Ikigai Through Leisure: A Conversation with Shintaro Kono

Shintaro Kono

Shintaro Kono explores how individuals can discover ikigai through meaningful leisure activities in episode 04 of the Ikigai Podcast.

Shintaro Kono is an expert in leisure behavior science and an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation at the University of Alberta, Canada. 


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How the Japanese define ikigai

There is this misconception that ikigai is a framework for doing something that you love, that you're good at, that the world needs, and that you can get paid for. But for the Japanese, ikigai is more than that -- it is not all about having grand goals.

Shintaro, a researcher of ikigai, shares how Japanese define ikigai: a feeling of a life worth living and the contributors that make people feel their life is worth living.

Nick: Ikigai is greatly misunderstood outside of Japan with people believing it to be a framework of doing something that you love, that you’re good at, that the world needs and that you can get paid for.

That’s obviously an incorrect interpretation. So how would you define ikigai?

Shin: Well that's a difficult question and I'm still thinking about it, the definition of ikigai. The way I see for now is that ikigai in Japanese means two things: one is the feeling that you have a life worth living; the other aspect is that contributors, something that makes you feel that way.

Those are things that tend to be more tangible in a way. They are activities, and that could be work too. It can be work, it can be a hobby still, it can be a relationship. It can be your community, organization, relationship with an organization. Things like that too.

There are two aspects: one is the feeling of it; the other one is what I call sources of ikigai. In terms of feeling, I would say the very, very central to ikigai is what I call life affirmation, the feeling that you have a life that’s worth living.

You wake up in the morning and you're energetic, you just get going with your life -- daily life. What I want to emphasize here is that it’s not about… Life here is not about this metaphoric idea, metaphysical idea of life as a philosophy.

It’s not how many dozens of years. It’s about daily life. That life you have now today or maybe this week or this month. It tends to be very short term.

I ask in a survey: is this worth living? You get up, you want to get going with it, or you feel like, “Oh no, today I woke up, I have to do this.” You’re hesitant and you’re not motivated, sort of thing. That’s the center part of ikigai feeling.

Three Ikigai Leisure Concepts

In his study, Shintaro mentioned three ikigai theories in relation to his findings on leisure: keiken, houkou-sei, and ibasho. How do they relate to ikigai? Shintaro explains each theories.

Nick: In your study that I read, you talked about three theories. I found them really insightful and interesting. Would you like to introduce those three ikigai theories in relation to your findings on leisure?

Shin: Sure. There are three core concepts. One of them is what I call keiken. In Japanese, it means literary experience. In English, I would say that it’s a valued experience in a way that you personally value and it also of course means that it should be valued in society, in a group and all that kind of stuff as well.

We identified specifically four key types of experience value and one being enjoyment or tanoshimi in Japanese. And second is effort, making effort or gambari in Japanese. The third is stimulation or shigeki in Japanese, doing something new, and the last is comfort or iyashi feeling relaxed in being who you are and things like that.

We found that each of those four types of experiences contribute to ikigai feeling. That’s not surprising. Probably I shouldn’t get into each theory yet, but it’s basically, keiken is about the here and now.

It’s a personal life, your personal experience in this current life. And the second theory is what I call houkou-sei. In Japanese houkou-sei, that means what I call life directionality. It’s about the temporal , over time, it’s a temporal aspect of ikigai. From past to present life to the future.

The question here is, can you make some sort of association between how past experiences contributed to who you are now and what you’re doing, and then how that leads you or how you think leads to your future goals.

But again the key here, keiken is still existing here because the present life is characterized by the keiken or your current valued experiences. 

The last one is what I call ibasho or interpersonal, authentic relationship. It’s really an interpersonal dimension of ikigai. Now, again, it begins with a keiken. Really keiken is the core and heart of my ikigai theories.

In ibasho theory, basically what it’s saying is that, yes, it’s great that you had a valuable experience, now the question is can you share them with close others, maybe in your case, maybe your son for example.

Can you share it with him in such a way that, basically, he values it too. One way is to just include them, and involve that person into the same activity. Do it together, or the other way is to tell them about what’s going on in your keiken (valued experiences) and you get the feedback. It's an indirect way of sharing.

