Japan & the dilemma of Happiness
Looking to Japan
In early 2019, Netflix set in motion an unexpected cultural phenomenon around something as seemingly mundane as “tidying up”. Mari Kondo, a tiny Japanese woman with a radiant smile, walked into the messy homes and lives of eight American families to teach the spiritual dimension and transformational power of cleaning out the mental and physical clutter that gets in the way of a happy life. All at once, it seemed, Americans were Twittering, Instagramming and Facebooking about how clearing out clutter was helping them to get in touch with what “sparks joy” in their lives to reclaim their rightful happiness.
The “Mari Kondo effect” is one manifestation of the West looking to Japan for wisdom on how to live better, more meaningful, more fulfilling lives. Another is the Japanese idea of “Ikigai” (life’s purpose), a buzzword of Ted Talks, articles and books with titles like How to Ikigai: Lessons for Finding Happiness and Living your Life’s Purpose, Awakening your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake up to Joy and Purpose Every Day, and Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life.
Not so happy after all?
Despite this flurry of excitement, global survey results indicate that Japanese don’t have an inside track on happiness. Ipsos’ 2019 Global Advisor Survey on Happiness revealed that, of 29 countries surveyed, Japan ranks 23rd, well behind Australia (#1), Canada (#2), China (#3) and the US (#6). At #20, even South Koreans are more upbeat about their happiness. This low level of happiness is reflected in the UN’s 2019 World Happiness Report as well where Japan ranks #58, amongst the lowest of industrialized nations. In a prosperous, clean, safe and stable country with high-quality and accessible education and health care systems, why do Japanese report such a comparatively meagre level of personal happiness?
Cultural context
Much of the explanation for Japan’s low ranking on the happy nation scale can be explained by cultural context. When global surveys are written, the way in which abstract concepts like “happiness” are communicated and understood reflects a specific cultural perspective (typically Western) and an assumption that the meaning of “happiness”, not to mention how to measure it, is easily understood across cultures. Japanese survey results must be evaluated in the context of a fundamentally different way of perceiving and understanding “happiness”.
Balance as goal
As a qualitative market researcher at Ipsos in Japan, I have observed a tendency to perceive the ideal state of being, not in terms of “doing” and “achieving”, but in terms of maintaining a state of “balance” and “stability”. Rather than achieving the high points of life, the goal is to avoid the extremes, both highs and lows. When I asked a group of my colleagues about their goals in life, the modesty of their aspirations shocked me.
通でいい (ordinary is fine) said one 30-year old. An older colleague said, 無事に生きる(To live without troubles) and then added, 欲張りにならない (To not become greedy). To my American ears attuned to proclamations engorged with aspiration such as “achieve my dream” or be “the first” or “the best”, I wondered why not aim for more?
Cultural psychologists Uchida and Ogihara explain that, in North America, “happiness” is considered highly desirable, positive and often the result of personal achievement. “Happiness” typically comes with a state of high arousal and generates strong feelings of self-esteem. In Eastern cultural contexts such as Japan, however, “happiness” is not perceived as wholly positive. Just as yin has yang, “happiness” can have a negative side as well. Too overt a display of happiness may attract the jealousy of others and strain human relationships that threaten group harmony. For collectivist cultures founded on the necessity of good relations with one’s neighbors (or the water resources won’t flow to your rice paddy), the danger of stirring the resentment of others is to be avoided. The group is the fundamental unit of society and must be protected from the disruption of any one individual. In this context, individual happiness is the product of harmonious relationships with others and is associated with a state of low arousal and a strong feeling of interpersonal connectedness.
Thus, what my colleagues were expressing to me is the way in which the goal is less focused on achieving the high highs or the big wins of life and more oriented around avoiding the negatives that push your life away from the ideal state of “balance”. We can see this tendency to define “happiness” as the absence of negatives, rather than an abundance of positives, reflected in the responses to an online discussion group that we recently conducted at Ipsos. Typical reasons for personal happiness (幸せと感じる) included:
I don’t have a major illness, and everything goes along normally.
大きな病気もなく、普通に毎日を過ごしているから.
Because no one in my family is ill or disabled, we can live a normal life.
家族みんなが何も病気なく何の不自由もなく普通に生活出来ているので.
I don’t have any specific dissatisfaction, so I can live normally.
特に不満もなく生活できている.
This focus on achieving balance helps to explain why Japanese survey responses on topics like “happiness”, tend towards the middle, rather than the extremes, thus depressing their score relative to more individualistic, high-arousal cultures.
