In my sixth review, I am going to look at the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia and Fransesc Miralles. This book takes the reader on a journey into a remote Japanese village with the highest life expectancy of anywhere in the world — a place called Okinawa. The authors go there themselves to explore this phenemona further and understand how these people find their ikigai, which means one’s purpose in life. I will get into the basics of the book, then into the 8-point scale review, and then finally into some big takeaways and a summary from the book.
Link to order on Amazon is here.
The Basics
Number of pages: 185
Amount of time spent reading per page: 35 seconds
Implied amount of time to read the whole book: 1.75 hours
Number of chapters: 9
Genre: Philosophy, Self-Help
Audience: Anyone
Very Short Summary
This book explains two seperate, but related ideas: how to find your purpose (ikigai) and how to live a long life. The authors go to great lengths to find people who have lived long lives and deduce common denominators across the population of “centenarians” — people who live to be 100 or older. The answers vary a good amount from person to person, but there are a few commonalities that are shown to be socializing with friends, keeping a good diet, and finding and maintaining a passion for your purpose, or ikigai. Just due to it’s general nature, this book is a little bit more geared towards the older population because the anecdotes given are likely not as appealing to the younger population — as will be seen throughout the review. There are some very helpful tips, though, on different mechanisms to improve happiness and longevity which everyone can likely apply.
The 8-Point Scale
- Readability (8/10)
A very easy read, no words or concepts unfamiliar to the average reader.
2. Transparency (2/10)
It gets very unclear what the actual argument/teaching point of the book is. I understood that Ikigai is your purpose in life, but the relationship is vague between that concept and the concept of longevity, especially when in interviews, centenarians would claim that there’s nothing special about them and they just live their regular old lives.
3. Applicability (6/10)
The authors make it pretty clear what to apply in terms of meditation, diet, exercise, friendship, etc. but it gets pretty general at times.
4. Excitement (0/10)
Felt like reading a car manual. Personally, I did not find much wisdom it what was being said, coupled with the fact that nothing really seemed all that important — this is just my opinion, but there’s no “story” being told here. No narrative arc, the only end goal seems to be extending your life, which is an impossible desire to attain so I do not understand the authors thrill with the concept.
5. Importance (2/10)
Is living long important enough to spend everyday performing actions with the sole intent to extend your life? That is for you to decide. But I would say that stoic lines of thinking diametrically oppose this obsession with the spectre of psuedo-immortality. (I hope to review some stoic works soon)
6. Accomplishment (1/10)
The book definitely does not take long to read, but I do not really feel that I was taught anything tangible. Many people already know that finding their purpose is important, which is an idea specifically drawn out in the book, but beyond that I just heard from what a bunch of old people think about life. I believe in the idea that they have wisdom, but I mean there’s no real acknowledgement that things have to go perfectly for someone to live to be 100.
7. Integration (3/10)
The book is either overly vague or way too specific, with no real in between. For example, the examples of Ikigai makes it seem like someone has to be an artist to have a real purpose, and the idea of ikigai in general is overly opaque. On the flip side, they present specific Japanese exercises as though integrating these exercises specifically is the key to success (a notion I do not buy).
8. Idea-Shaping (1/10)
There was not much this book taught me that I did not already know (don’t take that to mean I know a lot, but the cliche of this book is overwhelmingly present in almost every page).
OVERALL RATING: 2.5/8.0
Big Takeaways
- Find your Ikigai. Do something for your work that makes you not want to retire.
- Engage in activities of a degree that is perfectly challenging for you. This is an idea derived from the book Flow.
- Learn to meditate.
Summary
This book is not the greatest one in the world. I think there are important ideas, such as finding your purpose. But it is unclear how this book expects us to be able to do that. If interested in finding purpose, I would be much quicker to recommend Flow, which does a better job of actually showing one how to find this “ikigai”. There is nothing particularly wrong with this book, and if you really want to learn how to increase longevity, this book has a few things to teach and is a very quick read. However, it just was not my favorite book in the world due in part to dullness, and in part to the opacity of some of the claims being made.