Three theories, keiken is about the here and now, personal life. Houkou-sei is over time, temporal aspect. Ibasho is the interpersonal dimension of it. I see three… Well, two dimensions. Temporal, interpersonal and really the core is keiken.

Valued Experiences

What is the best way to achieve ikigai? For Shintaro, ikigai is an experiential aspect. People can attain ikigai through their valued experiences -- the values that people collect from enjoyment, effort, stimulation, and comfort.

Shintaro: One of the major finding is that there are different ways -- students don't just do enjoyment or effortful experiences. It's understandable that we have many of them. For example, so my students are varsity athletes, and their life tends to be all about sports.

But then when they were asked about ikigai, yes they have some pictures from sports and athletics, but also they have pictures of hanging out with other friends or studying or a trip, or whatever that might be. 

So they really talk about different experiences, and what that does is basically bringing different values to their life, to their kind of life. So that goes back to ikigai perception -- feeling that your life is worth living. 

Their perception of life worthiness, again, it's not like philosophical questioning: "Is my life worth living?" -- not that kind of questioning, but it was really experiential. 

It’s based on the more values you collect basically from enjoyment, efforts, simulation, comfort, arguably the better. Your ikigai level gets higher because you have more things to ground your perception of ikigai into.

That leads to what I called value diversification. You want to not to have, for example, 10 enjoyable experiences. You’d rather want to have, for example, two of enjoyment, two of effort, two of stimulation, two of comfort so that you have four experienced values represented in your life at a time. That’s one thing.

You can do that by having totally different experiences. For example, athletics require effort. Let’s say you also hang out with friends, which is enjoyment, that kind of stuff. You can do that.

Another thing you can do, it is actually you can identify different values in one dominant experience. For example, again, athletics, let’s use the example of athletics because it’s so dominant.

Investing a lot of time. Practicing sports can be very much effortful, but at the same time, if you think about the sports there are some casual hanging out with their teammates and stuff like that.

You can identify somebody’s enjoyment. Well, you can feel so much comfort and relaxed with their teammates because you spent so much time with them. But at the same time if you, for example, travel to a new place because of a tournament, that could give you some stimulating experience as well.

If you actually can recognize those different aspects and there are different types of value in one experience, you can still maintain a high level of ikigai arguably because of those diversified values.

Value Disengagement

Sometimes people need to step away from effortful experiences. According to Shintaro, effortful experiences can be daunting. Hence, people need to step away from doing those activities and seek enjoyable and comforting ones. In that case, people can have the motivation to get back to their challenging experiences.

Nick: You also discovered that students needed to disengage from their ikigai experiences, especially effortful ones, which I guess makes sense.

We do need to sometimes switch off and take a break from, I guess, from everything in life, but also leisure. 

Shin: Before getting to what I call value disengagement. Again, getting away from sometimes overwhelmingly effortful experiences. What’s common here and also value balancing, is that my theory of ikigai and keiken is very dynamic.

You can’t do, for example, effort, effort, effort, effort and you can increase, increase, increase your ikigai. There’s a kind of direct balance between them. It’s not a continuum where one is absolutely negative, the other side is absolutely positive.

There is somewhere in the middle optimal situation and you have to make yourself align there and that’s actually more difficult. A lot of theories out there, I mean, lots of psychology, behavioral, all that kind of behavioral science theories.

They are more simplistic in a way that do this, this is positively related, do it. But newer research, recent research and including my ikigai keiken theory is that now there is a balance. There’s a synergistic effect.

There is something going on. This is part of that too. And again, just like you said, effortful experience can be just daunting. Doing work -- I do research and teaching. Sometimes teaching can be overwhelming. I love teaching but at the same time, so many markings and it's too much.

What’s important is not actually keep doing it, but also take a step away from it. And often this is again, leisure is a unique position because it provides you a breather in your life that you can take a step back and not think about it, have fun.

But here it's a little bit different from enjoyment because enjoyment is what we seek. But value disengagement is an escape, it's a positive escape because effort becomes too much, you want to get away from it. That’s the purpose.

