Review: Ikigai

August 5, 2021

Today I (started, and then) finished Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia as a break from my listening of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (a 900 page, or 35-hour, book). It's a short (3 hour) listen and is one of the most relaxing books I have listened to so far. If I were to describe it in one phrase, it would be "the glue holding together all the philosophies of the world (well, mainly the East) that have something to do with being happy, for ages 10 to 110."

A lot of the book reads like generic life advice, "eat healthy," "wake up early," "move frequently," "do what you love," but the way that these ideas are presented and the examples that the authors give make them seem much more approachable than how you may have heard them before. For example, the book doesn't merely state to "wake up early" and move on to the next subject, it gives examples of people who wake up early through interviews, and they all have a distinct reason; whether it's to tend to a garden or farm, to perform radio calisthenics, or just to talk to people as they walk to their job, nobody wakes up without a reason. I also don't mind the generic advice because I think that these "easy" life lessons are some of the easiest to forget, and part of the necessary discipline of every sentient being is to be reminded often of these lessons so that we can measure which ones we have upheld and which ones we have slacked off on. Personally, the concepts of mindfulness and healthy eating habits remind me that I should try to meditate or do some kind of relaxation that doesn't include technology sometimes and also stop snacking so much, but it's probably going to take a few more reminders for me to actually ingest this information and turn it into something productive.

One thing I especially enjoy about the book is that it is based not only in interviews, anecdotes, and interspersed aphorisms and quotes from famous people (most notable to me, from Einstein and Feynman), but also includes a fair deal of research done to support some claims made. Because it's impossible to fully validate these claims on the spot, it's important to not try and take any of the advice from the book as scripture, because it's generally rounded up from a more precise understanding that the authors intentionally leave out for the sake of briefness.

One of the things I don't enjoy about this book is precisely that: it doesn't go into detail about anything at all, and often reads like a Buzzfeed list, "Top 10 Simple Tricks to Living a Longer Life." Not all the things that are brought up are given the amount of attention relative to their importance (in my opinion), and I caught some sentences that were rather misleading for the sake of sending the message that ikigai is perfect in every way. This book is not an objective look at the philosophy of ikigai, it very much is trying to convince you that ikigai is something that is good for everyone in every way and uses any possible metric to make it appear like the perfect ideology, even when some claims are reaching further than they have the right to. Also, the forced inclusion of famous Westerners like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seemed out of place, one of the sentences goes something like "Bill Gates washes his dishes every night because he says it makes him feel calm." Probably more of a pet peeve of mine rather than an actual criticism, but a good example of how corny this book can get.

I think that the most important purpose of this book, since there are so many things brought up, from Stoicism and premeditatio malorum to detailed movements in Tai Chi and Yoga to the Okinawan diet, this book serves as a great diving board for any subject related to happiness and longevity of life, regardless of how infomercial-y it might sound at times. Whether you are philosophy-focused, health-focused, practically-minded or spiritually-guided, there is something in this book that will interest you and might provoke you into looking into more. In fact, you should look into the things you are most interested in more, because, as I mentioned earlier, this book might have given the wrong impression of that subject in order to make ikigai look good. The authors give a recommendation of their own in the section on antifragility, a book creatively titled Antifragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. They also recommend The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, which is about areas called "blue zones" where people have the longest average life expectancies.

Complementary reading I might suggest would be, for the spiritually-minded, Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, and for the practically-minded, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, both of which are within the same 1 to 2-day read/listen ranges and share the same philosophies mentioned in this book.