As the minimalism movement gains momentum in the United States, it's probably a good idea to re-examine the concept on our own shores. Minimalism is a Japanese birthright — what Western culture views as monkish habits, Zen aesthetics or the joys of simplicity, the Japanese have pretty much taken for granted as an ingrained part of the business of living. Abundance has never been part of the average Japanese mindset, nor have things such as dinner sets for 12, linen closets stacked with towels for every occasion, bedrooms for every member of the family, three-car garages and the like. The Japanese house has never been designed to store and absorb any more amenities than the barest essentials and even then, possessions are often an extremely tight fit.

The truth is that many of us simply don't know what to do with large living spaces. Take my 39-year-old friend Akiko, who bought her own manshon (マンション, condominium) four years ago, only to hōchi suru (放置する, leave it there) in the depths of Ibaraki Prefecture, hardly ever returning to it save for the occasional weekend. The place is a whopping 88 sq. meters — way too big for one Japanese woman and unfathomably huge to someone like my grandfather, whose maxim in matters of space was the traditional okite hanjyō nete ichijyō (起きて半畳、寝て一畳, meaning, a person needs just one tatami mat for lying down at night, and half a tatami mat for the waking hours). Akiko had purchased her manshon with rosy visions of sipping wine on the balcony with a boyfriend or entertaining friends with home-cooked French cuisine. She meant to enjoy the ohitori-sama (おひとりさま single) life to the neon-lit hilt.

What Akiko didn't bargain for was the dreariness of the two-hour commute to the office every morning, the incredible distance from her door to the nearest decent boutique, and the fact that when she came home at night more than half the windows in the manshon would be pitch dark, since few of the residents came home before midnight. She also found herself wandering from room to room, lonely and a little frightened of what may be lurking in the dark corners.