In the previous essay, we explored how America is very wealthy relative to even other developed countries, even back in the 19th century, and how this has affected our perception of wealth. We also briefly mentioned how economic value is ultimately subjective and is determined by one’s preferences and values. Today, we will look at pre-modern Japan and how some of its own value systems, influenced by its limited material circumstances, led to an alternative material culture quite different from our own.

Japanese material modesty stands in sharp contrast to contemporary American consumerist culture where bigger is always better. While Americans don’t need to become Japanese, the roots of Japan’s historical material culture lead to some interesting points of comparison that might help give us some perspective on alternative consumerist values.

The Context of Pre-Modern Japanese Material Culture

Thanks to the isolationist policies put in place by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century, Japan was basically a world unto itself. There was next to no external trade, and what resources were in Japan were more or less what they had to work with. This is noteworthy because Japan is not a resource rich country. It has no vast natural resource deposits, and has limited arable land for cultivation.

Just as the material abundance that James Bryce mentions in The American Commonwealth set the stage for the development of America’s consumerist culture, so to did the limited material realities of Tokugawa Japan lead to a distinctly Japanese material culture that was not characterized by abundance in the American sense, but rather a different and more restrained vision of material prosperity.  

These material realities have always shaped Japanese patterns of consumption and material culture, but were especially crucial during the Tokugawa period which brought about over 200 years of peace, population increase, and flourishing internal trade that had hitherto been interrupted by intercine warfare and rampant banditry.

With the end of unrelenting violence and highway robbery, the Japanese wealth and population began to grow. By 1872, the Japanese population had grown to around 33 million people. This is nearly double the population of 15 to 18 million at the time the Tokugawa Shogunate was established in 1603.

With such a rapid population increase, it would obviously be impossible for the Japanese to consume goods in the same way Americans were, even in the 19th century. But, as Susan B. Hanley, the author of Everyday Things in Premodern Japan, argues, the Japanese still enjoyed prosperous lives with a high level of physical well-being that matched, or in some cases exceeded, those of Western states in the same time period.

In the previous essay, I discussed how economic value is ultimately determined by people’s subjective preferences which in turn stem from their values. In part due to their material circumstances, the Japanese came to value consumption habits that made the most of their limited resources. Hanley characterizes this as the Japanese adopting a “resource efficient culture”.

In Hanley’s words “Japan did not fare badly by the middle of the nineteenth century if our measure is not the quantity of goods and durability of structures but the quality of life the material culture provided. What the Japanese managed to achieve was a material culture that provided for their physical well-being but used resources economically.”

Pre-Modern Japanese Material Values
In the next essay in this series, we will look at some more specific everyday examples of what this resource efficiency looked like. But before we dive into some truly fascinating cases of this material efficiency, let’s look at the value system that underpinned Japanese materialism.

An essential idea to understanding Japanese conceptions of beauty and luxury is wabi-sabi.

Wabi-sabi is a term often used to capture the essence of the difference between Western and Japanese aesthetics and values. It at least in part originated from Zen Buddhism, which emphasized a concept called mu, meaning nonexistence or emptiness and embraces the inherent transience and imperfection of life. 

The authors of The Japanese Mind note that these philosophical principles contributed to simplicity and elegance becoming “two of the essential aesthetic qualities of Japanese life”. One of the quintessential manifestations of these concepts is the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which reflected “the Buddhist notion that the imperfect is the natural condition of nature that underlies all of existence.”

While it can be difficult for Westerners to wrap our heads around and we cannot do justice to the concept in this essay, it may be helpful to grasp that one of the core elements of wabi-sabi that is very relevant to us right now is that by promoting simplicity and empty space, wabi-sabi allows room for the beholder of art to appreciate its qualities within the mind. The authors of The Japanese Mind note that “the quality of wabi-sabi is not found in manifest existence; rather, it is created in the mind of the beholder” and notes that “the most important element was not found in the outward features of objects, but in the refined sense of being able to recognize the unseen qualities that exist in each of them.”

Not only did these principles, which emphasized the value of the mental rather than the material, fit with Zen philosophy, but they were also well suited for the limited material circumstances the Japanese found themselves in.

Wabi-Sabi In Action: Flower Arranging

A contrasting example may be of use here.

Consider this picture from a floral centerpiece at a wedding a friend attended. He noted that there were 13 of these arrangements and that they cost hundreds of dollars each. While this is a particularly fancy example, it is not too far out of the norm we would expect here in the West. As Hanley amusingly puts it “in Europe, the more flowers that are crammed into an arrangement, the more luxurious it is considered.”

Now contrast that to an example of Japanese flower arranging, known as ikebana, which is typically quite minimalistic.

Both of these arrangements are beautiful in their own way but it is inevitable that how one perceives them will be colored by one’s values. Yet, the Japanese conception of beauty undeniably uses less resources.

As was said in the previous essay, one can’t simply flip a mental switch and change one’s values and preferences. And Americans are also not Japanese, nor should we be. But it is useful to think about ways in which our values have been shaped by our consumerist culture and how ideas like wabi-sabi demonstrate that alternative and less resource-expensive conceptions of beauty and luxury exist.

To close out this series, the next and final essay will explore some very interesting aspects of pre-modern Japanese culture that were highly resource efficient, yet also allowed for a high standard of living and for the Japanese to make rapid economic progress, despite their late start to modernity, and what lessons we might draw for our own use today.

Zachary Yost is a freelance writer and researcher located in the Pittsburgh area. You can subscribe to his Substack, The Yost Post, here.