The title The Ethics of Leisure and Boredom may seem intimidating at first glance, but simply put, this is a book that explains what leisure means for modern people, when and why people feel bored, and how to enjoy life in leisure and face boredom with ease.

The author of this book, Koichiro Kokubu, is a professor at the University of Tokyo. Although he is a philosophy professor, he has written several accessible philosophy books. This summer, I had a long period of “leisure” time, and to pass the “boredom,” I picked up this book again and finished it over a few days.

# Why Do People Feel Bored?

In the preface, the book presents a refreshing idea: after achieving abundance, people ironically encounter “unhappiness.”

The preface uses William Morris’s social revolution as an example to illustrate this concept, but perhaps it resonates more with modern people through examples from daily life.

For instance, when you set a goal and work towards it, upon achieving it, though you feel a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of emptiness often creeps in, leading to a kind of burnout and a lack of motivation to do anything.

Or perhaps, after a year of hard work, you finally have a long-awaited holiday. However, whether you’re sleeping in, browsing your phone, playing games, or traveling, you may feel that you didn’t cherish the holiday or even feel it would have been better to keep working.

Is this sense of leisure and boredom (this “unhappiness”) truly what we wanted?

Here, building on Morris’s theory, the author expands on the biblical phrase “Man cannot live by bread alone” to suggest:

Humans cannot survive without bread. But people cannot live by bread alone. We need not only bread but also roses. As humans, we cannot live without beauty to adorn life.

This introduces the principles of leisure and boredom. The author uses hunting rabbits as an example to analyze what this act truly means.

In reality, the hunter is not particularly interested in the rabbit itself; rather, the desire arises as a means of entertainment, a way to pass the time. The object of desire is the rabbit, while the actual act is hunting. The hunter anticipates both the possibility of returning empty-handed and the risk of unforeseen incidents.

It’s similar to why many people find joy in fishing; if you simply bought them a fish from the store, the angler wouldn’t feel satisfied. The joy comes from studying fishing equipment, waking up early to prepare, pondering fishing techniques, enduring the frustration of not catching anything, and finally, the triumph of catching a big fish.

Through this analysis, the author proposes a conceptual view: the opposite of boredom is not pleasure, but excitement. It is precisely because of the possibility of misfortune and suffering (the risk of failure, the frustration of catching nothing) that people experience excitement. Nietzsche held a similar view: people suffer not from emptiness, but from the pursuit of things that bring suffering.

This assertion might seem pessimistic, but it’s not without merit. Humans aren’t born to seek happiness; although people who feel bored may look for “interesting things” or “things that make them happy,” ultimately, they are seeking things that excite them.

So why do people feel this sense of boredom and desire for excitement? The author analyzes this from a historical (genealogical) perspective.

According to the book, humans began to settle down about 10,000 years ago. Before that, humans lived a mobile lifestyle. In movement, people constantly needed to adapt to new environments, and in adapting, the brain processed a surplus of information, placing people in a state of continuous tension in these life-or-death situations. That is, people had no leisure. Human brains, with their powerful information-processing capabilities, were fully utilized in this environment, so they naturally didn’t feel bored.

However, once humans settled, their living environment no longer changed drastically; everything they saw and heard became familiar. Human exploration began to wane, and the brain’s information-processing capacity was no longer fully utilized. Thus, the focus of exploration turned inward, forcing people to confront the boredom and emptiness within themselves.

# The Respected Leisure Class and the Consumer Fighting Boredom

“Leisure” and “boredom” are easy to understand; one is an objective condition, the other a subjective feeling. However, leisure and boredom do not have a cause-and-effect relationship.

Up until the 19th century, the “leisure class,” who had ample leisure time but did not feel bored, was envied.

According to economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, the leisure class refers to those who already possess substantial wealth and thus don’t need to engage in productive labor, spending their leisure time on entertainment and social activities. This class occupied the upper tiers of society, with the financial security to abstain from labor. For them, “leisure” was a property in itself, a display of wealth ownership and social status. This leisure was considered “dignified leisure (otium cum dignitate).”

