While there were a few good and useful points here, I think this book has an awfully specific audience. Sasaki is a 35 year old single man living in a twenty square meter apartment in urban Tokyo. He’s writing essentially a memoir or journal of his own growth. He’s a few years older than me, and honestly sounded a bit immature to me. I’d rather read a book with serious philosophical - even quasi religious - life advice written by somebody with vastly more life experience and broader perspective than somebody who isn’t even middle aged yet.

I appreciate the connection Sasaki makes between minimalism and how it can change more than just your relationship to stuff. He had a few useful minimizing tips. But that’s about as far as the good points go for me.

Things that troubled me:
1) Sasaki believes in outsourcing stuff storage to others - letting old classmates keep their yearbooks and contacting them to see it so you don’t have to keep your own. Letting stores keep inventory of stuff so you don’t have to keep a backup (he even suggests it’s “selfish” to have a backup supply of something like toilet paper!)
2) he believes in completely letting the past go.
3) he seems to think digitizing paper goods means he no longer owns them
4) he suggested that a girlfriend dumped him because he “hadn’t sufficiently embraced the principles of minimalism” instead of the fact that maybe she has opinions and a will of her own
5) he thinks Steve Jobs, he of Apple fame (who was by all accounts a huge jerk and was CEO of the company who has actively fought legislation like right to repair and anti-child slavery laws) is an incredible minimalist hero.
6) he made his life more complicated by getting rid of so much stuff - he now has to travel to a coffee shop to see a friend or sit in a restaurant to enjoy a couch! He has to rent a suitcase if he needs one (requiring that a) rental suitcases are available and b) a whole lot of time and effort to get and return one for each flight)
7) he’s focused so much on his own experience he hasn’t taken into account that his hyper-urban middle class experience isn’t universal.

I just found Sasaki hard to take seriously as a Canadian mother of two. He’s just way too focused on himself instead of his reader. Maybe this book is more useful to similarly unattached young single men. Maybe it rings more true to a Zen or Buddhist practitioner than a Christian. But it lacked warmth and love to me, as well as practical considerations. I do not need to be able to move house in twenty minutes - I don’t want to move and don’t value mobility. I need to know how to use minimalism to make more space for joyful colour with my daughters!

Overall I would not recommend this book, unless you’ve read a number of books on minimalism already, because it will make you think you have to get rid of everything and live in a tiny bare apartment. That isn’t the heart of minimalism and Sasaki gives only lip service to the idea that quantity of stuff does not equal minimalism or maximalism. Read if you’re single and value mobility and a heavy present-focus in your philosophy, or if you’re just working through the minimalism canon.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism - Likewise Book Reviews

4 Reviews