＜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
1. The Law of Constant Happiness
When I was young, a senior colleague at work once told me about a law called the “Law of Constant Happiness.”
This meant that while some people in the world lead happy lives and others lead unhappy lives, the world as a whole is “zero-sum” (like the “zero-sum games” used in economics’ “game theory,” where the total sum is zero; mahjong is also a “zero-sum game”). Or perhaps it meant, regarding an individual’s life, “people who are happy in the first half of their lives often become relatively unhappy in the second half,” or “people who are successful in their careers and happy at work often end up unhappy due to family discord and other factors (due to neglecting their families, etc.),” or perhaps it meant both. I’ve forgotten the details, but for some reason it made an impression on me.
Masashi Sada wrote and composed a famous song called “Muenzaka.” It includes the line, “People sometimes talk about good luck and bad luck, but when I look at you, I think that there really is such a thing.”
It seems that sayings like “Beautiful people have short lives,” “talented people are often sick,” “everything in life is unpredictable,” and “good fortune and misfortune are like a twisted rope” are certainly true.
“When winter comes, spring is not far away” is one of my favorite sayings. When faced with misfortune or difficulties, I remind myself that good things will come again when the time is right. Other similar sayings include “where there is pain, there is pleasure,” “pleasure is the seed of pain, pain is the seed of pleasure,” and “when pain ends, sweetness comes.”
I’ve heard that “people’s luck is divided into ‘heavenly luck’ and ‘earthly luck.'” “Heavenly luck” is luck that comes from heaven and is beyond human comprehension. “Earthly luck” is luck that accumulates through human actions.
There’s also the saying, “Victory is determined by the luck of the moment.” Winning or losing depends on the luck of the moment, and it’s not necessarily the case that the strong win and the weak lose. These words are used as words of consolation to the defeated and as a warning to the victor.
I seem to recall seeing a scene in a historical TV drama after the Battle of Sekigahara, in which Tokugawa Ieyasu spoke these words to Ishida Mitsunari, the defeated general, and untied him from his ropes. Tokugawa Ieyasu also nearly lost his life when Sanada Yukimura charged his main camp during the Summer Siege of Osaka. If Tokugawa Ieyasu had been killed and the Osaka side had won, I believe history would have been very different. However, there are no “ifs” in history.
I’ve also heard that Bhutan, once said to have the “highest national happiness in the world,” has now become a normal country. I believe “maximizing Gross National Happiness” was the slogan of the King of Bhutan, but I believe that before the wave of modernization hit, Bhutanese people “knew contentment and 97% of people felt a sense of happiness.” If the “law of constant happiness” is correct, it may mean that “the amount of happiness for each individual will decrease, but many people will enjoy happiness widely and in a shallow manner.” However, since “happiness” is subjective and relative, I think it is unreasonable to think that there is an absolute upper limit to happiness.
2. The level of happiness of the “Taisho generation” like my parents
My mother was very sickly in her youth and often bedridden. Her father died of illness in his 30s, and her mother in her 50s. And her older sister died of illness in her 20s. However, my mother became healthy as if she had “survived illness” since middle age. Even now, at 97, she has no dementia and diligently reads the newspaper every day. She recently mused, “I feel like I inherited my longevity from my parents and older sister, who were both short-lived.”
My father was drafted into the Marine Corps at the age of 22 in 1942 (Showa 17), and served as a garrison on Hainan Island in China until the end of the war. His mother died of illness in her 40s, and his father also died of illness in his 50s. Apparently, their final farewell was a visit at the naval base in Kure before heading to China.
After the war, my father returned to work for the former Japanese National Railways (now JR West), where he worked until he retired at the age of 55.He then lived a leisurely life of “farming in the sun and reading in the rain” for 29 years, before dying of a cerebral infarction at the ripe old age of 84, without any significant illnesses.
My father’s youth was unhappy, like most men of his generation who were drafted into war, but the latter half of his life was very peaceful and happy, and even as a pensioner, I think he had more leisure than our generation.
3. The level of happiness enjoyed by us, the “baby boomer generation born after the war”
In contrast, my generation, apart from the food shortages of our childhoods, enjoyed a fairly fortunate early life, free of war, thanks to the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, despite the excessive competition caused by the baby boom. However, from middle age onward, we were hit by a storm of the bubble burst, the Lehman Shock, restructuring, and salary cuts. Is it true that “where there’s pain, there’s pain”?
The company where I worked as a temporary employee also implemented large-scale restructuring. Due to the reassignment of regular employees, I, a temporary employee, was terminated (dispatch termination) just before turning 70. I had no intention of finding a new job, but it seems that even people younger than me are having a hard time finding satisfying new employment.
Then, since January 2020, the global spread (pandemic) of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) has led to the issuance and extension of a state of emergency, forcing us to live a life of uncertainty and inconvenience, including refraining from going out (staying home), suspending business operations, avoiding crowded places, working from home, and closing all schools.
Following the national “state of emergency” being lifted for Osaka, Hyogo, and Kyoto prefectures on May 21, Osaka Prefecture lifted its requests for people to refrain from going out and for businesses to close as of midnight on May 23, allowing economic activity to resume.
However, if a “second wave” occurs and the number of new infections increases again, we may be forced back into “voluntary business closures,” and I worry that the “coronavirus recession” could become prolonged and turn into a situation similar to the Great Depression.
If the “law of constant happiness” applies to individuals as well, it seems to apply to my parents’ lives and my own life as well. What do you think?
4. An interesting story about “Happiness Station”
As an aside, there used to be a station called “Koufuku Station” on the Japan National Railways Hiroo Line in Koufuku-cho, Obihiro City, Hokkaido. The station’s name was considered auspicious, and its train and admission tickets were very popular. Even after the line was closed in 1987, the station has been developed as a tourist spot.
However, the place name “Koufuku” is a relatively recent creation, and it was previously called “Kounai.”
In 1897, a group of people migrated from Ono, Fukui Prefecture, and because the Satsunai River (“Satsunai” means “dry river” in Ainu) flows nearby, the village developed by the settlers was given the character “Satsunai” (fortunate tremors). The character “shin” (shake) was used for “nai” because the archaic word for earthquake is “nai.”
However, because this was difficult to read, the name gradually came to be read as “Koushin” (an on-reading). Later, the name of the settlement was changed to “Koufuku” (fortunate tremors) in recognition of the large number of people who migrated to “Koushin” from Fukui.