The book organizes the relationship between leisure and boredom as follows:

Unlike the leisure class, modern people are granted the right to leisure but don’t know how to spend it, or are preoccupied with daily chores, feeling bored, which may reflect the status of modern working individuals.

Even worse are those without leisure who don’t feel bored, as all their time is consumed by labor. Even if they have leisure as modern workers do, it is often “leisure that serves labor,” leading to the popular phrase “working like a horse.”

This “working-class leisure” emerged in modern times. The author cites the Fordist mass-production model at Ford Motor Company in the 1930s to illustrate this. The capitalists at Ford granted workers the right to take vacations and established unions while secretly employing detectives to monitor employees’ behavior during breaks. The book also references the Prohibition era in the U.S. in the 1930s to further illustrate how capitalists controlled workers to increase productivity. Although modern corporate management promotes WLB (work-life balance), from a capitalist perspective, “leisure” is an integral part of “labor.”

Consequently, when modern non-leisure-class people are granted leisure, they often feel bored because they don’t know how to use it. Quoting economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, the author analyzes modern boredom from an economic perspective.

Feeling bored, modern people develop desires to pass the time; these desires are actually created by businesses and advertising. We are constantly fed “new information” created to satisfy these desires, and we let ourselves “consume” this information endlessly.

The author introduces an interesting idea contrasting “consumption” with “waste.”

Waste refers to using or acquiring resources unnecessarily and excessively; conversely, waste is moderate and based on satisfaction.

Consumption refers to the use or acquisition of resources to satisfy desires. Unlike waste, consumption has no limits and is insatiable.

Modern people consume “information” and “concepts” formed within information. To gain wealth, capitalists and producers create an endless stream of information, triggering limitless “consumption.” People’s desires grow larger, consumption fails to satisfy these desires, and in turn, consumption breeds more boredom. Thus, modern society has evolved into a “consumer society,” and modern people are trapped in an “endless consumption trap,” entering a vicious cycle of boredom and emptiness.

# Three Forms of Boredom and the Fate of “Boredom”

This is the most refined part of the book and where the author shines. Using the theories of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the author offers a philosophical discourse on “boredom” (a deliberate pun here, haha).

According to Heidegger’s book Introduction to Metaphysics, there are three forms of “boredom”:

1. Boredom due to something (feeling bored because of something specific)
2. Boredom in a certain situation (feeling bored due to a certain scenario)
3. Boredom that arises inexplicably (feeling bored for no particular reason)

The author provides two vivid examples from daily life to illustrate the first and second forms of boredom.

We’re sitting in a very modest station on a rural railway line in a remote village. The next train won’t come for another four hours… We look at the timetable, carefully studying the route map and distances to other regions. But beyond a few place names, we know nothing about this area. We glance at the clock—only fifteen minutes have passed. There’s a book in our luggage, but we don’t feel like reading… Pacing back and forth feels tedious, so we sit on a stone and draw various things on the ground. After a while, we turn to the clock again—only half an hour has passed. Time drags on so slowly. (First form)

Or, we are invited to an evening gathering. Dinner is served, and both the food and the entertainment are tasteful. After dinner, everyone happily sits together, perhaps listening to some music, laughing and chatting. It feels interesting and enjoyable. We leave very satisfied. However, only then do I realize that I was actually very bored at tonight’s gathering. (Second form)

The first form is very common. Besides the example of waiting at a station, things like standing in line or attending a boring meeting are also examples of this type of boredom, a passive “void” imposed by external forces. Looking at the aforementioned diagram on the relationship between leisure and boredom, “having leisure yet feeling bored” is the first form of boredom. Although we could read at the station, we often don’t feel inclined to read there. Why? Because the act of reading doesn’t match our expectation in that setting. When time is prolonged and we are forced to remain in this prolonged time, we search for things to do to stave off boredom.

