Before 'Ikigai' (Reason for Living), There Was 'Shiniga' (Reason for Dying) — A Small Reflection on the Coordinate Axes of Meaning

After reading Panth's article 'The Reason Why Isoroku Yamamoto's "Young People These Days..." Is Misunderstood' (July 23, 2026) published on Diamond Online, I encountered a theme that stayed with me for a while. It is the pair of words: 'ikigai' (reason for living) and 'shiniga' (reason for dying).

The auxiliary line of 'shiniga'

According to the article, immediately after the outbreak of the Pacific War, Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, left behind a letter to an acquaintance stating, 'One should not be so presumptuous as to say "young people these days..."' Today, this phrase circulates online as a famous quote praising tolerant elders, but the article puts a stop to that interpretation. It argues that it should be read in the context of the total war regime at the time: 'Since young people are risking their lives to fight for the country, this is no time to look down on them.' In other words, this phrase was not so much about trust in young people, but rather a respect for the weight of the 'death' that young people were bearing.

The foundation for this interpretation is the essay 'The Loss of Shiniga' published by sociologist Shun Inoue in 1973. Inoue argues that while a 'sense of finding value in dying' was widespread throughout society during the Pacific War, that sense—'shiniga'—rapidly disappeared after the war, and young people seeking 'ikigai' became the protagonists of the era. Inoue's keen insight is that both young people who 'have an ikigai' and those who lament that they 'do not have an ikigai' are actually standing on the same playing field: the postwar coordinate axis of 'ikigai'.

A strange correspondence with well-being research

This composition overlaps surprisingly well with the distinctions discussed in the world of happiness research. In the PERMA model proposed by psychologist Martin Seligman, 'Meaning' is treated as a separate pillar of well-being, independent of 'Positive emotion.' In terms of the distinctions made since ancient Greece, hedonic happiness (hedonia) and meaningful fulfillment (eudaimonia) have long been considered separate things.

Superimposing Inoue's argument onto this framework, one could say that 'shiniga' was an extreme form of eudaimonia. It is a form of gaining meaning by offering oneself to something beyond one's own life, such as the nation, a cause, or a community. On the other hand, the postwar 'ikigai' can be seen as a form that shifted the source of meaning to the individual's inner self (self-actualization, being true to oneself). Historically, one could say that Japanese society was forced to switch the source of meaning from something collective and transcendent to something personal and immanent.

The auxiliary line of Frankl

Psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning' (original title: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, 1946; Japanese version published by Misuzu Shobo, translated by Tokuji Shimoyama/Kayoko Ikeda), which chronicles his experiences in a concentration camp, is known as a book that left behind the clinical insight that people desperately seek meaning precisely under extreme circumstances.

While Frankl's perspective depicted the process of 'an individual finding meaning from within,' the era of 'shiniga' described by Inoue was a time when society as a whole shared a framework of meaning in advance, based on the premise of the finiteness of death. The ease of obtaining well-being is completely different between a society where individuals search for meaning alone and a society where society itself provides the coordinate axes of meaning. The latter may have been 'easier' in a sense. We in the modern era, who only have the former, must create both finiteness and coordinate axes from scratch by ourselves.

Brightness was the flip side of sadness

In Yasujiro Ozu's film 'An Autumn Afternoon' (1962), there is a scene where former army comrades reunite at a bar and reminisce about the past. When I saw that scene, I suddenly realized something. Perhaps the generation that experienced the war was not just forward-looking in being so bright and rushing through the period of high economic growth after the war. Rather, it may be that they had no other way to live but to act bright precisely because they carried deep sadness and loss.

For the generation that knew 'shiniga,' the postwar era of 'ikigai' may have also been a process of mourning for lost comrades and the framework of meaning they had shared. Behind the energy of working furiously and pursuing affluence, there was a brightness used to avoid looking directly at the sadness. The phenomenon that Shun Inoue called 'the loss of shiniga' can also be seen as a kind of collective adaptation where people jumped to the next meaning without being able to fully grieve their losses.

And we who live in an era where death is not side-by-side with us may have a certain assumption. It is the assumption that a person only truly becomes independent after losing their parents. But that might be wrong. Perhaps independence is not something that comes forcibly through an external loss like someone's death, but the very act of rebuilding the coordinate axes of meaning within oneself with one's own hands. For us who do not have 'shiniga,' independence may not be about avoiding sadness and acting bright, nor about waiting for someone's death, but a modest yet continuous endeavor of accepting finiteness and continuing to create meaning for ourselves.

A prescription for those 'lost in ikigai'

This also explains the current 'ikigai lost'—the feeling of not knowing what one is living for, even though one has all the things one wants and things to do. When the entities that once provided finiteness from the outside (war, strong community norms) disappeared, people were forced to create their own meaning. That is a task that is both free and accompanied by a corresponding psychological cost.

The 'work engagement' measures of organizations and teams are actually not unrelated to this structure. Setting up a philosophy or purpose can be reinterpreted as an attempt by the organization to take on some of the burden of self-creating meaning that has been left to the individual. However, history teaches us the danger of completely subordinating individual meaning to the goals of a group. A sense of distance, perhaps 'an organization that supports the power to create one's own meaning' rather than 'an organization that gives you an ikigai,' might be just right.

Reference: Panth, 'The Reason Why Isoroku Yamamoto's "Young People These Days..." Is Misunderstood,' Diamond Online, July 23, 2026 / Shun Inoue, 'The Loss of Shiniga,' 1973 / V. E. Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning,' Misuzu Shobo / M. Seligman, PERMA model (Flourish, 2011)