So even though the material is gone, I still hold it very dearly in my heart. If it was a letter or a card that was really important to me, I remember every word in the card and the letter. I remember everything about it very vividly in my mind. Because I remember the texture of the cross, how much it weighed on my hands. I actually think that the more something is important to you, the more it’s OK to actually let it go. Now that time has passed a little bit, now I’m of the mind-set that maybe that was going a little bit too far. I wrote in the book about letting go of things even if it sparks joy.

In the book, you mention having a souvenir cross that sparked joy but you threw out anyway. Minimalism is just a principle you could apply to all areas of your life and not just for tidying your home.

It’s also about what is the absolute minimum you need to eat, for example, or anything that you consume, not just the material things that you buy. Minimalism is about the absolute minimum that you need - not want, but need - and is the self-reflective process of learning what is your absolute minimum for you personally. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play How would you differentiate minimalism from what Marie Kondo promotes? It took Sasaki four years to declutter his 'maximalist' lifestyle and a fifth year to get to 'a more minimalist state,' eventually even getting rid of his table, TV, and bed. Sasaki then learned about danshari, a Japanese concept of decluttering, and began reading the books of Marie Kondo, whose concept of keeping only things that 'spark joy' is so ubiquitous that it got name-dropped in the Gilmore Girls reboot. He would find himself assessing his self-worth on what he did and didn't own - and he wouldn't like how he would measure up. 'I would say I used to own 10 times more than I do now,' he says. Sasaki estimates he now owns about 300 items. “Even if I come to New York, I’m not going to be buying souvenirs,” he tells me through his translator, Rieko Yamanaka, “so it seems like I won’t be needing it.”) (Sasaki, who lives in Kyoto, Japan, owns a suitcase but its days seem numbered. Later, I learn, the backpack is all he brought with him for his New York press tour to promote the English edition of Goodbye, Things, out April 11. He has thick-rimmed black glasses sitting on his face and he carries a large backpack, the kind people might use to go hiking.

Then again, what does a minimalist look like? This one wears a gray sweatshirt over a gray shirt, slim off-black jeans, and comfortable-looking black sneakers. When I first meet Fumio Sasaki, who recently wrote a book called Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, he is taking a picture of a neon sign in the office that reads, “I WANT IT ALL.” There’s nothing about Sasaki to indicate that he is a minimalist, someone who advocates purging unnecessary material possessions.

Goodbye things on minimalist living