We were in the living room after dinner. My son is building his own business — has been for a while now — and it is not an easy road. He described it recently as going through the trenches. That felt right to me. The kind of work that asks everything of you, day after day, with no guarantee of what is on the other side.

That evening he said something — the kind of thing you say when you are trying to 奮い立たせる — to rouse yourself, to keep going, to find the push to get back in. I understood it completely. And at the same time, something in me wanted to offer him something different. Not a correction. Something older.

I explained 言霊, kotodama.

What it is

言霊 is written with two characters: 言, koto, word or speech. 霊, tama or dama, spirit or soul. The spirit of words. The belief, ancient in Japan, that the words we speak carry energy beyond their literal meaning — that to say something out loud is to release something into the world.

This is not a modern concept. The Man'yōshū, Japan's oldest poetry anthology compiled in the 8th century, contains the phrase 言霊の幸ふ国 — the land blessed by the power of words. Japan has understood itself this way for over a thousand years. Language was not just communication. It was an act with consequence.

In Shinto belief, 霊 — spirit — exists in all things. In trees, in rivers, in the objects we use every day. And in the words that come out of us. Every time we speak, we are releasing something that was held inside. The question is what that something carries.

Not just the literal meaning

This is what I wanted my son to understand — and what I think makes 言霊 different from simply choosing positive words.

It is not about the literal content of what you say. It is about the spirit behind it. Words spoken with kindness carry kindness into the world. Words spoken with care carry care. Words spoken from fear, or exhaustion, or a place of disconnection from what you actually value — those carry that too.

When I think of 言霊 I picture something like a manga speech bubble — the word rising out of the mouth, but carrying with it something invisible. The 霊 that was already inside you, traveling out into the world with whatever you chose to say. We all hold that spirit. Every time we speak, we are sending some of it somewhere.

How it lives in daily Japanese life

言霊 shapes Japanese culture in ways that are easy to miss from the outside.

縁起でもない, engi demo nai — "don't say such things." The instinct to stop a negative word before it fully enters the room. Before a trip, an exam, an important moment, certain words simply are not said. Not out of superstition exactly, but out of a felt sense that speaking something gives it weight in the world.

The first words of the new year carry particular significance. What you choose to say on January 1st matters, because those words set something in motion. What spirit do you want to release first into the year?

Compliments in Japan are often deflected — not only out of 謙虚, modesty, but because accepting praise too readily can feel like claiming too much. The energy of a compliment is received quietly, held carefully.

And in daily speech, Japanese is full of words that soften, that cushion, that consider the spirit of what is being released. The language itself carries 言霊 in its structure.

What it has to do with building something

I do not know if what I shared that evening landed. He nodded. He seemed to hear it. And honestly, saying it out loud reminded me too — because I am still learning this myself. 言霊 is not something you master. It is something you come back to, again and again, when you notice the words coming out of you are not quite carrying what you actually mean.

言霊 is not about affirmations or the law of attraction, though people often reach for that comparison when they first hear it. It is older than that, and quieter. It is not about programming your mindset with positive phrases. It is about the responsibility that comes with language — the understanding that words are not neutral. They carry what you put into them. And what you put into them travels further than you think.

I am still paying attention to mine.