Japanese Barn Finds: materialism in balance?
As we continue to restore the akiya (空き家) here in Northern Japan, I recently started cleaning out the old agricultural storehouse, the kura (倉 or 蔵). The first task was multiple pickup loads of farm plastic – visqueen, garden cover plastic, and some very long runs of old greenhouse plastic. All expected! We have become a regular visitor at our local dump pickup site. I suppose I look a little comical – a 6’1″ American driving my tiny little Kei-truck back and forth!
But a curious (though expected) transition occurred as I delved deeper into the rubbish pile. I started finding things of use and value. An old yakitori grill, a circular BBQ grill, a old wood box of farm tools. Further back were found items of increasing value and utility – an old hand-powered grain mill (showed in my YouTube video above), an old box of homeschool curriculum, a stack of old vinyl records, and even a couple of boxes of Coca-Cola glasses from 1976!
The value of ‘stuff’
What occurred to me was the value of this ‘stuff’. It is cynically easy to dismiss this stuff as junk, to sniff self-importantly at how only fools hold onto things as mere earthly materialism. But I found myself sitting down with this ‘stuff’, this old junk, and pondering. The previous owner is dead, the property handed down to his son and then purchased by us. Each of those items were placed in that ‘junk’ pile and forgotten. But…what did those items remember? Each one represented a time in that old families brief time on this earth that was cherished. The homeschool science curriculum was purchased its knowledge delivered to their children – a hope in a stable and bright future. The old grain mill churned out not just flour, but held the memories of that family sitting together and putting up their harvest. How many hours did that stack of vinyl records play their favorite music and hold their collective emotions? The box of hold farm tools? – uncountable amounts of sweat and labor poured into them, providing for a rural Japanese family.
Too much ‘stuff’
In our modern times we have so much ‘stuff’ that those of us who are philosophically minded have gone to the far end of the spectrum- dismissing collections of junk as mere materialism. There are even whole philosophical principles and movements built around minimalism – in Japan there is Danshari, in the West – Christian minimalism.
But what if we missed the true value of our possessions? Not as mere possessions, not just an endless accumulation of things. But as tokens and talismans of our memories, hopes, and labors that will endure far after we are gone. Perhaps, a small part of our own souls linger in those ‘things’ that held our lives for a brief while.
Invest in value
Certainly the majority of our day-to-day possessions are just items of utility. Useful for today, junk for tomorrow. Nothing wrong with that. But perhaps making sure that you also are investing in items of quality, items that are worth repairing and keeping useful is a form of immortality. Something to leave in an old barn, to be found by some stranger 100 years from now. They will pick up that ‘stuff’, that thing, and wonder who you were, what you dreamed and labored for. It is a comforting thought that maybe, while lounging around our streets of gold, we will feel a small tug on our soul and, peeking down from heaven’s lofty perch, we will smile a bit as some young family decides to keep an old, almost worn-out, tool of ours that we left in an graying barn, so very long ago.
