OK. I'm Cleaning Up.

I mentioned before that I had requested the book Tokyo: a certain style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki.  It is a small book, 6 x 4 inches, consisting only of photographs of Tokyo apartments with tiny annotations in the corners.  It has 400+ pages and I only managed to look through 138 of them before I had to come up for air.

The apartments featured aren't really apartments of normal families but mainly those of single persons, often students, and you know how they live.  I guess Tokyo isn't any different except that the apartments are smaller so they are even more cramped and less airy.  You have to have money to be a minimalist.

This isn't the only photography book featuring messy rooms in Tokyo.  The Tokyo Weekender has an October 20, 1916 article entitled: Peek Inside Tokyo Apartments which features the second book of another photographer Shiori Kawamoto called Onago Room. His first book,  Daraku Room, featured the "infamous dormitories where female [teen, pop] idols were living together, with messy rooms so chaotic they were nicknamed daraku beya, which translates best as “depravity rooms.”"

"With “Onago Room,” he builds on his previous work, this time with a diverse spectrum of women from a selection of professions including underground idols, artists, musicians, housewives, and company employees. Each is photographed in her home – and these include everything from minimal studios, stylish monochrome pads, and pastel pink hideaways to sprawling nests of eclectic knick knacks."

You see?  There are lots of apartments in Tokyo ripe for Marie Kondo.