＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
In 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Bhutan, the newly married young King and Queen of Bhutan visited Japan, creating a “Bhutan whirlwind.”
The king was a gentle, polite and handsome man similar to Antonio Inoki, and the queen was young and pretty, which is probably why they became so popular.
１．”The happiest country in the world”
At the time, television and newspapers reported that Bhutan had the world’s happiest citizens and that 97% of the people considered themselves happy. In other words, the idea of ”contentment” as Laozi put it (those who know enough are rich) had permeated the nation.
Certainly, the Bhutanese people shown on the television screen all had carefree smiles and looked like “happiness itself.” Being a contrarian and not accepting information at face value, I suspected that they were only putting on a “happy face” because they were on television, but it is true that at that time, there may have been many Bhutanese people who “considered themselves happy.”
This is similar to photographs of children in Japan during the poor post-war period, or of children in developing countries such as Africa, all smiling happily and brightly.
The King’s speech at the Japanese Diet, given the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, was warm and compassionate, and he highly praised the qualities of the Japanese people, such as “quiet dignity, self-confidence, discipline and inner strength,” even in the most difficult circumstances. It was a great encouragement to those affected by the disaster and other Japanese people.
Bhutan has set its own indicator, Gross National Happiness (GNH), instead of GDP (Gross National Product), and aims to maximize it. In other words, it values ”spiritual wealth, not economic wealth.”
“Happiness is not the happiness that comes from being wealthy, but the happiness of being able to live an ordinary life,” he said. “There is a sense of security in knowing that you can eat three meals a day, have a place to sleep, and something to wear. Just that makes you feel content and happy.”
２．Has Bhutan become a “normal country” now?
However, I recently came across an interesting report. In Bhutan, where the ban on the Internet has been lifted and technology has spread rapidly, it seems that everyone now uses smartphones, just like in Japan.
The main things people do on their smartphones are chat and use social media, and the Chinese app “WeChat” seems to be rapidly gaining popularity.
If you ask the people of Bhutan about their “level of happiness” now, I have a doubtful feeling that they are the happiest people in the world.
Bhutan’s national policy is to “maximize GNH (Gross National Happiness),” that is, to “aim to be the happiest country in the world,” but if you ask them if they are “happy” on a “true” or “honest” basis, I don’t think they are the happiest in the world.
Bhutan can no longer return to its pre-1970 “isolation” and it is impossible to go back to a society without smartphones. It is safe to say that the same or even greater changes have hit the country as during the Meiji Restoration in Japan.
It seems that the country also faces a number of problems, such as “skyrocketing prices,” “youth unemployment,” “economic disparity between urban and rural areas,” and “increasing crime.” According to the writer of the reportage article, his impression was that it was an “ordinary country” rather than a special “country with the world’s highest level of happiness.
Many people may have mistakenly believed that Bhutan was a utopia, a paradise, or an “ideal land” based on reports that Bhutan has the world’s highest level of happiness, but it seems that this was an illusion.
As a reminder, the 2019 World Happiness Rankings by the United Nations were released on March 20, 2019. (March 20 is designated “World Happiness Day.”)
This was a ranking of 156 countries worldwide, with Japan in 58th place and Bhutan in 95th. Incidentally, Finland ranked first, and South Sudan was at the bottom of the list.
This ranking survey was started in 2012 by the Bhutanese government to promote the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH). The survey quantifies and ranks the level of happiness based on the “degree of freedom of the people, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, politics, social welfare system,” and other factors.
In other words, it is an objective measurement of happiness from various perspectives, including political and economic aspects, unlike the conclusion that “97% of the population thinks they are happy” based solely on the results of a survey of the public.
However, I do not think it is fair to dismiss Bhutan’s concept of “Gross National Happiness (GNH) maximization” and happiness surveys in general.
After all, human desires are boundless, and I think it is necessary to put a stop to them at a certain point, to “know contentment” and to “avoid excessive greed. What do you think?
３．Ripples from the Suicide of a Bhutanese Student
It seems that some students who came to Japan to study, believing in the sweet talk that “if you study in Japan for two years, you will be introduced to a high-income job,” are now living in a life of part-time work and are not even introduced to a high-income job.
In January of this year, one of the foreign students who had come to Japan under the “Learn and Earn Program,” which the Ministry of Labor and Human Resources of Bhutan and a study abroad broker had been promoting since April 2017, committed suicide.
The “Learn and Earn Program” was a system that touted that “if you study in Japan, you can cover your tuition and living expenses with a part-time job, and you can easily enter graduate school or find a job. Believing this, more than 700 young people borrowed more than 1 million yen to study in Japan.
However, it is not so easy to find a high income job even for a Japanese person. It is impossible for a young Bhutanese who cannot speak Japanese well enough to find a high-income job just by studying in Japan for two years.
The Bhutan government’s anti-corruption commission has also issued a report investigating allegations of corruption in the form of bribes from a “study abroad placement broker” to the “Bhutan Ministry of Labor and Human Resources.
This is an example of failure by Bhutan, which is suffering from high youth unemployment, which is said to be as high as 30%, through “naive export of young labor.