Usually you go for something enjoyable or comforting. Now you’d get back to it. The point is that you have the purpose of getting back to challenging experience, effortful experience. It’s not total escapism, if that makes sense.

Nick: It does make sense. I guess, it leans towards, as you just mentioned, comfort. If you do disengage from effortful activities that give you purpose or leisure, taking a break from them gives you the comfort you need to obviously re-engage with them later.

Shin: Exactly. Related to that though and value disengagement, first when we tested it, it was obvious in a qualitative interview results. When I tested it in a survey with a number relationship with their value disengagement and ikigai feeling was not as strong as I hoped.


So what I did was I separated them my students into two groups. Students who have a higher level of negative emotion, like anxiety and fearfulness and low negative emotion folks. 


What I found was that the importance of value disengagement was way higher and is very much significant with students with high negative emotions. This is a dynamic theory that the importance of value disengagement depends on the situation.

Active and Passive Leisure

Shintaro discusses the distinction between active and passive leisure. According to Shintaro, the more people engage in active leisure, the more they tend to be happier.

Nick: So I have another question: do you make a distinction between active leisure and passive leisure?

Shintaro: I think we do, not just me personally, but also a lot of leisure researchers do make this distinction. When we say active versus passive, we often mean the physical activeness and passiveness. Physical active like doing sports versus passive being watching TV, sedentary activity. We do that. 

But also in leisure, we can think about different kinds of activities like for example, social reactive, that's one thing. Another thing is cognitive and memory active: quizzes, games, and stuff like that, too. 

We have I think a fair amount of evidence, very basic evidence to suggest that the more you engage in active leisure, both physical and social reactive specifically, you tend to be happier. 

Not necessarily ikigai but other activities as well. I also have some evidence around that, too, but we make this distinction.

Nick: I think it's an important distinction and perhaps unfortunately, we're living towards passive leisure. So in a world of distraction with smartphones, social media, social media addiction, and 24-hour access to unlimited entertainment with things like YouTube or Netflix. Do you think it's becoming harder for people to find ikigai? 

Shintaro: I think so. There's a layer of value judgement here, and it's kind of difficult for me, too. But in many ways, I'm thinking about the pictures that I got in my first ikigai study.

I didn't see a lot of people showing screen or computer or TV: "Here's my ikigai, that's a TV show" for example. I didn't see that. Or even for that matter, for example, twitter or Instagram, Japan is heavily technology based, and Japanese people use those social media.

However, I didn't see anybody saying, for example: "Facebook, this is my ikigai." Not really. so I think that it's attached to this personal values and social values that although we tend to do those social media activities, we are also surrounded by this social discourse that those are not great things.

We know that, we are aware of that. So it's really difficult for us to value truly, wholeheartedly value those experiences. And I don't think there's so much about it, to be honest. I also sometimes binge-watch Netflix, but I usually feel guilty rather than be proud of myself afterwards.

So I think, there's that element, social norms, aspect to it, too. But also just the sheer quality and intensity of the experience, it's just not there sometimes. A lot of people would provide picture about trip, for example.

It's very experiential and it's just a unique experience -- that cannot be just reproduced on, like TV for example, it's very different from simulated experience like YouTube video.

Yes, you can go to eatery through YouTube video, but that's just different from when you actually go there, travel and actually getting there, talking to people, eating something, smelling something, and all that kind of real experience.

So I think that's really necessary. Although, one thing that I want to point out, that maybe social media or watching some stuff can be good for value disengagement. It's an easy way to just take your mind off.

But again, when you really want to have valued experience, yes, I would agree, too many of us spent too much time on those things and people tend not to value those experiences. 

What is Houkousei?

In his study on the temporal aspect of ikigai, Shintaro shares that his interviewees (Japanese university students) often use the word houkousei when they talk about where they are and where they want to be in the future.

Nick: Well, let's define the word houkousei, how would you define it?

Shintaro: According to the Japanese dictionary, houkou means direction, and the last part sei is a suffix that doesn't really have a meaning in itself, but it just adds an abstract nature to the word. So it's really directioness, directedness.

But the Japanese students that I talked to use the word expression in such a way that talking about this, I wouldn't say choose, but it's a bit of loose sense of where they're coming from, and where they are, and where they want to go in the future.

