Hello, Habits by Fumio Sasaki

Hello, Habits: A Minimalist’s Guide to a Better Life
By Fumio Sasaki (translated by Eriko Sugita)
WW Norton, 2021

World-famous minimalist Fumio Sasaki’s first book, Goodbye Things: The New Japanese Minimalism came out in 2015 and sold a mountain of copies long before it was translated into English in 2017, whereupon it sold mountains more copies. The book described the author’s quest for less, his decision to dispense with the vast majority of his possessions and live in a mostly empty apartment. 

Such was the strength of the movement Goodbye Things helped to popularize that you can probably picture its stereotypical depictions: clean white walls, empty floors, gourmet coffee makers, no bookshelves (1 Kindle instead), strategically-placed plants, Instagram photos of beaming minimalists surrounded by what they witheringly refer to as their things: 1 pair of shoes, 2 pairs of pants, 4 shirts (all black), a meditation mat, a treasured coffee mug, and a 2018 MacBook Pro (bearing no stickers, of course). 

Like all stereotypes, this is oversimplified. Dedicated minimalists will tell you the goal is not to discard possessions but to need fewer things, to simplify your outer life in order to free your inner life. Cluttered surroundings full of junk you neither need nor want, they quite correctly argue, leads to cluttered minds full of junk you neither need nor want. 

Although the minimalism movement has been thickly encrusted with cynical grifters since the moment it proved lucrative (simply go to YouTube and type in “minimalism” - the first 100 video results will be by not minimalists but rather by evident frauds lying about being minimalists)(expert advice: so will the second 100 videos, and the third), it does no harm to grant that Fumio Sasaki is one of the true believers. 

It’s precious little comfort if he’s sincere, unfortunately, if he’s also dumb as a post. The author might disclaim any idea that Hello, Habits is meant to instruct or guide readers, but there’s scarcely any other conceivable reason for the book to exist, and my, my is it an unsettling prospect to get life-advice from somebody who, translator Eriko Sugita’s efforts notwithstanding, comes across as more than a little dim. 

Take one of the book’s many personal anecdotes as an example: the author notices that he’s hitting the ‘snooze’ button on his morning alarm clock more often and deduces from this that he’s not sleeping well enough. He wonders if the reason he’s not sleeping well is because he’s regularly drinking at night. He exercises enormous self-restraint and refuses to buy beer one night, but it doesn’t last. “I couldn’t control the desire for beer that I had once foregone and ran to a nearby store,” he writes. “I could no longer stop myself after the first beer. Next, I went to the store again to buy a stronger chuhai as my second drink.” At some point after this, he notices in his diary that he’s recently been upset because he’s been procrastinating about a piece of writing he needs to do. And unbelievably, almost comically, he comes to this conclusion: “It appeared that the reason I began to drink was that I hadn’t taken proper care of the work that I was supposed to complete in the afternoon. That had been the ultimate culprit in my inability to get up early.” 

Look at the separate points of that story, and then ask yourself: who on Earth would read those mentions of running out for alcohol (and then running out for more, stronger alcohol) and come to the conclusion that the writing-procrastination was the root problem? 

“A bird is able to sing and do a mating dance without instruction, but we humans have to make an effort to learn to play an instrument or learn how to dance,” our author writes at another point. “Why is it that human beings are the only ones who have to make an effort?” Again, the reader just stares at a question asked in sincerity that literally any 6-year-old child could see is fundamentally stupid. 

The book is likewise full of little tossed-off asides from which readers are encouraged to draw deeper life lessons, and virtually every single one of those tossed-off asides should instead be tossed out - as blockheaded, off-point, factually wrong, or all three. Take this little tidbit:

The English historian Edward Gibbon continued his research while serving in the military. During marches he took along his books by Horace, and he researched philosophical theories in his tent. These may sound like impossible actions that only a dedicated individual would take, but we can learn from them.

Set aside the image of Gibbon lugging around his Horace in order to write his philosophical theories and you get one of the book’s most persistently muddied points: the difference between habit and self-discipline. Making a point of forcing yourself to continue scholarly work even while tramping around the countryside with the South Hampshire militia is not the same thing as forming a habit, obviously, and in a more perfect world a book called Hello, Habits would see that. 

“Committing to the practice of acquiring habits is different from being stubborn with the specific habits you’ve formed,” Fumio Sasaki mentions at one point, and this is one of his book’s many bland truisms that some devoted minimalists or curious outsiders might productively remember and apply. But from Hello, Habits and its bestselling predecessor the real standout habit to form in 2021 is clear: don’t read books on minimalism.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The National. He writes regularly for The Vineyard Gazette, the Daily Star and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.