The second form is more in line with modern life. It’s a mixture of boredom and engagement; the emptiness arises from within ourselves. Looking again at the diagram, the question-marked “no leisure yet feeling bored” represents this second form. In our daily lives, we constantly check social media, watch short videos, go window shopping, or party at clubs. While these activities are not boring per se, an inner sense of boredom and emptiness still arises.

The book does not provide an example for the third form, but we all occasionally feel that life is boring and meaningless. This type of boredom cannot be alleviated by any activity; it’s a deep-rooted, negative feeling of detachment and indifference towards life, the most profound form of boredom.

As mentioned before, because humans have shifted from nomadic to settled lifestyles, the third form, “boredom for no apparent reason,” is humanity’s fate.

Humans generally spend their daily lives in the second form, “no leisure yet feeling bored.” However, they occasionally fall into the abyss of the third form, questioning if they should focus on something meaningful. In such moments, people escape from the third form of boredom to the first form of “boredom due to something.”

We don’t want to waste time, so we aim to maximize our time use in daily life, searching for things to pass the time. In Heidegger’s discourse, we become “slaves to daily work,” trapped in the first form of boredom. In a sense, the third and first forms of boredom are fundamentally the same.

Although Heidegger believed it’s difficult to eliminate the third form of boredom, he saw great value in it: In “unexplained boredom,” people explore their potential—these “potentials” are our “freedom.” Boredom enables people to understand freedom, so we should exercise this freedom through decision-making. People gain freedom through boredom. Therefore, make decisions—this is Heidegger’s conclusion on boredom.

However, although the author spends significant time discussing Heidegger’s theory, he disagrees with this conclusion. He argues, If one makes a decision, they become a slave to that decision. How is this different from becoming a “slave to daily work” in the first form of boredom? He believes that to avoid being enslaved by any action or object, people should live in the second form, where boredom and engagement are blended, to truly escape boredom.

# Do Animals Feel Bored?

To illustrate the relationship among these three forms of boredom and lead to his final conclusion, the author poses a question: Do animals feel bored? He introduces the biological concept of “Umwelt” to answer this question.

Umwelt is a concept proposed by Jakob von Uexküll, meaning each animal lives in its own perceptual world, acting as the subject within that world. General time and space (Umgebung, or “environment”) are perceived uniquely by each animal.

The significance of this concept is to express the view that humans differ from other animals in that, unlike animals who have only one Umwelt, humans can easily move between different Umwelts through learning and imagination.

To better understand this, let’s use the example of a guide dog and an entomologist. A guide dog, through training, gains the ability to move into a “human-like Umwelt.” However, aside from guide dogs, few other animals can acquire this ability. An entomologist’s perception of an insect differs completely from that of a layperson, but with knowledge, an average person could approach the entomologist’s “Umwelt.”

Because humans can move freely between different Umwelts, they feel boredom.

# Coexistence with Boredom

In the final chapter, the author presents three conclusions:

The first conclusion is that by reading The Ethics of Leisure and Boredom, you’ve developed your own thoughts and coping strategies on leisure and boredom. While presenting the first conclusion, the author cautions that readers who skip straight to the conclusion will be disappointed. Therefore, with the thoughts sparked by reading the previous chapters and the reading comprehension to get to this point, readers will have a deeper understanding of these conclusions.

The second conclusion is a return to “luxury.” Luxury equates to waste; waste involves receiving more than necessary, and thus waste is a condition of an abundant life.

Modern society is full of consumption temptations. People aren’t “receiving things”; rather, they’re consuming endlessly for “desires” and “concepts.” People shouldn’t consume things; they should “receive things,” learning to be content and to “waste.”

Here, the author proposes an interesting idea: we should also “train” ourselves to receive things, such as appreciating daily life’s basics like food, clothing, and shelter, and cultivating an aesthetic for art, entertainment, and recreation.

