A review by thebigemmt505
The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Fumitake Koga, Ichiro Kishimi

informative inspiring medium-paced

2.25

“The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked.” 

The Courage to Be Disliked is psychological-philosophical self-help book that imparts handfuls of decent advice cluttered in dialogue full of questionable stances and an arrogant tone. It’s a book that is both frustrating and enlightening, helpful and unhelpful. 

Self help is possibly the most subjective genre. Groundbreaking advice to one person is everyday fact to another. In that sense, some of my criticism is highly personal, but I’m going to take as objective a stance as possible. 

The Courage to Be Disliked is written completely in Socratic dialogue. The dialogue is at times decent, at times irritating. The writing often includes the Youth repeating a phrase the Philosopher said as a question, a format that quickly becomes stale. Other times, the Youth is overly emotional and combative to a hyperbolic, unrealistic extent, which is annoying to a reader that is supposed to identify with the Youth, aka someone who doesn’t know “the Japanese phenomenon that shows you how to change your life and achieve real happiness.” Said “Japanese Phenomenon” is actually borrowed from the works Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. Here’s another theme in the writing: misleading titles and claims. The title of the book along with many chapter titles imply the placement of actionable steps to understand life and reach one’s happiness; most often the dialogue within these chapters is meandering and a point is never reached. It’s not uncommon for dialogue to not reach a natural conclusion, but it contrasts what is proposed by the premise. That being said, it’s not poorly written to an unreadable extent. It has it’s moments. 

The content of the book is a mixed bag. The third night (of five in the book) is both the best written and the one with the best ideas. The idea of the “separation of tasks” is probably the best proposed by the authors. It’s an easily approachable but massively under-utilized mindset that can assist many people who feel overwhelmed in relationships or untrue to themselves. There’s also a decent analysis of inferiority and superiority complexes. Personally, the difference between horizontal and vertical relationships was good insight as well, as over-simplified as it could be at times; one should strive for more equal relationships, ones without excessive one-sided praise or one-sided rebuke, one sided competition or one sided withdrawal. The total dismissal of the concepts themselves, though, (i.e. praises, rebuke, competition) is an extreme and unfounded standpoint. Then there’s the disgusting and outdated dismissal of trauma. This is the worst idea proposed. There’s truth in the idea that the meaning makes the trauma; the interpretation one gives to the event can influence one’s present outcome. What’s also true, though, is that both physically painful traumas (abuse, torture, medical problem, malnutrition, etc.) and mentally/emotionally painful traumas (abuse, neglect, divorce, bullying, etc.) are interpreted when the trauma happens and after the trauma happens. The trauma itself and the (usually, rightfully) negative interpretation changes the brain in the moment AND after, particularly in children and teens. Multiple mesurable, neurological shifts occur in trauma victims that aren’t easily reversed and NOT the choice of victims. And when the mind doesn’t remember, the body does. It’s all connected, as the book itself argues. For example, the book uses an example of a blushing girl who uses embarrassment of blushing to cover her fear of rejection from a boy. But what could also be the case is the girl was bullied for her blushing, already rejected for it, and as hard as she tried to ask a boy out, as clear as her intentions were, her body panics from any attempt to ask a boy out. It’s not the fault of the survivor, and no “pushing through it” and realizing one’s “internal goals” will fix the problem without deep trauma processing work (work that doesn’t include victim-blaming, by the way.) That’s probably one of the biggest issues with this book, and these sentiments exist in smaller doses elsewhere (i.e. attributing all atypical behavior as “attention seeking with the goal to get acknowledgement.”) 

Admittedly, there’s this: “Even if you are avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life lies, it isn’t because you are steeped in evil.” The authors do not assign moralistic value to someone’s inferiority or superiority, to someone’s participation in so-called “life-lies” or life-truths. That’s another strong point; while the writing often comes off condescending, it is made clear that it’s not a case of good vs. evil. That being said, it is an issue of courage, which while frequently mentioned in the book, isn’t actually explored in much depth. 

Frankly, the strongest point in the novel is the point I quoted above. Happiness involves courage, and courage means facing adversity. To have courage, in the eyes of the authors, is to live in the moment. It’s a great message that could’ve been maximum 100 pages. 

TL;DR: It’s a book worth your time if you’re okay with shifting through some bullshit. There are good although relatively basic ideas and bad bordering on harmful ideas. Anyways, this review length is what happens when your plane is fucking delayed. Cheers!