生甲斐 ikigai Reason For Being

生甲斐 (ikigai): a reason for being, what makes a life worth the living.

What makes your life worth the living: not a goal you set, but the thing that gives your days their worth, the person or the work you get up for. It is an everyday Japanese word, on record since the fourteenth century, built on 甲斐 (kai), an old native noun for the worth an act turns out to have had; in surveys, people name their work, their family and their children. For five hundred years it was said mostly in the negative, of a life not worth the living, and the novelists around 1900 gave it the zest it carries now, a sense the psychiatrist Kamiya Mieko wrote a whole book about in 1966. The four-circle diagram that travels with the word in English, what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, is not the word: it was drawn in 2011 for the Spanish word for purpose and given the Japanese name in 2014. The Japanese asks only whether living is worth it, and names what makes it so; which thing that is, for you, is yours.

A native Japanese word: its earliest example in the 日本国語大辞典 is the fourteenth-century war chronicle 太平記, where it is said in the negative, of a life not worth the living.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 生甲斐.

Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days. It ships by USPS Priority Mail from Master Takase's studio in Washington State, boxed and ready to hang, with a printed page giving the art's English, romaji and Japanese.

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Every order is covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. If your scroll arrives damaged, or we made an error, we replace it or refund you in full, including shipping. Refund policy

Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase brushes your scroll by hand when you order it. Each scroll bears her red seal, 英利, and her signature.

The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with woven damask borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, and we have worked with them for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase