Note: As I continue to learn the Japanese language and culture, these Spotlight posts seek to highlight things I find curious, interesting, and meaningful. The relationship between language and culture runs deep. In fact, there are many points where it gets hard to tell one from the other. “Language is not merely an indifferent mechanism for cataloguing men’s experience but the language itself affects the cataloguing process…. The language system of each culture is a fluid factor in culture; it varies with each generation and serves as clue to its thinking as well as actually coloring and molding this thinking.” In other words, if I am going to learn how to reach Japanese people, I need to understand how Japanese people think. The process of how they think is intimately intwined with the language they use. Unfortunately for us, it goes far beyond simply using “Google Translate” to come up with the right vocabulary. Language embeds the foundational concepts of culture into everyday interaction. So, deeper we go into this wonderful world of language exploration! Much of this information comes from Charles Corwin’s Biblical Encounter with Japanese Culture (Tokyo, 1967).
Kōfuku (幸福) is comprised of two characters in kanji. The first character can represent “lucky” while the second character can mean “blessing”. The original words behind this one had to do with one’s arrow hitting the mark. In an ancient hunting and fishing society, successfully taking prey or making a catch meant food, health, and prosperity. We tend to think of hunting and fishing as more skill-based activities today, but the Japanese sense of this idea leans more toward the hunter or fisherman finding his quarry because of “good fortune” rather than skill or hard work. To be sure, skill and hard work are highly prized in Japanese society, and one is expected to employ both earnestly in order to expect good results. But one’s luck is given more weight.
The Japanese concept of happiness inherits these ideas. It is primarily a way to express that things have turned out well, or that one has achieved a “full” condition. It has also evolved to include a good aspect found amidst a disaster (what we might recognize as “a silver lining”).
With respect to the Old Testament, the word “happiness” does not occur in a noun form. This can perhaps be traced to our English nuance in which “hap” seems to introduce an element of “chance” into the meaning. We use other words like haphazard and happenstance in this way. So, biblical translators almost always chose the word “blessed” instead to convey the Hebrew conviction that man comes into happiness not by chance but by Divine help.
In the New Testament, the idea of happiness remains rooted in God’s blessings, but with an added eschatological element. One may be happy based not only on possession of the quality or experience of current life, but also on the present or future rewards that come with it. The Beatitudes are a prime example. On the surface, they appear as a paradox. They renounce the very things that most people seek and think are required for happiness (wealth, power, joy). Instead, those considered “blessed” or “happy” in the Beatitudes have sacrificed their natural desires. They have given up many things that seem desirable to the natural heart, and embrace many other things that make most people wince. But just as Jesus himself experienced glorious exaltation after emptying Himself, His followers also take up their own crosses in order to receive the inheritance of the earth and a great reward in heaven.
Japanese kōfuku is strictly a happiness which consists of material benefits, fullness, wealth, and a happy turn of events. It speaks of a mystical play of events turning out in one’s favor, either positively in material blessings or negatively in the avoidance of an impending disaster. The concept of happiness is so fixed in Japanese thinking that its importance is raised almost to the ultimate in values, or the measure of all things.
Biblical concepts of happiness instead develop an emphasis on blessing over current experience. This is possible because of the promise of Jesus. There is a circle of blessing: it flows down from God the Provider to men, who in turn bless God by giving Him due thanks and worship, and the circle is completed with a heavenly life of eternal rewards.
~ Clay
Fowlers in Japan 