This book by Shoukei Matsumoto was as disappointingly materialistic as it was wishy-washily platitudinous. I'm not sure what I was expecting from a book with a title like this, but it pretty much is just comprised of a list of possible chores and household maintenance tasks appendaged with cloying and repetitive discussions of how these particular tasks, performed with attentive deliberation, mindfully and carefully, can (enormous surprise) help the cleaner develop meditative states and attitudes. This is not something that anyone who's ever done a thorough spring clean needs explaining - I was hoping that this book would shed some deeper insight into Zen Buddhist philosophies around material objects and stewarding them well, perhaps also cultural or psychological nuggets of interestingness as to how one may approach these tasks in such a way as to bring about such states; at the very least partial repressedly-angry tirade against Western society's lazy-affluent carpet-hoovering torpor. But no! Aside from the pleasant regular illustrations and the occasional spots of discussion which do actually acknowledge the global historical contexts of the advice contained herein (many of these are couched in sections included apparently to sole aims of explicating a certain item of Japanese home cleaning-ware), I'm sad to say it's hard to describe this book as anything more or less than a list of domestic to-maybe-do's padded out with samey almost-ironic-in-their-extremity-of-sincere-mundane-devotion* broad generalisations associating housework with purity, love, life, enlightenment, and all that jazz. I'll finish with a selected quote to show you what I mean: "Dishes must be carefully held in both hands. Holding things in this way displays a sense of natural sophistication and shows that you take care of each and every thing you hold." So, there probably are some people who would enjoy this book, but for me, in a cruel twist of fate it has become one of the few of my acquisitions to have been updated in its material-possession status - to clutter.
* Is that maybe just what Zen Buddhism is like? And if so, is this whole post xenophobic?**
** Maybe it wasn't until I asked this in an asterisk!? Oh dear, what a minefield.
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