[Thanks and Resolve] Thank You for Every Encounter: The Journey to Bar Little Happiness’s 20th Anniversary

2026.10.05

In short: a year-end letter from Mika Tanimoto, owner of Bar Little Happiness in Hiroshima, written in December 2025 ahead of the bar’s 20th anniversary in 2026. A trip to New Zealand, letting go of trying to make everyone happy, the Expo 2025 pavilions that changed her view of altruism, and her decision to “only do what I find beautiful” — which, in the end, brought guests from all over the world.

2025, the year everything connected — the courage to choose, and my thoughts on our 20th anniversary

Thank you for your support throughout 2025.

It is already December.

For me, this year was truly deep — a year in which I felt that “everything connected” across a long stretch of time.

Why did people start coming from all over the world to a bar run in a way that was criticised as “too expensive to sell” and “too high-tech”?

With our 20th anniversary approaching, I put my thoughts as a business owner into this blog.

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• The start of the journey — a realisation in New Zealand

• The truth that emerged from doubt

• The limits of pursuing other people’s happiness
• The path I chose by overcoming fear
• The Expo as a philosophical journey — conviction in my decision
• The miracle drawn in by beauty
• What true happiness is
• Gratitude and resolve for our 20th anniversary

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The start of the journey — a realisation in New Zealand

In January, I took the plunge, closed for a long break and went to New Zealand.

Surrounded by vast nature, away from the hectic daily life in Japan, I had time to face myself.

The reason was simple: I wanted to travel with a senior business owner I respect — that was all.

Their casual remarks and questions kept circling inside me.

Questions I could not answer right away, books they had once recommended —

before I knew it, those fragments of words had been quietly asking questions of my inner self, deep in my heart.

At the time, I had no idea this trip was the beginning of a big change that would run through the whole year.

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The frustration at my starting point

Looking back, what drove me when I first opened the bar was frustration.

I wanted to prove wrong the people who looked down on this job.
I wanted to make the bar industry a better profession.

That feeling was my driving force for 19 years.

How I designed the space, and with what feelings I have grown this place —
I wrote about that journey in detail in a three-part series this May.

▶︎ [Feature] How the place called Little Happiness came to be
– [Part 1] The place called Little Happiness
– [Part 2] The freedom to choose, the resolve to be chosen
– [Part 3] Quiet conviction and small happiness

And in 2025, the journey that began with that “frustration” moved into a new phase.

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The truth that emerged from doubt

Looking back, at some point after opening, I had started working “for someone else.”

“This bottle selection is too expensive to sell.”
“You should fit in more with the world.”
“So that the staff don’t feel stressed…”

I kept searching for a form of the world I wanted that others could understand, and a form my staff could easily accept.

But somewhere along the way, I think I had turned the world I truly find “beautiful” into work that fits in with the world.

Protecting my staff’s livelihoods, raising their pay, making the bar industry better.

Those things were precious in themselves, but for their sake I had left my own heart completely behind.

And after a long time of trial and error, I finally accepted that the ideal vision I had been chasing could no longer work.

In that moment, I felt as if I had lost what was holding me up, and I agonised:
“Can I really keep running this business?”
“If I let go of my driving force, how should I live?”

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The limits of pursuing other people’s happiness

For these 19 years, what I kept thinking about was “How can I make my staff happy?”

As an owner, I believed it was natural to put the happiness of the people working for me first, and achieving that was the same as the path to my own vision.

But at times, this wish created a big dilemma.

I worked desperately so that the future of each staff member in front of me would be as rich as possible.

It may have been self-satisfaction, but because everyone’s shape of happiness is different, I believed the first priority was to make the company one that truly earns.

Yet the harder I tried, the deeper my questioning of myself became.

Was my presence actually becoming an extra burden? That thought crossed my mind.

What my staff wanted was a perfectly natural human feeling, and I could understand it.

But the reality of capitalism is sometimes cruel.

Not knowing such complicated things would surely let them live a calmer life with fewer worries —

but I was convinced it was not good in the long run.

Kindness in the moment, and strictness for the long term.
Peace today, and responsibility for the future.
Feelings I could understand, and the sense of crisis I felt about a future I was sure of.

Caught between these conflicting feelings, I fell into a deep dilemma.
I no longer knew what was right, or what would truly be good for each person.

What I realised through this experience is that there is a limit to pursuing other people’s happiness.

That is not a cold conclusion. Rather, it became a chance to think deeply about what real compassion is.

Clearly admitting “this structure cannot be changed” was the most rational management decision I have ever made.

I no longer had to try to save anyone — that sense of release opened the next door.

