Japanese Minimalist Movement: Why Less is More?

• Zen Buddhism is promoting simplistic way of life
• Japanese people are being promoted to only keep just what they need
• People are focussing on more important things in life rather than keeping up with the trends

New Delhi, July 8, 2017: A new trend, which has become prominent in Japan is called minimalist movement. it promotes stress-free simplicity and has become popular under the influence of Zen Buddhism. It supports simplicity and ideas like less is more. A de-cluttering expert Marie Condo influences people to throw everything out and retain just what you are just in need of. There are thousands of people who are hardcore minimalists with almost thousands more interested.

Japan is regularly hit by natural disasters like an earthquake which does not make it sensible to fill their homes with a lot of valued possessions. Studies reveal that falling objects cause nearly half of earthquake injuries. Moreover, it is cheaper to be minimalist.

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Some of the bedrooms in Japan are so simple that they do not have beds. All consumerist products are kept out of sight in drawers. Everything is kept right where it was picked up from after use. In some houses, even the living rooms have been de-cluttered and are filled with only a desk and chair. They manage to decorate their houses with simple yet beautiful objects. It is easier to find items you need and they are kept within reach. A popular storage strategy used by minimalists is hanging objects on hooks.

Fumio Sasaki is one of the many Japanese people who decided that less is more and lives in a minimalist way. His friends compare his one room apartment to an interrogation room. He, who was once a collector of books, CDs, and DVDs, got tired of following trends and starting selling his belongings or giving them to his friends.

According to him, if he spends less time on cleaning and gathering trendy things he would be able to focus on the more important things in life like friends and traveling and it'll make him a lot more active. Definitions of minimalists vary because the aim is not just de-cluttering but re-considering what possessions mean to them in order to gain something else.

In the West, an empty space is made complete by filling it with different things but here, in Japan, spaces are left empty to let people's imaginations make them complete. It is a way of valuing the more important things in your life and discarding the less important ones.

– prepared by Harsimran Kaur of NewsGram. Twitter: Hkaur1025