Subtitle: 'The New Japanese Minimalism'.
I've been noticing a few tendencies towards minimalism in myself for a while now. I'd guess the reasons are a mix of aesthetic (I like the look), ethical (a desire to consume less), practical (less stuff to cart around when I move house!), and psychological (a preference for the sense of space, clarity, and maybe resultant sense of control or freedom?), and it's a mindset shift from the days of collecting as many books, cds and so on as possible, and more generally generating/curating/defaulting to a certain messiness that I probably associated with romantic bohemianism during those impressionable teenage years.
Which makes this book entirely timely and very enjoyable, with sections on 'why minimalism', why we accumulate so much in the first place, tips for saying goodbye to things (eg, 20. Let go of the idea of 'someday', 33. Discard any possessions that you can't discuss with passion, 35. If you can't remember how many presents you've given, don't worry about the gifts you've gotten) and going further along the minimalist journey (eg, 13. The desire to discard and the desire to possess are flip sides of the same coin), and ways that people might change along the way. It's nicely modest in tone[*] and it seems like the author genuinely has gone through the change from 'maximalist' to minimalist and benefited as he describes.
It did inspire me a bit to go even further than I already have in getting rid of possessions, although I suspect I'll run into a lower limit. It's one thing - for example - to have whittled my cd collection from the 1000+ that I previously had done to the most 'essential' 250 or so, but it would be qualitatively different again in terms of a minimalist mindset to actually get rid of all of my cds (though never say never). Clothes would be another frontier for me - I can just about imagine myself with only a skeleton wardrobe ... but it takes a fair bit of imagination at this stage!
* * *
[*] Don't know how much of this is the Japanese voice in translation versus my own projections versus actual thing, but there were the occasional sentences that reminded me of Murakami, eg:
I've been noticing a few tendencies towards minimalism in myself for a while now. I'd guess the reasons are a mix of aesthetic (I like the look), ethical (a desire to consume less), practical (less stuff to cart around when I move house!), and psychological (a preference for the sense of space, clarity, and maybe resultant sense of control or freedom?), and it's a mindset shift from the days of collecting as many books, cds and so on as possible, and more generally generating/curating/defaulting to a certain messiness that I probably associated with romantic bohemianism during those impressionable teenage years.
Which makes this book entirely timely and very enjoyable, with sections on 'why minimalism', why we accumulate so much in the first place, tips for saying goodbye to things (eg, 20. Let go of the idea of 'someday', 33. Discard any possessions that you can't discuss with passion, 35. If you can't remember how many presents you've given, don't worry about the gifts you've gotten) and going further along the minimalist journey (eg, 13. The desire to discard and the desire to possess are flip sides of the same coin), and ways that people might change along the way. It's nicely modest in tone[*] and it seems like the author genuinely has gone through the change from 'maximalist' to minimalist and benefited as he describes.
It did inspire me a bit to go even further than I already have in getting rid of possessions, although I suspect I'll run into a lower limit. It's one thing - for example - to have whittled my cd collection from the 1000+ that I previously had done to the most 'essential' 250 or so, but it would be qualitatively different again in terms of a minimalist mindset to actually get rid of all of my cds (though never say never). Clothes would be another frontier for me - I can just about imagine myself with only a skeleton wardrobe ... but it takes a fair bit of imagination at this stage!
* * *
[*] Don't know how much of this is the Japanese voice in translation versus my own projections versus actual thing, but there were the occasional sentences that reminded me of Murakami, eg:
After what I've been through, I think saying goodbye to your things is more than an exercise in tidying up. I think it's an exercise in thinking about true happiness.
Maybe that sounds grandiose. But I seriously think it's true.