So that really is the connection, associations across the past, present, and future. And really having some understanding, some connections across them, those things are not just accumulation of random events, actions and experiences, but there are some meaningful connections among them.

Nick: It was interesting that you noted that your interviewees  freely use this word when discussing the past, present and future. So it wasn't a word that you led with, it was a word they used.

Shintaro: I think, yeah, typically Japanese people use it in a daily conversation, it's a very loose, meaning that people often refer to the future. 


Even in a business context as well, talking about some strategic plan, for example, we use this word houkou or houkousei in a way. 


But in this context, in terms of ikigai, students tend to mention the past current as well as the current, to the future, all connections were important.

Defining Life Legacy

If you feel like your past experiences have meaningfully contributed to who you are today, then according to Shintaro, it is what we call life legacy: the past-present linkage.

Nick: Well, what stood out for me and what you highlight in your research is related to these associations are two subjective states, life legacy and life momentum. And I really like how you phrase these learnings.

So let's talk about what a life legacy is. What is it?

Shintaro: Life legacy is this feeling that your past experience, past events, past self too have meaningfully contributed to who you are, what you're doing, what you're valuing, and what kind of life you have right now.

So really the past-present linkage and the feeling that you're almost building on top of something you have accomplished, its actual goals and things, your activities and project.

But also your personal growth probably from the past that you're on being on top of it. Either you're who you are or what you are now, what you're doing right now, it's meaning to be connected to that past.

Nick: Yeah, I can actually think of a really good example for me, and this would have been my traineeship to Japan in 1995.

So I was awarded a traineeship to work in a restaurant chain in Japan, and that experience, probably was an ikigai experience, I had one year in Japan, I learned so much about Japan, and I learnt the language, but I also learnt a lot about myself.

That experience led to so many other things related to Japan: me meeting my wife, even obviously, what I'm doing now.

I remember that experience, and I see it as a very meaningful and positive experience, and it definitely shaped my past and has shaped my current life. Life legacy, we don't have to be old and gray, to have a life legacy, it's like a journey, and I'm still relatively young.

Shintaro: That's a very good point. I talked to university students in Japan, 18 to 22, that's the age group I talked to mostly. 


So really even that we would right now call the proper emerging adults, the younger adults, emerging adults, they still have much to be proud of in terms of life legacy.


Of course, this will maybe change over time, what counts is legacy and their magnitude of legacy, maybe. 


Hopefully, as we live, probably the value of the legacy, the project that we work on, for example, career wise, or the even the maturity of our hobby, just the excellence of it, will maybe increase.


Maybe the legacy gets bigger and bigger, and the legacy from 30s could be bigger when you're 60s, for example. But also, we may develop some different personal values and social values, we live in a dynamic society. 


So what we really value could change as we go. It's not really absolute, or it's not really static. It's definitely a relative and or dynamic process.

Defining The Past

Shintaro explains defining the past as valued experiences which served as a turning point in people's lives.

Nick: A recurring theme I've learned from yourself and other Japanese is there's this casualness approach to ikigai and I guess yutori, where there are no strict rules, just be casual in your approach. 

Where in the West, we're almost creating this sense of pressure thinking, I have to know what my ikigai is. So I do like this casualness where you don't have to say, every morning, I'm going to meditate from eight to nine.

It can be something like, well, I just feel like having my coffee outside or I might pet my cats, and just relax for half an hour, and you might end up getting the sort of the same benefit with this casual approach to things. 

That's something I'm trying to embrace. I do have a tendency to get up and want to do things, but I do think, relax, man, you got the whole day ahead, have your coffee, don't drink it in front of the computer, sit outside.

So let's move on, Shin, with these two associations, behavioural and cognitive. Your research also revealed two conditions for houkousei, and they were defining the past and clear goals. 

I think our audience would understand the importance of clear goals and we’ll discuss that in a minute. But I find this condition defining the past fascinating. So can you explain what it means in the context of your theory?

Shintaro: Sure, defining past is the past experiences, which is basically the valued experiences that I mentioned in Episode Four that effort for enjoyment is stimulating and comforting experience.

