This is a defiant little picture book (the same size as a post card, but about three-fourths of an inch thick) on housing in Tokyo. If you’re looking for a a book on a minimalist or wabi-sabi aesthetic, move on. This is Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s retort to all those stylish coffee table books on Japanese style for Westerners, what he terms the “techno-teahouse-bonzai-blitz”. He says he does not mean it to be sarcastic or venomous. He wants to show how people really live on a tight budget in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Tokyo: A Certain Style is a celebration of cramped quarters. When thinking about how cramped Japan is, imagine half the population of the United States stuffed into an area smaller than California. When thinking about how cramped a Japanese apartment in Tokyo is, imagine all your belongings stuffed into a large American walk-in closet.
Most of the apartments in this book are no bigger than a college dorm room and just as strewn with books, clothes, CDs, bicycles, electronics, musical instruments, and other collections. Many apartments have only rudimentary kitchens, no private bath, and shared toilet facilities. They house not just solitary students, but couples, and couples with small or teenaged children.
My own Japanese apartment (in rural Kyushu) was huge by comparison: a 2DK (two 6-mat tatami rooms and a dining/kitchenette; toilet and bath). A 6-mat room is 9×12 feet. Many of the Tokyo apartments in this book are 1DK, with one 4.5-mat room (9×9 feet) and some are the incredibly small 3-mat rooms (6×9 feet). The inhabitants sleep with their heads in the futon closet…which holds everything but futons.
So how do you live like this? Not at home. Home is where you crash and store a change of clothes. You live in Tokyo’s cafes, parks, shops, restaurants, and public baths. This is definitely not my style. I don’t need a home big enough to entertain in (which seems the focus of most American interior design magazines). But I need a quiet, uncluttered space to think.
On my return home from driving through the great open spaces of the the American southwest, I was already feeling a bit claustrophobic. After leafing through this book, I have a sudden urge to clean out the garage. Amazon.com: Tokyo: A Certain Style (9780811824231): Kyoichi Tsuzuki: Books