PROLOGUE
Ikigai: A mysterious word
THIS BOOK FIRST came into being on a rainy night in Tokyo, when its authors sat
down together for the first time in one of the city’s tiny bars.
We had read each other’s work but had never met, thanks to the thousands of
miles that separate Barcelona from the capital of Japan. Then a mutual
acquaintance put us in touch, launching a friendship that led to this project and
seems destined to last a lifetime.
The next time we got together, a year later, we strolled through a park in
downtown Tokyo and ended up talking about trends in Western psychology,
specifically logotherapy, which helps people find their purpose in life.
We remarked that Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy had gone out of fashion among
practicing therapists, who favored other schools of psychology, though people
still search for meaning in what they do and how they live. We ask ourselves
things like:
What is the meaning of my life?
Is the point just to live longer, or should I seek a higher purpose?
Why do some people know what they want and have a passion for life, while
others languish in confusion?
At some point in our conversation, the mysterious word ikigai came up.
This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as “the happiness of always
being busy,” is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond. It also seems to be one
way of explaining the extraordinary longevity of the Japanese, especially on the
island of Okinawa, where there are 24.55 people over the age of 100 for every
100,000 inhabitants—far more than the global average.
Those who study why the inhabitants of this island in the south of Japan live
longer than people anywhere else in the world believe that one of the keys—in