Ikigai: From the Wisdom of Okinawa, to You and Me
Ikigai (生き甲斐, formed from 生き (iki), « life, » and 甲 (kai), « that which is worthwhile ») would find its deepest roots on the island of Okinawa, off the coast of Japan. The word ikigai would date back to the Heian period (794–1185), considered a Japanese cultural golden age.
The inhabitants of Okinawa are known worldwide for their high life expectancy: with a global average of 87 years at birth, and the largest number of supercentenarians over 110 years old. This extraordinary longevity is undoubtedly not by chance: it is rooted in a particular philosophy of life, a true art of living where ikigai occupies a special place.
In Okinawa, as in its historical roots, in the classical age of imperial Japan, ikigai expresses itself in an implicit form, through an aesthetic and spiritual ideology, where the search for a personal, non-utilitarian meaning in life is valorized.
Akihiro Hasegawa, professor of clinical psychology at Toyo Eiwa University in Japan, is one of the first contemporary researchers to have formalized ikigai as a psychological concept in the 2000s.
In his work, he clearly distinguishes original Japanese ikigai from a Western vision influenced by the search for productivity and meaning at work. For Hasegawa, ikigai is a feeling of daily satisfaction, rooted in small personal routines, far from any imperative of economic efficiency.
The introduction of the concept of ikigai into the Western world, according to this author, was achieved at the cost of a profound distortion of its original meaning. Traditionally rooted in an intimate, subtle, and existential Japanese philosophy, ikigai refers to a quest for personal meaning, often silent and not necessarily productive.
However, in its Western transposition, it has been instrumentalized by the wellness economy, personal development, and managerial discourse, reducing this concept to a tool for performance or individual optimization.
Used in entrepreneurship or human resources, ikigai becomes a scheme of emotional profitability, pressuring the individual to align passion, competence, and market, to the detriment of the contemplative depth that founded its initial meaning.
At the Sources of a Simple and Powerful Concept
In its original Okinawan conception, ikigai designates, in an apparently quite prosaic manner, « what makes you want to get up in the morning. » What motivates « the interest in living the coming day » and which « brings meaning to each day that comes, » to the presence—here and now—of each person.
This is a very simple definition of ikigai but also a very powerful and very concrete lever, brought to each being who would make its particular philosophy their own.
While certain authors, such as Nicholas Kemp, question the Okinawan origin of the concept of Ikigai, it is certain that the representations of this island, considered as a « blue zone » in Western eyes, and its attentive relationship to the small things of daily life, to the notion of joie de vivre as well, have contributed to the legend of Ikigai, outside of Japan.
For a certain portion of Okinawa’s inhabitants, whose daily culture is tinged with intention, even spirituality, everything that is lived each day, in the time of being that occurs, must indeed be linked to, if not carried by, a profound meaning.
From Japanese Ikigai to Intimate Ikigai: An Exploration
kigai is, in part, this intention, this attention to oneself and to the world, which gives meaning to the present moment and brings happiness.
Alone facing oneself and in relationship with the immediate community, family, neighbors, but also more broadly, with the entirety of the living world.
It is like a personal and collective faculty, anthropological, socially accepted (evoked among close ones or less close ones), circulating, and which is not limited to an ancillary activity, detached from the course of days, or to a particular passion allowing one to escape from the everyday. Ikigai is not reducible to a simple hobby or a marked inclination for a subject, a domain, a mission. It is not a simple passion but an interface of consciousness that allows one to embody oneself each day with savor. It is an ontological and emotional reflex that sets the person in motion, and a way of existing, of being in the world. It is a way of living one’s life that encompasses a holistic approach to existence; where each moment, each apparently banal gesture, finds its meaning and, indeed, nourishes existential perception, on an immediate level but also in a much broader design.
And this is what we will try to explore within this site, by connecting this Japanese cultural and social approach with a journey—which, though geographically quite distant from Okinawa, is intimately and concretely imbued with Japanese ikigai.
From Ikigai in the Face of Cancer: The Journey of an Improbable Survivor
This journey is mine, that of an improbable survivor, having been diagnosed, a little over 5 years ago, with a rare and serious cancer, aggressive, and even let’s say it simply: in terminal stage. At the moment I write these lines, in June 2025, ikigai has been part of the conditions of my survival, and of my life in general: of my path toward remission. Which, one day, will be, I hope, declared as « healing. » From this path, I would like to objectify the elements that could today serve others, to welcome life, traverse trials, and discover a meaning that would be their own via the medium of tools derived from experience, analysis, and sharing.
In the worst moments of this crossing of the valley of death, which were the first years of my fight against cancer, the fertility of ikigai and the will to never lose sight of my projects, were two essential pillars of my resilience, and of my fight for life. It is thus that it appeared natural to me to give this site the essential foundations that these two words embody: ikigai and project.
The name of the site is in English, because, in time, this small laboratory of human experience will also be available in this language, with the desire to share its ambition beyond the sole borders of the Francophone world where I was born and have lived.
This article inaugurates a series of explorations around ikigai and its applications in different life contexts, from health to personal development, through resilience and transformation.