The quest for happiness in Japan

要旨

Japan is a fortunate country.What better measure is there to support this assertion than declining mortality and growing life expectancy?!The Japanese do not die during the first precarious months after birth, enjoying as they do the lowest infant mortality on earth.They do not die on the battlefield because their constitution prevents them from going to war.Thanks to social bonds and neighbourhoods that are relatively intact, they do not die of street crime.Violence, though hardly unknown, is not a major cause of death.They don't kill themselves eating too much junk food or drinking too much alcohol.Fatal traffic accidents have been declining steadily.And medical research is making progress improving the protection from coronary heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in Japan.As a result, Japan has over the past half century experienced unprecedented life expectancy gains (Yanagishita, Guralnik 1988).At the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy at birth was 44.0 years for males and 44.8 years for females, far below levels in Western countries.At the end of the century, the Japanese topped the world list of life expectancy at 81.25 years on average (85.6 for women and 78.5 for men, in 2006).The massive gain in life expectancy is irrefutable evidence of a highly successful society, and a successful state allowing its citizens to flourish.Longevity has traditionally been regarded as an indication of happiness.If this still holds true Japan must be a happier country now by a large measure than it was a century ago.Japan is also more prosperous today than it ever has been before.During the half century from 1955 to 2005, GDP per capita grew by a factor of 30.Between 1980 and 2000, Gross National Income per person doubled from 2,063,000 yen to 4,084,000 yen.Most Japanese enjoy a higher level of material comfort than their forebears, living in bigger homes equipped with more amenities.The choice of goods offered to them in the market would have baffled their parents when they were young.Politically they are living in a peaceful, stable and open environment largely free of coercion.Progress in education has been phenomenal.High school enrolment rates gained more than 30 per cent from 1955 to 1970 and were approximating 100 per cent at century's end, and the enrolment rate for university has also been upward.While 12.8 per cent of high school students were progressing to universities in 1965, their share had swelled to 41.3 per cent in 2003.The Japanese have access to all the information they could possibly want being able to make use of it from an earlier age and up to a higher age than previous generations.Since the 1980s, Japan has consistently ranked among the top ten countries of all three categories of The Quest for Happiness in Japan

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