Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings By Edward Sylvester Morse

I discovered this book while browsing my town's art museum's giftshop. It is called Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, and written by Edward S. Morse. If you google Ed Morse, we find he went to Japan at the end of the 19th century, recording marvelously with words and pictures the living environments of Japanese people at that time. It was published by Ticknor and Company in Boston in 1886.Just flipping through it, I was stunned to find this passage regarding clutter.

One of the surprising features that strikes a foreigner as he becomes acquainted with the Japanese home is the entire absence of so many things that with us clutter the closets, or make squirrel-nests of the attic,--I speak now of the common house. The reason of this is that the people have never developed the miserly spirit of hoarding truck and rubbish with the idea that some day it may come into use: this spirit when developed into a mania converts a man's attic and shed into a junkshop. The few necessary articles kept by the Japanese are stowed away in boxes, cupboards, or interspaces beneath the floors (pp 195-6).

With all the clutter-clearing, organization, and simplification movements over the past few years, I've very much enjoyed and been inspired by the works of Julie Morgenstern, Don Aslett, Karen Kingston, and Michelle Passoff, among others. Through all this immersion in the clutter-clearing and organizing literature, I'd come to the impression that clutter appears more and more as societies become wealthier over time, and have more disposable income to spend on clutter. So I thought North America in 1885 would not have clutter because we were poorer back then and didn't have all the material wealth of today. I was very much surprised to read Mr. Morse's comments on "squirrel-nests" and the "miserly spirit of hoarding truck and rubbish" and the "junkshop," as he wrote this more than 120 years ago, before the rapid increase in wealth!

Here is Ed Morse's wikipedia page. An online biography of Morse has been written by the great great grandson of Morse's lifelong friend, John Gould, and is available here.

Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings is available in its entirety through the magic of google books! It has also been reprinted by Tuttle Publishing over the years if you want a hard copy. You can get it from them or from amazon. Here is a clip from the page he mentions Japan's lack of clutter, showing one of his beautiful line drawings of a stairway storage unit. There are many other descriptive line drawings of this quality in Morse's book. The lower left-hand cubby contains portable lamps, and directly above that are floor cushions or futon bedding.

This book was a wonderful discovery!