A growing number of people are “paying it forward,” repaying a received favor to a third person instead of the original benefactor. The practice spreads goodwill through such gestures as giving away free meal coupons, and is becoming popular as an easy way for people to express altruism.

“To a twin like me. I pray that twins the world over can happily enjoy coffee together.”

“From a ‘small bear’ to a chubby person. I ate too much during the New Year’s holidays and turned into the size of a bear. Let’s be careful.”

On any given day, there are typically around 100 business card-sized cards with messages like these affixed to a corkboard at the entrance of “Cohaze Coffee,” a coffee shop in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo.

The cards on the board are the shop’s loyalty cards, with customers getting one point for every drink they order. Once they collect 12 points, they receive a coupon for a free cup of coffee. However, instead of using the coupons for themselves, customers give them to others.

Benefactors think about what kind of person they want to give the coupon to, write a message on the card, and pin it to the board.

“People who find a card that applies to them through descriptions like ‘twin’ or ‘chubby’ get a free cup of coffee when they present the card,” explains the shop’s owner, Ryuji Tanigawa, 36.

Tanigawa first started using the “pay it forward” cards about four years ago — he heard of a similar initiative at a store in the United States and incorporated it at Cohaze Coffee because he thought “the interaction between customers, and between customers and himself, would be fun.”

So far, about 1,500 cards have been issued and about 650 have been redeemed.

“Writing a message while thinking of the person who is going to use the card is sure to make people feel happy,” Tanigawa says. He says there have even been times when customers who received a free coffee made new loyalty cards to pay it forward to the next person.

The Japanese term for pay it forward, “on-okuri,” is somewhat unfamiliar in this nation, but it is said to have been used during the Edo period (1603-1867). Masanori Takezawa, an associate professor in social psychology at Hokkaido University, said: “Many people naturally want to be nice to others. The pay-it-forward phenomenon is thought to be universally seen throughout the ages.”

Ever since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, “on-okuri” has quietly become known as a word that indicates kindness toward others.

“Today’s meal is a gift from past customers” — flyers with these words were handed out to people who came to a “Karma Kitchen Tokyo” event held at a restaurant in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, in January. As stated on the flyers, 31 men and women who came to the restaurant were offered free meals such as curry and stew with ground beef steak.

Although there were some customers who simply ate and left, many voluntarily paid varying amounts to the organizers, totaling ¥40,900. The money was set aside to fund the next event.

Karma Kitchen Tokyo started in 2012 and is held two to three times a year. Mayumi Takeda, 40, a member of the managing organization Gift Economy Lab, said, “I think that our events are gradually being understood as a fun way to spread kindness throughout society with a pay-it-forward mentality.”

However, not all such initiatives are successful.

The “Dandan share umbrella” project, which started in Matsue in 2012, is a service that places umbrellas throughout the city and allows people to freely use them whenever it rains. Those who benefit from borrowing the umbrellas can pay it forward by returning them.

Although the local non-profit organization that manages the project has prepared a total of 10,000 umbrellas so far, only about 400 remain.

“People’s sense of gratitude was washed away with the rain,” lamented one of the organizers.

“Simply having the mechanism in place is not enough to make people cooperate. If things like events are held, and they are done in a way that shows a lot of people cooperating together, it makes others want to cooperate themselves, and the project will be more likely to catch on,” Takezawa said.

Rise in philanthropic awareness

A survey conducted roughly once every five years by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics asks men and women aged 20 or older, “Do you think that most people want to help others, or do you think that they care only for themselves?”

In 1978, there was a significant gap between the number of those who answered “only themselves,” which stood at 74 percent, and those who answered “help others” at 19 percent. However, this gap has decreased with each passing year, and in 2013, the survey conducted after the Great East Japan Earthquake, those who said most people try to help others took the lead.

The reasons behind this trend are believed to include an increased focus on spiritual rather than simply material wealth since the 1970s, when Japan’s period of rapid economic growth ended, and a rise in philanthropic awareness with the establishment of the Law on Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities in 1998.