Cultural and Practical Pathways to Wellbeing: Care, Narrative, and Non-Clinical Responses to Distress in Asia

Panel abstract: This panel brings together five interdisciplinary contributions that examine how wellbeing, resilience, and recovery are conceptualised and pursued through culturally situated pathways that operate outside conventional biomedical frameworks, enabling forms of local resilience under conditions of socioeconomic, political, and environmental fragility. Focusing primarily on Japan, with comparative and regional perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, the papers explore emotional care (kokoro no kea), disaster storytelling (kataribe), community-based arts therapies, philosophical conceptualisations of health and illness, and applied models of community health and empowerment. The first paper examines Japanese women’s engagement with kokoro no kea, meditation, yoga, and holistic spirituality as non-pathologising coping strategies and gaps in health access shaped by gender norms, caregiving burdens, and dissatisfaction with institutional care. The second paper analyses kataribe storytelling in post-disaster Japan as a form of narrative exposure that supports trauma processing, identity reconstruction, and community resilience. The third contribution investigates arts therapy initiatives in Japan, highlighting how creative and embodied practices foster wellbeing, social cohesion, and culturally sensitive forms of care beyond clinical settings. The fourth paper offers a comparative conceptual framework, contrasting Chinese and Japanese attitudes to Western understandings of health and illness, revealing differing assumptions about wellbeing in our daily lives, purity, and the boundaries of body and self. The final paper extends the discussion to Southeast Asia, analysing MedAcross’s community-based health interventions in Myanmar and Thailand as integrated models linking healthcare provision, women’s empowerment, and local resilience in contexts of political and environmental fragility. Taken together, the panel advances a critical reflection on care as a cultural, social, and ethical practice. It demonstrates how non-clinical approaches expand existing health ecologies, offering inclusive and context-sensitive responses to distress in contemporary Japan and Asia.