External orientation
Our survey results reveal that, determining your personal level of happiness is approached more as a math problem, than an exercise of introspection — a netting out of the positives and negatives in one’s life. Consistent with an external orientation, these positives and negatives tend to be largely outside of individual control — most often the presence of a child, a spouse or a job and the absence of sickness, debt or financial hardship.
I have my health and husband and I have enough money to buy things I like.
健康で夫がいて好きなものを買えるくらいのお金があるから.
There are bad things and good things, so hard to say.
良いことも悪いこともあるのでどちらとも言えない.
My private life is going fine, but my work is not satisfying.
プライベートが充実しているが、仕事に不満があるため.
Out of 263 responses, only one person stated that happiness lay within:
“Because I decide it.”
そう決めているから．
Happiness is trending downward
This external orientation may help to explain why happiness is, in fact, diminishing in Japan year after year. Japan’s rank of #58 in the 2019 UN World Happiness Ranking is a drop of 4 rungs from 2018. And, in the Ipsos Global Advisor Survey, the trend has been steadily downward: in 2011, 70% of Japanese surveyed reported some level of happiness, but only 52% in 2019.
If happiness is perceived as dependent upon things beyond personal control, it is likely to fluctuate strongly with factors like the economy, health and job security.
The most advanced economy in Asia, Japan has had a hard time of it since the bursting of the real estate bubble of the late 1980s. Since then, the Japanese economy has experienced steady contraction, finally showing consistent growth only in recent years. In contrast to the stable, lifetime employment of previous decades, today over 40% of the population works in highly insecure contract jobs of short-terms, lower pay and lack of benefits. In this two-tier system of “regular” and “contract” employment, inequality is growing. Lacking stable employment, many young men feel that they cannot marry. Marriage rates and birth rates have continued to fall at precipitous rates year after year such that the Japanese population is shrinking just as the proportion of elderly Japanese is ballooning. More Japanese live alone today than ever before. In this context, there are plenty of negatives to throw one’s balance out of whack.
Implications for brands
Understanding the cultural nuance of abstract concepts like “happiness” is an opportunity for global brands to create more resonant and impactful messaging. When it comes to happiness, brands can ask themselves three questions:
WHOSE HAPPINESS?
Be aware of the cultural dimension of how happiness is perceived and experienced. While Western cultures may emphasize the happiness of individual achievement, Eastern cultures may experience the greatest happiness in the feeling of interconnectedness and balance. Ensure that your own cultural bias is not clouding understanding.
WHAT KIND OF HAPPINESS?
What kind of happiness is suitable and relevant to this time, place and occasion? Should your brand be representing a high arousal type of happiness or a low arousal type of happiness?
One home interior brand that I worked with in Japan was portraying bright interiors and high energy moments of joy in their communications, which was a disconnect to consumers who perceive home as a place of low energy to regain a sense of balance and replenishment. Together, we reinterpreted their positioning and communication to have greater resonance and impact within the Japanese cultural context.
CAN YOU SPARK JOY?
Understanding the complexity of emotions like happiness allows brands to go beyond the surface to tap what’s underneath to “spark joy” — to provide a sense of connection, uplift and encourage.
This is a story of the Futurist Club
by Science of the Time
Written by: Deanna Elstrom
Passionate about culture and how it impacts one’s worldview, motivations and behaviors, I have studied and worked in the U.S., France and Japan.
After a long career as a beauty marketer (L’Oréal, Avon, Revlon, L’Occitane) and a brand insights strategist (CBX NY), I moved to Japan in 2013 and morphed into a brand insights researcher.
At Ipsos in Japan, I help multinational brands to better connect with Japanese consumers by interpreting consumer data through the lens of cultural context to understand what consumer mean, not just say. With this understanding, brands develop positionings and communications that are resonant and create impact.
As head of the Public Affairs team at Ipsos in Japan, I try to explain the quantitative numbers behind Japanese behaviors and attitudes through the lens of culture and context. At Esomar Asia 2019, I presented a paper about the ambivalence towards issues of gender inequality in Japan.
Currently, I am particularly interested in issues around Japan’s mental health treatment, the impact of being the world’s fastest-aging society and how to move towards more sustainable consumption.
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.” — Finnish proverb
In collaboration with
Are you as an educational knowledge institute (university, polytechnic or otherwise) interested in getting involved in the International Cool City Hunt please click here.
