What makes for a meaningful life? In the Japanese context, the concept ofikigaiprovides a clue. Translated as "that which makes one's life worth living,"ikigaihas also come to mean that which gives a person happiness. In Japan, where the demographic cohort of elderly citizens is growing, and new modes of living and relationships are revising traditional multigenerational family structures, the elderly experience ofikigaiis considered a public health concern. Without a relevant model for meaningful and joyful older age, the increasing older population of Japan must create new cultural forms that center theikigaithat comes from old age. InMaking Meaningful Lives, Iza Kavedžija provides a rich anthropological account of the lives and concerns of older Japanese women and men. Grounded in years of ethnographic fieldwork at two community centers in Osaka, Kavedžija offers an intimate narrative analysis of the existential concerns of her active, independent subjects. Alone and in groups, the elderly residents of these communities make sense of their lives and shiftingikigaiwith humor, conversation, and storytelling. They are as much providers as recipients of care, challenging common images of the elderly as frail and dependent, while illustrating a more complex argument: maintaining independence nevertheless requires cultivating multiple dependences on others. Making Meaningful Livesargues that an anthropology of the elderly is uniquely suited to examine the competing values of dependence and independence, sociality and isolation, intimacy and freedom, that people must balance throughout all of life's stages. | Making Meaningful Lives by Iza Kavedžija, Paper over Board | Indigo Chapters