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Less is more as Japanese minimalist movement grows

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<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/news-special1/nation/06/20/062016_minimal1.jpg"/><figcaption><div class="embed-desc">Utensils lie in a kitchen drawer in the home of minimalist Saeko Kushibiki in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, Japan. <em>Reuters</em></div></figcaption></figure></div><p>TOKYO - Fumio Sasaki&#x27;s one-room 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 meager scattering of various other items.</p><p>Money isn&#x27;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.</p><p>Influenced by the spare aesthetic of Japan&#x27;s traditional Zen Buddhism, these minimalists buck the norm in a fervently consumerist society by dramatically paring back their possessions.</p><p>Sasaki, once a passionate collector of books, CDs and DVDs, became tired of keeping up with trends two years ago.</p><p>&quot;I kept thinking about what I did not own, what was missing,&quot; he said.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/news-special1/nation/06/20/062016_minimal2.jpg"/><figcaption><div class="embed-desc">Minimalist Naoki Numahata talks to his two-and-a-half year old daughter Ei in their living-room in Tokyo, Japan.</div></figcaption></figure></div><p>He spent the next year selling possessions or giving them to friends.</p><p>&quot;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,&quot; he said.</p><p>Others welcome the chance to own only things they truly like - a philosophy also applied by Mari Kondo, a consultant whose &quot;KonMari&quot; organizational methods have swept the United States.</p><p>&quot;It&#x27;s not that I had more things than the average person, but that didn&#x27;t mean that I valued or liked everything I owned,&quot; said Katsuya Toyoda, an online publication editor who has only one table and one futon in his 22-square-metre apartment.</p><p>&quot;I became a minimalist so I could let things I truly liked surface in my life.&quot;</p><p>Inspiration for Japan&#x27;s minimalists came from the United States, where early adherents included Steve Jobs.</p><p>Definitions vary, because the goal is not just decluttering but re-evaluating what posessions mean, to gain something else - in Sasaki&#x27;s case, time to travel.</p><p>Just how many there are is unclear, but Sasaki and others believe there are thousands of hard-core minimalists, with possibly thousands more interested.</p><p>Some say minimalism is actually not foreign but a natural outgrowth of Zen Buddhism and its stripped-down world view.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/news-special1/nation/06/20/062016_minimal3.jpg"/><figcaption><div class="embed-desc">Two-and-a-half year old Ei, the daughter of minimalist Naoki Numahata, sits in the family living-room in Tokyo, Japan. <em>Reuters</em></div></figcaption></figure></div><p>&quot;In the west, making a space complete means placing something there,&quot; said Naoki Numahata, 41, a freelance writer.</p><p>&quot;But with tea ceremonies, or Zen, things are left incomplete on purpose to let the person&#x27;s imagination make that space complete.&quot;</p><p>Minimalists also argue that having fewer possessions is eminently practical in Japan, which is regularly shaken by earthquakes.</p><p>In 2011, a 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami killed nearly 20,000 people and led to many re-evaluating possessions, Sasaki said.</p><p>&quot;Thirty to 50 percent of earthquake injuries occur through falling objects,&quot; he said, gesturing around his apartment.</p><p>&quot;But in this room, you don&#x27;t have that concern.&quot;</p>

TOKYO - Fumio Sasaki's one-room 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 meager scattering of various other items.