Any of those maybe mixture of them, that happened in the past, then you're no longer doing it, but they are so powerful that when you reflect back, you oftentimes remember that there is vivid memories around that too.

And it's often when we interview people, we talk to people, we just introduce ourselves, those are experiences that people often utilize to define who they are, where they're coming from, not just about their location, but also what kind of person they are really.

So they tend to mention them as basically turning points in their life, that in their life trajectories, sometimes something happened, and people just quit their job, career and switch to whole another degree for example, that type of thing.

So really powerful, transformative experiences. And people do have those experiences.

Nick: I definitely had a few, now that you mentioned quitting a job. One day, I walked out of a job, I was just sitting at the desk, and I was extremely stressed because of workplace harassment, constant pressure, the work was absolutely meaningless.

I was depressed, I was frustrated. I just thought, you can't keep doing this, so I asked a coworker to be a witness. I got a manager, I went in a room and said, this is happening, I've been documenting this abuse, and I'm leaving today.

I just walked out, and I didn't go back. I got my pay on my holiday pay, and then that's when I really started really going into my online work and entrepreneurial pursuit. 

So even though that experience was absolutely horrible, I can look back at it now and think, man, that was a turning point, and I could say, well, you had the courage to do that, and thank God, you did that and look where your life is now.

So that is a question I do have, and I think it's something we should do often, to look back at turning points or transformative experiences, and think about what they mean to us.

Redefining Negative Experiences

All of us might encounter an unpleasant experience. However, rather than thinking of these experiences as troublesome, we should consider them transformative ones; they might cause us unpleasant emotions, but they also contribute to our growth and development. Shintaro discusses the importance of having "negative" experiences in our lives.

Nick: So I do wonder, with age and life experience, if we can redefine our past, perhaps challenging experiences, we have negative thoughts about, could they be looked back upon as these life turning points? 

Shintaro: I think that your example, it's as painful as it was probably for you back then. I think it's a brilliant example.

Because throughout the ikigai literature, you know, Kamiya's work, Dr. Kumano Michiko's work, and my work itself, the consistent theme in terms of ikigai is that ikigai cannot be fully understood and also experienced if you're categorizing experience, positive versus negative.

I think we have to really move past that dichotomous framework that this positive and negative, yes, they exist. Then to an extent, it's just like a good indicator of how your life is right now, but beyond that.

When you think about stretching the perspective from the past to the future, sometimes years and decades of your life, this momentary positive versus negative really can be actually misleading in a way that there are some negative you know, back then it was negative experiences that you really want to put in Japanese expression, put a lid on and you never want to open that lid. 

It stinks you know, I have those experiences too and I'm probably younger than you, but I do, but it's really important in terms of ikigai to sometimes, when you're okay with it, you have to be properly ready.

And I would love to kind of do research about when and how we can be ready to look at those powerful yet negative experiences, "negative experiences" to get more ikigai.

But when you're ready, I think it's important to open that lid and really take a look at that again, because negative experience, a negative memory in the past, can be very powerful so it's most likely, we evolved, we grew out of those experiences, and that have lingering effect on our lives. It's really a great source of life legacy.

Nick: It is amazing. Because if I do look back at that day and the weeks leading up to that decision, I was extremely stressed, I was on the verge of breaking down, I was almost crying as I was saying, I want to leave.

So I could look at that always as a painful negative experience with a certain mindset. But if I look back thinking, hang on, this ended up changing your life for the better, and it almost ties in to Buddhism where I could almost thank this person who gave me so much trouble, because it did end up changing my life. 

So I like your idea that we don't have to really say that positive or negative, they're almost like life defining experiences, regardless of if they're negative or positive.

I think we should be open to this idea that we can go back to past experiences and reinterpret them. Because we have this new context of all the years from that experience, up until now.

Enhancing Our Ikigai Through Authentic Relationships

The findings of his study suggest that ibasho (authentic relationship) is important to one's ikigai. Shintaro shares that it is rare to find someone whom you can be your real self with. Hence, an authentic relationship is something that people do cherish and that they consider meaningful.

Having authentic relationships help in cultivating our ikigai.

Nick: I read through your paper and your study found that data indicated that close others in the student’s lives and their interpersonal relationships with them, played a key role in enhancing students ikigai.

