Before Marie Kondo came to the world’s attention for admonishing us to get rid of items that don’t “spark joy,” there was another Japanese organizing guru.
Her name is Yamashita Eiko. While Ms. Yamashita, 70, has never achieved the fame that Ms. Kondo has achieved with Netflix, she is widely regarded in Japan as a leader of the modern home organization movement — or, as she is called overseas, “Ms. Kondo”-ing .
The two Tokyo-born women, thirty years apart, both promote the idea that families accumulate too much stuff. They believe that getting rid of unnecessary items and creating a minimalist, clutter-free space can enhance mental health.
Ms. Yamashita said she admired Ms. Kondo, 40, for bringing these ideas to the Western world. In a statement, Ms. Kondo’s spokesman acknowledged that Ms. Yamashita had been a leader in decluttering trends for years, but said Ms. Kondo had established her own philosophy.
More than 20 years ago, Ms. Yamashita began holding “danshari” (Japanese art of organizing) seminars in Japan. Her book “The New Method of Tidying Up: Danshari” was published in 2009, more than a year before Ms. Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” hit shelves, catapulting her to fame.
Ms. Yamashita hosts a weekly television show that features some of the country’s most minimalist homes, and the show has received critical acclaim in Japan. She also runs a school that trains students, mostly middle-aged and older women, on how to become professional decluttering experts.
During the consultation in the group home, Ms. Yamashita wore a fashionable one-shoulder apron and a red belt and walked around the client’s home. The seventy-year-old man has a neat chestnut bob and a warm, slightly twisted smile on his face, exuding vitality.
Ms. Yamashita and Ms. Kondo organize in different ways. In Ms. Kondo’s books and Netflix series, she offers easy-to-follow organizational tips imbued with her signature joy and positivity. Keep the items that make you happy and be grateful for the items that don’t before getting rid of them, she instructs.
Converts to the Marie Kondo school view Ms. Yamashita as more abstract, more philosophical, more inquisitive—and less approachable. When picking out things to keep or discard, Ms. Yamashita urges her clients to think about why they become attached to certain items and to examine the impact that excess and obsession can have on their emotional state.
“For me, danshari is not about tidying up, organizing or throwing away things that don’t bring joy,” Ms. Yamashita said over slurps of soba noodles in sesame soup at a restaurant in Tokyo. “It’s about getting people back to a place where saying goodbye to things is natural.”
“When people’s homes and minds become clogged with too much stuff, they start to fester,” she continued. “It’s just like the way you eat and then release – it’s a normal part of our existence.”
“The purpose of Danshari is to create an outlet and bring money back,” she added.
Ms. Yamashita first encountered broken relics while attending college in Tokyo, where she studied yoga and Buddhist teachings that emphasize letting go of attachments. After graduating and moving to Ishikawa Prefecture, west of Tokyo, she began applying these principles to organize the home she shared with her husband, son, and mother-in-law.
It was from her mother-in-law that she discovered the difficulty of encouraging others to tidy up. When Ms. Yamashita tried to throw things away, her mother-in-law would rummage through garbage bags and scold her with “mottainai,” a Japanese word for regret about waste.
My mother-in-law complained that the house was too small. “I wanted to scream, ‘If you throw things away, you’ll have more room!'” Ms. Yamashita recalled.
In 2005, Ms. Yamashita, then 50 years old, built another building near her home and called it “Danshari Open House.” There, she began teaching her yoga students the principles of home organization.
Four years later, Ms. Yamashita published her book— It was an immediate success, followed by dozens more successes. Ms. Yamashita’s books have sold more than seven million copies.
Tomoko Ikari, an associate professor of consumer behavior at Tokyo’s Meisei University, said there’s a reason Danshari resonates so strongly in Japan: Ideas of simple living and detachment from desires are rooted in Buddhist teachings that helped shape Japan.
However, despite the popular perception of Japanese homes as tidy and a lifestyle rooted in Zen minimalist aesthetics, Japan is a country with limited space and a highly concentrated population in large cities. Ms. Ikari said many houses are small and crowded with items.
“Some people know about Duan Shari, but before Ms. Yamashita’s rise, very few people knew about it,” Ms. Ikari said. “Years later, what started with Ms. Yamashita has shaped the global ‘sparks flying’ phenomenon we see today.”
One early morning last fall, Ms. Yamashita arrived for a monoshali consultation in a small apartment on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in northwest Tokyo. Her video crew follows her to record sessions for her YouTube channel.
Dressed in light jeans and a frilly white blouse, Ms. Yamashita walked briskly through the entrance hall and into the main living area, pausing to admire the scene before her.
Stacks of totes, baskets and hampers filled with clothes and toys. In one corner, dozens of dusty bottles sit behind a bean bag chair, next to a miniature trampoline. Barely a surface is visible, buried beneath an avalanche of old gadgets, picture frames and office supplies.
“Well, that doesn’t feel very refreshing, does it?” Ms. Yamashita said, smiling as she turned to the apartment owner Risa Kojima, who was standing in the living room with her eyes wide open. “Do you want this to look new again?” she asked.
Ms. Kojima, 41, and her husband, Takashi, both work full-time and have three sons, one of whom is a toddler, one in kindergarten and one in elementary school. In addition to his day job, Kojima also has several side jobs, including photography and event planning. Her husband does most of the housework and childcare.
Ten years after they moved in, the couple’s 750-square-foot apartment was in such constant disarray that they no longer really noticed the mess.
Kojima and her husband started in the living room, sorting through baskets filled with old pens, gaming devices and tangled charging cords. Ms. Yamashita walked around the room in her signature apron, wiping down surfaces and peppering the couple with questions.
An early question—”Which is more important to you, the comfort of this space or your attachment to these objects? Which is more valuable?”—seemed to catch Ms. Kojima off guard and into a dilemma.
By the end of the five-hour meeting, as often happens on Ms. Yamashita’s television shows, Ms. Kojima had some answers.
“You noticed that there was so much exposed, but we need to dig deeper into the fact that you had so much stuff,” Ms. Yamashita said during the cleaning process.
“I think my brain is confused,” Kojima replies at work and elsewhere. “My mind is constantly filled with a lot of things,” she said.
“Obviously, no one can see the inside of your brain, but in this space, it is visible,” Ms. Yamashita emphasized, then pointed to the living room. “Can you see how the challenges you’re dealing with in your mind manifest physically?” she asked.
“I think the problem is that I can’t even recognize a lot of it,” Ms. Kojima said.
During the morning and afternoon breaks, Ms. Yamashita, accompanied by the film crew and Ms. Kojima, walked to a small noodle shop on the street. Sitting at a low table in a corner of the straw-mat restaurant, Ms. Yamashita sympathized with Ms. Kojima, saying how challenging it was to play Shari.
“In many ways, having to face our things is like having to face ourselves,” Ms. Yamashita said. “We all take on too much and it’s hard to cut back on things in relationships and work.”
Her goal, she said, is to help the working mother of three learn to recognize when things have gone too far. “All we do with the items in your house is training,” she said.
