How Does Japan Rank on the 2024 World Happiness Report?

I noticed that the 2024 World Happiness Report had been released, and got curious to see how Japan ranked this year. Let’s explore the ranking together in this blog post!

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Japan Ranks 51st In World Happiness

This year, Japan is ranked #51 in the World Happiness Report. This is down from 2023 (when it came in at #47) but better than the past few years, when Japan bounced between #54 and #62.

The World Happiness ranking is created by comparing many factors, including

GDP, economic growth and inflation
Consumption and investment
The labor market
Overall trust in the political system
The country’s ranking on economic freedom indexes
Access to healthcare, child mortality, and so on.

As expected, Nordic countries dominate the list because they created the algorithm. Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway are all at or near the top. Luxembourg is smiling at #8, Switzerland is sitting pretty at #9, and beautiful New Zealand comes in at #11. The larger economies are comparatively less happy but still doing fine, with the U.K. at #20, the U.S. at #23, Germany at #24 and France at #27.

Is Japan a Happy Place?

This is a difficult question to answer. If you ask any Japanese on the street if they’re happy, they’ll firmly insist that they are not. But this is based on the Japanese people’s great humility and self-effacing manner.

You can test this yourself. The next time you meet a Japanese person, compliment them on something, such as their language skill or attractiveness. If they’re a “real” Japanese, they’ll vehemently deny your compliment because that’s what you do in Japan. If they accept your praise with a curt “thank you!” it means they’ve spent a long time studying abroad.

Why are Japanese people the best in the world? Here are six reasons!

The concept at work here is 謙遜 kenson, the strong sense of humility and modesty that is a core personality trait for almost every Japanese person. To be self-effacing and never boastful is taught to all Japanese from an early age, and is even built into the language. The idea of kenson is also a big part of mastering Japanese martial arts.

Can You Define Happiness?

How would you define happiness? I would say it would involve working a job you enjoyed reasonably well and had a secure position at. It would include being able to move forward economically each year, with “good years” hopefully outnumbering challenging ones. It would involve having family and friends to connect with. Following the “love, work and play” theory of happiness, you should also have hobbies you enjoy doing at the end of the day in order to feel happy.

And, of course, having your favorite anime get that second season you’ve been asking for. Ha, just kidding about that last one!

One concept that’s important to Japan’s sense of happiness is ikigai, literally meaning one’s “reason for being.” If you have something that gets you out of bed every morning, you’re probably going to be happier on average. I’m fortunate that I found my own ikigai, which is finding topics about Japan and anime and blogging about them for you!

(My wife’s parent run an old, dilapidated liquor shop on the first floor of our house that gets perhaps 1-2 customers each day, usually elderly neighbors who stop by to chat. We’d honestly like them to close the shop, but we wouldn’t want to interfere with their ikigai and harm their happiness.)

What’s Wrong with the World Happiness Index?

As I wrote before, an algorithm designed to measure the happiness of every country in the world is going to have lots of biases built in. Japan, South Korea and India are all very different from Northern Europe, and trying to measure them using the same system is bound to yield questionable results.

What if Japan made its own ranking, tracking ideas like giri and ninjo, traditional concepts of balancing someone’s personal desires with his responsibilities to society (or in the original meaning, to his feudal lord)? What if Japan ranked other nations on the austere principles of Zen Buddhism? What if they judged other countries by omotenashi, the absolute dedication to providing guests with great service. What if they organized all the countries of the world based on the Confucian concept of filial piety or absolute obedience to one’s parents? They could put Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China at the top of the list, and rank Finland, Sweden and Norway at the bottom.

Thanks for reading this blog post about Japan’s ranking in the World Happiness Index for 2024, which you can read here if you like. How is your country? Do you think it’s happy compared to other countries, and why or why not? Tell us in the comments below!

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