Using food as an example, if one wants to “appreciate gourmet food,” some training is required. Complex and detailed flavors involve engaging multiple senses to savor and appreciate; one might wonder why a dish tastes so good, leading to knowledge about the dish and experiences (past “training”) that deepen appreciation. Merely eating to fill hunger lacks the conscious “training” of appreciating culinary enjoyment.

Similarly, if you’ve “trained” yourself to appreciate railways and geography, looking at railway timetables and maps wouldn’t feel boring; or, if you’ve learned entomology, you might find interest in the insects at a station, alleviating boredom.

The third conclusion is that once immersed in a single Umwelt, one escapes boredom. Humans, being able to move between different Umwelts, often feel bored; but by immersing in one Umwelt, or “becoming animal,” they avoid boredom.

For example, if one trains themselves to “enjoy the fun of railways and geography,” then waiting four hours at a station would be less boring and more fulfilling. For railway and geography enthusiasts, those four hours in the “railway geek Umwelt” would fly by.

This process is a virtuous cycle:

Becoming animal (entering a single Umwelt) => Training => Not feeling bored, experiencing enjoyment and excitement => Becoming animal

In summary, the conclusion of this book can be summed up in one sentence: By enjoying “the existence of being human,” we can seize the opportunity to “become animals.”

# Postscript

Last summer, the paperback edition of this book was displayed prominently in a bookstore’s promotional area. At that time, I was back in Japan briefly, going through a bittersweet experience that left me struggling with “emptiness and boredom.” So, I bought this book without hesitation and glanced through the introduction. However, upon returning to the U.S., I became so busy and mentally overwhelmed that I didn’t have the mindset to read it, so I set it aside. This summer, I happened to have some time filled with emptiness and boredom again, and indeed found myself in the first form of boredom mentioned in the book, “having leisure but feeling bored.” To kill time, I started re-reading it.

Reading this book did give me the second form of boredom, “having no leisure but still feeling bored.” I genuinely found reading this book very interesting, stimulating my thoughts and enhancing my training in “enjoying the pleasures of philosophy” (haha). However, the book is filled with so many citations and references that it’s quite challenging to understand. Reading these philosophical concepts in Japanese is indeed a kind of “masochistic” behavior. But, having made it halfway through, I couldn’t just abandon it, so I kept reading, feeling both bored and determined.

This book presents its theories from a wide range of fields: history, economics, philosophy, biology, ethics, and even medicine in the appendix. The academic scope is vast, and to understand its content, the book indeed stimulates the reader’s thoughts. For readers who have not had much exposure to this field, it provides unique perspectives that are easy for non-academic readers to overlook. So, the overall reading experience is quite exciting. While writing this article, I also expanded my research on some concepts that I didn’t understand or only partially understood during reading, gaining a wealth of useful and perhaps useless knowledge.

Though it may be presumptuous, I have to say that this book not only has too many citations but also has some confusing elements in its writing and organizational logic. Each chapter repeatedly states previously mentioned conclusions, and when new arguments or assertions appear, there’s not always an apparent cause-and-effect relationship. As a result, it was easy for me to lose track of the overall logical thread during reading, which caused me to get stuck for a long time while writing this article. (Of course, it’s also possible that my Japanese reading level or appreciation for philosophy is not yet sufficient.)

This book is one of the few best-selling philosophy books in Japan, and in 2022, it was ranked the number one best-selling book at both the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. Personally, I’m not fully convinced; its popularity might very well be due to the title, which directly hits the pain points of modern society. Students are the ones most idle and most likely to feel bored, so it makes sense that it’s popular among them. On the other hand, Japanese corporate workers often belong to the unfortunate labor class who “have no leisure but do not feel bored.” Buying this book may just be for psychological comfort, as they might not actually have the time to calmly read the philosophical ideas within it.

I’m the same; if I weren’t bored, who would bother finishing this book?