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The life-changing magic of Japanese clutter
The world sees Japan as a paragon of minimalism. But its hidden clutter culture shows that ‘more’ can be as magical as ‘less’
As Americans and Europeans fumed over invasions of their marketplaces, they ignored the fact that Japanese homes were filling with the same electronics and entertainments: Walkmans, karaoke machines, videocassette players, televisions, stereos, countless toys, videogames, cartoons, comics and nearly every other packaged delight one might imagine, all tested on eager domestic consumers before being released to the world. In the early 1990s, when I was studying abroad in Tokyo, I would eagerly await these ‘bulk garbage’ days, when I might scout for a perfectly operational television or turntable – an American scavenging Japan’s discards, in a strange, ironic echo of the Japanese who sifted through the refuse of US bases after the war. There’s a perfect example of this in the leafy western suburbs of Tokyo, home to one of the city’s most popular attractions: the museum of the famed anime production company Studio Ghibli, creator of globally acclaimed films including Spirited Away(2001) and The Boy and the Heron(2023).
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