“When I was two, our family moved to a rural town in the Kansai area to be with my father’s aging parents,” writes Mari Fujimoto in the introduction to the new book Ikigai and Other Japanese Words to Live by (published by Modern Books), which translates 43 of the most poignant phrases in the language. “I fondly remember spending Obon, the festival that honours one’s ancestors, at the house of my grandparents (both of whom were over 100 years old).” More than just a childhood memory, her experience reflects an outlook – one of many that appear in the book, questioning dominant Western values.

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Fujimoto – director of Japanese Studies at the City University of New York – is a linguist by training, and believes that by discovering words and phrases unique to other cultures, we can gain a wider understanding of our own lives. “It’s important to give another perspective, see that other life,” she tells BBC Culture. “In the West we tend to seek perfection, and we always feel like we have to be perfect, we have to do as much as we can, and meet other people’s expectations. Thinking about the way my grandparents were, and the traditional way of Japanese life, I thought we could stop and look around and accept the things that we don’t normally appreciate, like getting older.”