When times are tough, the Japanese get going, or something to that effect. My grandfather always held that as a nation, we were much better at being poor than being rich — "Nihonjinga kane wo motsuto rokunakotoni naranai日本人が金をもつとろくなことにならない, Nothing good comes of the Japanese having money)” was one of his oft-repeated observations.

Even the language was better suited to describing deprivation and poverty than riches and prosperity. There's depth and wit to words like shoboi (しょぼい, shabby), samui (寒い, chilly, or deprived), binb kusai (貧乏臭い, smelling of poverty) — and a certain bohemian charm. "Borowa kitetemo kokorowa nishiki (ぼろは着てても心は錦, Though my clothes may be in tatters, my heart has the value of silk)” goes a line from a popular song penned 50 years ago. In those days, the country was struggling to recover from defeat in WWII — the clothing of many were indeed in tatters, but a feverish optimism was in the air.

Hinraku (貧楽) means the state of relaxed freedom that comes from being poor — the logic being that when one has nothing, there's nothing to worry about. True, most Japanese culture and aesthetics are based on hinraku and what is now known as hikizan no bigaku (引き算の美学, the aesthetics of subtraction).