[www.keralites.net] Less is more in Japan as minimalist movement grows

 

Less is more in Japan as minimalist movement grows   Fumio Sasaki's oneroom Tokyo apartment is so stark friends liken it to an interrogation room. He owns three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and a meagre scattering of various other items. Money isn't the issue. The 36-year-old editor has made a conscious lifestyle choice, joining a growing number of Japanese deciding that less is more. Influenced by the spare aesthetic of Japan's traditional Zen Buddhism, these minimalists buck the norm in a fervently consumerist society by dramatically paring back their possessions. Sasaki, once a passionate collector of books, CDs and DVDs, became tired of keeping up with trends two years ago. "I kept thinking about what I did not own, what was missing," he said. He spent the next year selling possessions or giving them to friends. "Spending less time on cleaning or shopping means I have more time to spend with friends, go out, or travel on my days off. I have become a lot more active," he said. Others welcome the chance to own only things they truly like. "It's not that I had more things than the average person, but that didn't mean that I valued or liked everything I owned," said Katsuya Toyoda, an online publication editor who has only one table and one futon in his 22-square-metre apartment. "I became a minimalist so I could let things I truly liked surface in my life." Inspiration for Japan's minimalists came from the US, where early adherents included Steve Jobs. Definitions vary , because the goal is not just decluttering but re-evaluating what posessions mean, to gain so mething else -in Sasaki's ca se, time to travel. Just how many there are is unclear, but Sasaki and others believe the re are thousands of hard-core minimalists, with possibly thousands more interested. Some say minimalism is actually not foreign but a na tural outgrowth of Zen Budd hism and its stripped-down world view.

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Posted by: Cool Kis <cooolkis@gmail.com>

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