An antidote to cluttered minds
Kids and clutter don’t have to go together, says Naoki Numahata, a 42-year-old Japanese father so committed to minimalism that he’d make a monk look extravagant.
When his 4-year-old daughter Ei wants to play, she doesn’t go to a playroom or even a play corner. Instead, she gets a small basket that contains all her most precious possessions — a doll, a Minions tin with some cars, a yo-yo and a spinning top — and plays happily on the stark white floor.
Their 420-square-foot Tokyo apartment is small even by Japanese standards, and is almost empty. There is nothing on the kitchen counter. In the drawers: three sets of chopsticks, two sets of children’s cutlery. The breakfast drawer contains a loaf of bread and a jar of honey.
There is no couch, only a table, a chair and a bench for two. The small bedroom contains a bed that Numahata and his wife share with Ei. His one concession to decadence: a big television that he uses for his work as a web designer.
This kind of extreme minimalism is not standard practice in Japan, but the concept of making do with less has become much more mainstream in recent years, an antidote to materialism and excess.
The most famous proponent of this concept abroad is the Japanese declutterer Marie Kondo, whose “KonMari” method — she tells people to get rid of everything that doesn’t “spark joy” — has swept through the West in recent years.
But minimalism and decluttering became a craze in Japan several years before Kondo arrived on the scene. Indeed, people here know the concept not as the “KonMari” method, but as “danshari” — taken from three Japanese characters meaning “refuse,” “dispose” and “separate.”
“Modern society is all about getting more, more, more without taking account of your whole situation,” said Hideko Yamashita, who was promoting the idea of danshari several years before Kondo arrived on the decluttering scene. Yamashita’s book on danshari became an instant bestseller in Japan.
Danshari is based on the idea that if you have a clutter-free environment, your mind will also be clear. Formulating it, Yamashita, who is 63, was heavily influenced by eastern religions.
Numahatawas inspired by a photo in a magazine of a Japanese house that contained almost nothing and has also written a book with fellow danshari devotee Fumio Sasaki.
“The year that we had our daughter, our place was so messy,” he said. “It inspired me to make our house look like the one in the magazine. We got rid of so much stuff, and I really liked the liberating feeling I got from having so little.”
It’s changed the way they live their lives, he said. He moves more quietly and gracefully now, and as a family they go out more.
Now Numahata is raising the next generation of minimalist in Ei, who just naturally cleans up after herself, he said.
Visitors to their apartment are initially surprised by how empty it is, but soon remark how comfortable they feel, he said. To explain why, Numahata quoted a Taoist principle: “It’s the empty space inside the pot that makes it useful.”