What's your ikigai?

On Stoic philosophers, beach reading, and a book that promises quite a lot of one thing but ends up delivering more of something else

There isn’t much to “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” that a person couldn’t otherwise find by reading “The Enchiridion” by Epictetus and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl, which is both a critique and an endorsement. The authors openly cite both the Stoic philosophers and Frankl quite frequently throughout the book. Add in a few tips on the healthy aspects of a Japanese diet and basic light exercise, and you’ve pretty much covered what this book will tell you.

■ Admittedly, both Epictetus and Frankl can be heavy reading, so this is a lighter repackaging of many of the same topics, with a heavy emphasis on the authors’ travelogue to Okinawa -- easy, breezy reading that can be digested in the course of a moderate-length flight or a couple of hours on the beach.

■ What the book notably shortchanges is a thorough discussion of the “ikigai” concept itself: How to concentrate one’s efforts on a meaningful motivation in life. (That, at least, is the takeaway from the popular diagram depicting the concept.)

■ The text celebrates the “why” with lots of general tips about the virtues of finding it, but devotes very little to the “how”, and the resulting gap between the promises and the reality are hard to ignore. (It also leans heavily on the unnecessary trope of “ancient wisdom from the Orient”.)

■ It’s not that the book is bad; it reads easily, has some durable merit, and repeats lots of ideas worth knowing. It’s just missing what many readers living in tempestuous times might be trying to find: A methodical guide to uncovering the specifics of where to concentrate their own energies in pursuit of a fulfilling lifestyle.