And a word that seemed to pop up in their reports, or their conversations with you was this word, ibasho? How would you translate ibasho?

Shintaro: This is the word some other interviewee used and I kind of took it and made it the name of a sub-theory here. I would say it's an authentic relationship and what we mean by authentic you can be who you are, and they are true to you too.

As in the close others, maybe they're friends or family members or whoever that might be, they're also true to you too. Whatever they're doing for you, whether it's something that they're saying to you or you guys are doing something together or whatever that might be, their intentions are genuine, rather than a bit of superficial, ulterior motive. 

I think that's one thing that I should have mentioned in terms of Japanese culture and ikigai that would have unique cultural components. This is not that I have researched on it, but I read something, and pop culture and my anecdotal experiences to that.

In a collectivistic culture, I think sometimes relationships are not like we're all together and peaceful and friends but, Nick, probably you can speak to that too, sometimes there are politics, there are ulterior motives in a relationship, there are compromises, and negotiations, and passive negative interactions. 

There are so many things that are more complicated in those collectivistic cultures because there is more emphasis on the relationship. You cannot screw up some important connections because that matters in terms of your success.

So whatever that might be, you cannot basically say "oh, I'm awesome. I can do whatever” that's just quite not like that. So in those situations, a lot of relationships are not genuine, in a true sense at least in people's minds.

I think that's something that young adults and us also potentially many other people are feeling. And in those cultures and social dynamics, I think this ibasho, an authentic relationship really shines as something that people cherish.

Nick: Yeah, it's interesting what you've just said because it reminded me of the Japanese concept of the phrase of honne and tatemae. Where tatemae is a false self you present to the outside world.

Shintaro: Honne is your true self, true sound. The tricky part is in Canada and the US a lot we consider that type of, sometimes lip service and double standards as a negative thing, we consider that as not a good thing. 


In many collectivistic cultures, including Japan, it's just taken for granted, you cannot just believe in face value of what people are saying, or what people are doing depending on a social context like business or whatever that might be. 


You would usually assume that there are some double standards, and that's just okay. So in that kind of culture in this situation, it's important and sometimes rare to have a person with whom you can be real.

The Mixed-Method Data Collection Process For My Ikigai Study

Shintaro used a mixed-method approach for his study, where he collected both qualitative and quantitative data. The topic 'ikigai' is very complex and hard to discuss. Therefore, he used photo-elicitation, where his interviewees chose pictures related to their ikigai, making it easier for them to identify their ikigai.

Using photo-elicitation helps people distinguish their ikigai

Nick: Your study, and what you mentioned earlier, your data collection method was quite interesting. Would you like to go into detail about that?

Shintaro: Sure. This study was what we call a mixed-method, so there's an interview-based qualitative component and there's later on quantitative components with the bigger survey.

But the first qualitative component with the interview was also coupled with their photo choosing and photo-taking sometimes -- it's called photo-elicitation. It started from anthropology, cultural anthropology, it's been there in social science for 50, 70 years probably now, it's a very established thing. 

Sometimes in our field, like well-being research, it's not necessarily of use yet and I think that has a lot of potential and that's the reason why I chose it for my ikigai study. Because the topic of well-being and including ikigai, sometimes it's an abstract, and it's difficult to talk. 

I don't think even among the listeners, I don't think a lot of people can talk about, for example, meaning in life or happiness, I'm assuming they're English speakers, for an hour and a half. That's hard. I will ask you some questions, but it's still pretty tough. 

That would be resolved with the existence of pictures, there is something tangible that they can talk about. Especially for students there is your point that you're making that older adults tend to have so many life experiences that they can kind of pull back on, they're used to reflections.

Maybe young adults, university students don't have those reflective moments many times. A lot of interviewees said that this was the first time for them to seriously think about ikigai in their life.

The process was asking them to choose a maximum of 10 pictures that they thought related to ikigai in their smartphone, or they could take several days or a week to take new pictures that represented their ikigai.

They would put a title caption on it that would describe when, where, what kind of picture it is and stuff like that. I'll print it out and we'll have our interview with those physical copies of the picture, which I think helped.

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