Ikigai and Mortality

Among the 43,391 subjects enrolled, 25,596 (59.0%) indicated that they found a sense of ikigai, 15,782 (36.4%) indicated they were uncertain, and 2013 (4.6%) indicated they did not find a sense of ikigai. As compared with those who found a sense of ikigai, those who did not were more likely to be unmarried, unemployed, have a lower educational level, have bad or poor self-rated health, have a high level of perceived mental stress, have severe or moderate bodily pain, have limitation of physical function, and less likely to walk (Table 1).

The Kaplan-Meier curves indicated that those who did not find a sense of ikigai were associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality (p < .001) (Figure 1). Table 2 shows the HR (95% CI) of all-cause and cause-specific mortality according to the response categories for ikigai. There was a statistically significant association between ikigai and the risk of all-cause mortality. As compared with subjects who found a sense of ikigai, the multivariate adjusted HR (95% CI) of all-cause mortality was 1.1 (1.0 –1.2) for those who were uncertain, and 1.5 (1.3–1.7) for those who did not find a sense of ikigai. This finding remained basically unchanged even after excluding the deaths that occurred within the first 2 years of follow-up.