{"id":39,"date":"2024-12-04T02:08:07","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T02:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/?page_id=39"},"modified":"2024-12-21T00:54:57","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T00:54:57","slug":"literature-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/literature-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature Review: Ikigai"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The kanji of ikigai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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An image from an Indonesian news article on ikigai. (Kitalulus, 2024<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ikigai <\/em>is the Japanese concept of one\u2019s \u2018reason for being\u2019. It is said to bring meaning to one\u2019s life, and knowledge of one\u2019s ikigai is meant to help craft a life of purpose. In the past twenty years, its popularity has expanded globally, and it has come to hold various meanings. Some definitions say that it is the overlap between personal passions and societal contribution, where what you love intersects with what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at. To me, ikigai <\/em>is best understood through its kanji characters\u2014iki<\/em>, to live, and gai<\/em>, value. It is where one gains value from life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How humans derive meaningfulness from life is a question battled across disciplines. Professor of Philosophy, Robert M. Baird (1985) discusses three foundations in the creation or discovery of a meaningful life<\/a>: the quality of one’s relationships, the integrative power of one’s goals and projects, and the role of story. Baird emphasizes that the role of the story or stories is to place life in a genuinely ultimate context. In their article, \u201cCounting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life\u201d<\/a>, Psychologists Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (2003) focused on the emotional lens through which life is attributed meaning and found that a gratitude-grounded outlook on life can improve well-being. In considering these philosophical and psychological methods of making a meaningful life, there is a throughline of how life is framed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Life has no meaning” meme taken from a 9gag thread–it’s a funny thread, if you want to check it out. (Pepsisanta)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A photograph of Karl Marx (Stefano Moraschini, 2002)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Marx posits his own idea of human\u2019s purpose that is directly linked to labor. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, <\/em>Marx dissects his idea of gattungswesen<\/em>\u2014 species-being, or directly translates \u201cspecies essence\u201d. Marx explains that humans are \u2018species-beings\u2019 because they \u201cadopt the species as their object\u201d (Marx 45), and it is through a conscious labor of \u201cworking over the objective world\u201d that humans derive \u2018species-life\u2019. In the eyes of Marx, labor cultivates species-life is the pool from which humans nourish the essence of their humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viewing ikigai <\/em>as both a framing method and a labor motivation, its power as a philosophy by which to understand an individual\u2019s guiding purpose becomes crucial to understanding not only one\u2019s work, but one\u2019s self. Notably, there is a divide by which Japanese society understand ikigai<\/em>. Some commentators explicitly define ikigai as jiko jitsugen<\/em>, “self-realization” (Kobayashi 1989) while others (Niwano 1969) implicitly define ikigai <\/em>as ittaikan<\/em>: commitment to one\u2019s group role. In interviews with 98 Japanese citizens, Gordon Mathews (1996)<\/a> found that ikigai as itaikan <\/em>and ikigai <\/em>as jiko jitsugen<\/em> are matters of the self\u2019s individual commitment to its deepest matter. He found, additionally, that the attitude of \u201cshikata ga nai<\/em>\u201d was prevalent when people described their ikigai <\/em>and their \u2018selves\u2019. Shikata ga nai<\/em> translates to \u2018nothing I can do\u2019, and Mathews describes this as where one is resigned to the context in which they are placed. He likens shigata ga nai <\/em>to Bordieu\u2019s habitus, and Mathews found that this attitude was significant in his conversations with Japanese on making meanings of their ikigai <\/em>on of their selves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Shoganai”<\/em>, the informal version of Shikata ga nai<\/em>. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shikata ga nai <\/em>or a resignation to circumstance necessitates an inspection of the broader society from which ikigai <\/em>originates, as well as where I will trace its migration\u2014the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next Chapter: A Brief Overview of Japanese Society<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next Chapter: A Brief overview of japanese and american societies<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ikigai is the Japanese concept of one\u2019s \u2018reason for being\u2019. It is said to bring meaning to one\u2019s life, and knowledge of one\u2019s ikigai is meant to help craft a life of purpose. In the past twenty years, its popularity has expanded globally, and it has come to hold various meanings. Some definitions say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-39","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workandikigai.emmasagekm.sites.grinnell.edu\/project\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}