Further Details

Title: What Makes Life Worth Living?
Condition: New
Subtitle: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds
ISBN-10: 0520201337
EAN: 9780520201330
ISBN: 9780520201330
Publisher: University of California Press
Format: Paperback
Release Date: 05/04/1996
Description: Here is an original and provocative anthropological approach to the fundamental philosophical question of what makes life worth living. Gordon Mathews considers this perennial issue by examining nine pairs of similarly situated individuals in the United States and Japan. In the course of exploring how people from these two cultures find meaning in their daily lives, he illuminates a vast and intriguing range of ideas about work and love, religion, creativity, and self-realization. Mathews explores these topics by means of the Japanese term ikigai, "that which most makes one's life seem worth living." American English has no equivalent, but ikigai applies not only to Japanese lives but to American lives as well. Ikigai is what, day after day and year after year, each of us most essentially lives for. Through the life stories of those he interviews, Mathews analyzes the ways Japanese and American lives have been affected by social roles and cultural vocabularies. As we approach the end of the century, the author's investigation into how the inhabitants of the world's two largest economic superpowers make sense of their lives brings a vital new understanding to our skeptical age.
Language: English
Country/Region of Manufacture: US
Item Height: 229mm
Item Length: 152mm
Item Width: 18mm
Item Weight: 454g
Author: Gordon Mathews
Genre: Society & Culture
Topic: Social Sciences
Release Year: 1996

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