What Makes Life Worth Living?: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds

前表紙
University of California Press, 1996/04/05 - 296 ページ
Here is an original and provocative anthropological approach to the fundamental philosophical question of what makes life worth living. Gordon Mathews considers this perennial issue by examining nine pairs of similarly situated individuals in the United States and Japan. In the course of exploring how people from these two cultures find meaning in their daily lives, he illuminates a vast and intriguing range of ideas about work and love, religion, creativity, and self-realization.

Mathews explores these topics by means of the Japanese term ikigai, "that which most makes one's life seem worth living." American English has no equivalent, but ikigai applies not only to Japanese lives but to American lives as well. Ikigai is what, day after day and year after year, each of us most essentially lives for.

Through the life stories of those he interviews, Mathews analyzes the ways Japanese and American lives have been affected by social roles and cultural vocabularies. As we approach the end of the century, the author's investigation into how the inhabitants of the world's two largest economic superpowers make sense of their lives brings a vital new understanding to our skeptical age.
 

ページのサンプル

目次

What Makes Life Worth Living?
3
The Varieties of Ikigai in Japan
12
Individualism Community and Conformity in the United States
27
The Comparison of Japanese and American Selves
41
Ikigai in Japanese and American Lives
55
Ikigai in Work and Family
57
Ikigai and Gender
94
Ikigai in Past and Future
106
Ikigai in Creation and Religion
155
Ikigai and Significance
193
Ikigai and the Meaning of Life
205
A Phenomenological Analysis of Ikigai
207
Ikigai and the Meaning of Life
232
References
257
Index
271
著作権

Ikigai and Dreams
144

他の版 - すべて表示

多く使われている語句

著者について (1996)

Gordon Mathews is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

書誌情報