The Japanese art of happiness: From ikigai, to ritual, to embracing old age

Pico Iyer, traveler writer and author of “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise,” Pico Iyer explores his love for Japan and why it remains, for him, the “most unique and distinctive place I've ever been.” Iyer shares why he’s drawn to the culture’s appreciation of community and elders. 

“In California, many of us are trying to be as young and full of energy and enthusiasm [as possible], but in Japan, which is a very hierarchical place, the older the better, because age connotes wisdom, maturity, and experience,” Iyer says. 

More: In search of paradise — and why travel writer Pico Iyer says it may be within

Iza Kavedžija, social and medical anthropologist at Cambridge University and author of “Making Meaningful Lives: Tales from an Aging Japan,” describes some of the principals and traditions which abound in Japanese culture and imbue a sense of meaning, purpose, and well-being into many older generations of Japanese people. 

“We don't tend to think of older people as driving the processes of social change,” says Kavedžija, “but that's exactly what they were doing.”