Foreword -- Ikigai.

Ikigai.

When written literally and translated into English, the word defines the answer to a purposeful life. Conceptually speaking, ikigai is a path, a way of living; not a single definable thing that presents itself to someone when requested or sought.

For some, ikigai is found in the pursuit of happiness and a life unscarred by the blemishes of hardship. For others, it lies in the eyes of family members, sparkling just beyond the colored irises in the woven fabric of the soul. Ultimately, when drawing the final breath before disappearing beyond the veil, every person is said to pass on with the satisfaction of a life lived with purpose – a life uncovered by the promise of ikigai.

It could be said that everything with a soul can find its ikigai. Through each winding river, over every flowered plain and mooring mountain, there lay thousands of purposes left uncovered – in the hearts of every soulful thing that ever graced the earth – waiting just beyond the barrier between this life and the next, to be found.

Within the mountains of Hokkaido, there bloomed a special purpose.

It found its origin deep beneath the ground, in the heart of a slumbering beast that ruled the realm above; it was intertwined delicately with the roots of the towering bamboo forests, the clouds in a misty sky, and in the snow that fell into the eyes of a remarkable young soul who called these snowcaps her home.

But ikigai is only sometimes easily defined. It is sprawling, like the fields of rice beyond the mountains of grassless hills, and often, the answer to that sacred connection lies deep within the souls of the ones who harbor it, farther than even a sighted eye could see.

The world was full of things that no one could begin to explain.

Spirits of unnatural origin, the risen dead – mighty dragons and fearsome gods who ruled from beyond – their purpose for existence intertwining within the delicate heartstrings of mankind. Even more than that, however, there lived sacred drive in the hearts of all who lived in Hokkaido's sacred valleys, in the pockets beneath the festival grounds of gods.

But as humans advanced in the valley, their ties to the metaphysical world began to diminish. Spirits retreated to the wilds from whence they came, and life lost the magic that embedded itself in every fiber of land and sea. As the centuries passed, the rift only grew; eventually, the divide was so great that the belief in spirits, like every gust of frozen wind, was lost to the whispers of the breeze that carried the legends from long ago.

This is a story of magic; of the purpose behind every beating heart and soul. It is the tale of gods and spirits, of war and peace, and of a special little girl with eyes as white as snow.

This is Ikigai.