Choosing a Path of Your Own Will and Making That Path the Right One

Did you know that Japan is the world’s third-largest economy and ranks No. 1 in terms of healthy longevity, yet ranks no higher than 50th in terms of happiness? Unfortunately, such shocking figures about Japan are in no short supply: the nation also ranks 132nd out of 139 countries in terms of happiness of working businesspeople. Among developed countries, Japan is dead last in terms of hopes for the future among the young. And only 6% of employees feel passionate about their jobs. Given this state of affairs, I believe we can hardly say that the Japanese people are sufficiently happy.

A great deal of research has been conducted on happiness and its measurement. One conclusion we can draw is that happiness springs less from academic achievement and annual income and more from self-determination. In surveys to determine happiness rankings, Japan scores dreadfully low in terms of freedom to choose one’s own path in life, testifying that the feeling of self-determination is lacking in this country. Why is self-determination so difficult in Japanese society?

There was a time when Japan’s economic growth rate was high and the key to that success was thought to lie in following a certain unique approach to life. Enter a good university so you can join a good company, the Japanese were told. Once in the working world, a centralized, authoritarian, right-facing management style was the most fruitful, as it led to material wealth. And undoubtedly, the wealth amassed during that era laid the foundations for modern Japan.

But one of the by-products of this period was a culture that said that happiness was to be found in the material world.
That culture remains powerful even in the modern era, when the right answer is felt to lie in intangibles such as education and choosing the right profession at the right time. These beliefs pressure individuals to conform, thereby snatching away the will to choose for oneself.

There’s no point in denying the past. But times have changed.
We’ve moved from an age in which material wealth was the measure of happiness to one with different standards of wealth and wellbeing, of diversification of values. The days of a one-size-fits-all formula for success are gone.

It’s time to part ways with the successes of the past, to choose a path of our own will and make the path we chose the correct one.

We define “independent people” as “those who, unencumbered by received wisdom, proceed by choosing a path of their own will and making their chosen path the right one.” We aim for a society that is densely populated with such independent people.

To be sure, that process is filled with pain and hardship. But once they overcome those difficulties, young people can carry their ambitions into the future, working people can push vigorously onward and upward, and many others will find that they are happy now, without comparing themselves to others. We believe this happy state of affairs will one day be commonplace.

That conviction is the belief that underpins our vision, “growing the ranks of independent personnel to increase happiness in people’s lives.”

Naoto Kimura
President and CEO
Hajimari Inc.