unconvincing snippets of half-baked wisdom. It is stuffed with a slurry of low-grade Orientalism which I would have expected from a book written a hundred years ago. I honestly can't work out what the purpose of the book is. Part of it is travelogue (isn't Japan fascinating!) and part of it is history (isn't Japanese culture fascinating!). The majority tries hard to convince the reader that Japanese practices are the one-true path to a happy and fulfilling life.

Yet, it almost immediately undermines its own thesis by proclaiming:

Of course, ephemeral joy is not necessarily a trademark of Japan. For example, the French take sensory pleasures seriously. So do the Italians. Or, for that matter, the Russians, the Chinese, or even the English. Every culture has its own inspiration to offer.

So… what's the point?

In discussing how to find satisfaction in life, it offers up what I thought was a cautionary tale about the dangers of obsession:

For many years, Watanabe did not take any holidays, except for a week at New Year and another week in the middle of August. The rest of the time, Watanabe has been standing behind the bars of Est! seven days a week, all year around.

But, apparently, that's something to be emulated. Work/life balance? Nah!

I can't overstate just how much tosh there is in here.

Seen from the inner perspective of ikigai, the border between winner and losers gradually melts. Ultimately there is no difference between winners and losers. It is all about being human.

Imagine there was a Gashapon machine which dispensed little capsules of plasticy kōans. You'd stick in a coin and out would pop:

You don’t have to blow your own trumpet to be heard. You can just whisper, sometimes to yourself.

Think of it like a surface-level TED talk. Designed to make dullards think they're learning some deep secret when all they're getting is the mechanically reclaimed industrial byproducts of truth.

There are hints of the quack Jordan Peterson with sentences reminding us that:

Needless to say, you don’t have to be born in Japan to practise the custom of getting up early.

In amongst all the Wikipedia-list padding, there was one solitary thing I found useful. The idea of the "Focusing Illusion"

Researchers have been investigating a phenomenon called ‘focusing illusion’. People tend to regard certain things in life as necessary for happiness, while in fact they aren’t. The term ‘focusing illusion’ comes from the idea that you can be focused on a particular aspect of life, so much so that you can believe that your whole happiness depends on it. Some have the focusing illusion on, say, marriage as a prerequisite condition for happiness. In that case, they will feel unhappy so long as they remain single. Some will complain that they cannot be happy because they don’t have enough money, while others will be convinced they are unhappy because they don’t have a proper job.

In having a focusing illusion, you create your own reason for feeling unhappy.

Evidently my "focusing illusion" is that if I just read enough books, I'll finally understand what makes people fall for nonsense like this.