The Joy of Clutter
October 14, 2024 at 05:30PMWho isn’t a fan of elegantly designed Shintō shrines, tidy tea houses, meditative Zen gardens, and Marie Kondo? For decades, the Western world has been obsessed with Japanese minimalism. But Japan isn’t actually as tidy as foreigners perceive it to be. In this delightful Aeon essay, Matt Alt examines and celebrates the unique material culture and aesthetic of Japan—one defined by meticulous minimalism, yes, but also the careful curation of lots of stuff.
There is a dreary sameness to so much of modern culture, rough edges smoothed into comfortable averages by the power of market research and algorithms. It’s why the movies we watch are sequels of sequels, or the music we listen to feels like samples of samples, or the fashions we wear turn out to be copies of copies.
Cosily curated Japanese clutter-spaces are different. There is a meticulousness to the best of them that is on a par with the mental effort poured into simplifying something: a deliberate aesthetic decision to add, rather than subtract – sometimes mindfully, sometimes unconsciously, but always, always individually. Clutter offers an antidote to the stupefying standardisation of so much of modern life.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/10/14/the-joy-of-clutter/
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