Looking back now, I think it was an immature way of thinking as a business owner.
But it was because of that struggle that I could finally move on to the next phase.

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The path I chose by overcoming fear

Over the past year or two, despite my fear, I deliberately let go of things I had been doing because I thought they were “necessary to be understood” — things that left me uneasy inside, even though they were producing solid results.

Business, life and my feelings.

It was a decluttering of the things I thought I valued.

“I will only do what I find beautiful” — that is what I decided.

It was an enormous fear.


“I might lose everything.”

But there was no going back. Having decided that, I put it into action.


The Expo as a philosophical journey — conviction in my decision

I went to Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai again and again.

“Future of Life,” “null²,” “Dynamic Equilibrium of Life”…

Every creative work questioned, from many different directions, how we understand “life.”

What struck me most was the preciousness of the will not to choose, even in an age with more choices than ever; the message “you no longer need to think about the meaning of living”; and the idea that ending does not mean being lost, but becoming part of a flow — being within one cycle. I resonated with it deeply.

At Future of Life I experienced “the freedom of choosing not to choose,” at null² I experienced “letting go of symbols,” and at the Dynamic Equilibrium pavilion I understood that “simply existing is itself altruism.” Then I was deeply convinced that the path I had arrived at was true altruism.

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The miracle drawn in by beauty

Before I knew it —

people were coming from all over Japan and all over the world, looking for the world I find beautiful.

The product selection and management policy that I was once told were “too expensive to sell” and “the wrong way to do it.”

And the digital menu I introduced because I wanted to convey the appeal of whisky and rum more deeply — some people who cherish traditional bar culture criticised it, too: “Why make it so high-tech? It doesn’t feel like a bar.”

It is true that the good things about old-fashioned bars, their analogue warmth, have immeasurable value.

But while cherishing tradition, I wanted to bring in new technology too — so that guests can experience the deep world of whisky and rum more richly, so that I can create a clear and reassuring space, and so that I can focus on what only humans can do.

Ironically, that was exactly the approach the people close to me had criticised all along.

Not “to raise sales,” and not “for wages” — it began to work as a place where people who share the values I find beautiful gather.

The time that flows there, the quality of the conversations, the depth of fulfilment.

That was the greatest value of all.

And strangely enough, the way my own heart was filled turned out to connect naturally to sales and results as well.

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What true happiness is

Expressing the world I find beautiful, and meeting people who also find that world “beautiful.”

That is true happiness for me now.

Until now, I thought I had been working “for someone else.”

There may have been an unconscious “exchange” in me: trying to keep relationships by giving.

But in truth, expressing the world I find beautiful is what ended up touching many people’s hearts, and became “altruism” in the real sense.

At last, the meaning of the words “death, too, is altruism” sank in.

It is not about deliberately doing something for someone; simply being yourself is already a contribution to those around you.


I think life needs the feeling that you are of use to something.

And the deeper that feeling grows, the more the line between “for myself” and “for someone else” blurs.

My own fulfilment naturally leads to the fulfilment of others.

When I was able to place myself in that kind of cycle, it led to results, too.

Being surrounded by people who find beautiful the same things I find beautiful.

A state of self-congruence, where “what I do,” “what I feel” and “what I seek” line up almost in a straight line.

Beyond other people’s expectations and society’s judgement, it was a state in which everything so far had matured and been sublimated.

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Gratitude and resolve for our 20th anniversary

Next year, Bar Little Happiness celebrates its 20th anniversary.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has supported us this far.

Our regulars, the guests we met only once, the staff who gave me so many questions, and even those who sometimes gave me harsh opinions — I am who I am today because of every one of these encounters.

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My hopes for the next 20 years

For the next 20 years, I will refine this into a more beautiful form, as my life’s work.

No matter how far technology advances, no matter how smart AI becomes, the beauty of people spending time in the same space and sharing the same moments will not change.

In fact, I am convinced that precisely because digitalisation is advancing, the value of this analogue space will grow.

Bar Little Happiness will keep evolving so that we can focus on what only humans can do.

A night that leaves no record becomes a night that stays in memory.

I want to keep creating that kind of space with care.

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About our opening style

From this year, I have chosen a new lifestyle myself.

I now take time off now and then while I keep travelling.

With 4–5 hour openings, the bar is open for fewer hours than before — but in return, I want to make each visit richer and more special.

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🥂 2026: into the 20th-anniversary year of Bar Little Happiness.

Because this moment is fleeting, it is precious and beautiful.

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Every encounter is meant to be. Welcome to the world of Rum&Whisky.

Mika Tanimoto, Bar Little Happiness

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