小確幸(shōgakkō): Small but certain happiness in life.

I really like the word 小確幸 (shōgakkō), first coined by Murakami in his 1986 essay Afternoon in the Islets of Langerhans, and refers to small but certain happiness.

It consists of three characters:

小 (shō, “little”) + 確 (kaku, “sure”) + 幸 (kō, “fortune”), and x

Murakami gave many examples of them in his essay: Tearing off bits of a freshly baked loaf of bread, seeing neatly folded underwear in a drawer, listening to Brahms’ chamber music while gazing at the autumn afternoon sun; Alone drinking beer and reading magazines.

I did not, however, learn about the term until a few years ago from a film review. The film is called “Little Forest (2014)” (リトル・フォレスト), in which the young protagonist Ichiko returns to her small hometown Komori after going through events of heartbreak in Tokyo.

The remote village is surrounded by large forests, farmland, and is hours from the closest supermarket. She lives alone in her childhood house, farming the land and deciding the food to be made each day in accordance with the changing season and mood.

We see her meticulously makes each meal for herself with love and care, and contently enjoys the result of her work. In the rainy winter, she uses the residual heat of the stove to bake the warm, fragrant and glutinous bread. At the time of harvest in the cool autumn, she picks walnuts to make a fragrant walnut rice bento. In the sweltering summer, she makes a pot of ice-cold rice wine in the evening after finishing a hard day of farm work. These moments are 小確幸 (shōgakkō). They are nothing grand or magnificent, but they are certainly happiness.

The reviewer reflects that “witnessing her days filled with moments of 小確幸 (shōgakkō), one would be surprised to later find out that life has not been kind to her, she was someone who’s been abandoned by her family and lover.”

Indeed, in spite of the unfortunate cards life dealt her, she was still able to create these moments of “small but certain happiness” by living her life with a sense of ceremony. Reading this in one of the more difficulty period in my life, I found it tremendously inspiring to see someone with the ability to live with a sense of ceremony regardless of how mundane of even difficult life could be.

Since then I began to think about 小確幸 (shōgakkō) often, however, I soon realise the ability of creating and capturing these small certain happiness did not come naturally to me. I have been living too fast and being too focused on results, performance and achievement to notice much of anything that’s happening around me.

Fortunately, I found out that it is a skill that can be trained. It is not yet hopeless for me. Bit by bit, I became more grounded and noticed and appreciated more small moments in life to call them my 小確幸 (shōgakkō).

But you may ask: “Nice story Lolo. But what does this have to do with Betterstill with Techō?”

Yes, yes. You see, journaling has been an important tool in my journey of training the skill of appreciating 小確幸 (shōgakkō).

The act of writing/journaling is the ceremony I carry out everyday, and my techō book provides a space and prompt for me to notice and document all the 小確幸 (shōgakkō).

With Betterstill with Techō, we hope to help more people re-introduce the sense of ceremony that we have perhaps lost in our busy life, so that we could all be filled with “small but certain happiness”, no matter what life throws at us.

As the famous Chinese novelist Xiaobo Wang said:

“The sense of ceremony makes life a life, not a simple existence. It’s not enough us to only have this world, but also a poetic world.”

— -Lolo