Postcard From Tokyo

A profound stillness underpins the world capital of frenzied materialism

- Pallavi Aiyar

Japanese has a bounty of words that recasts the mundane into the luminous. Shinrinyoku, for example, refers to taking a walk in the forest, but translates as “forest bathing”, conjuring up the feel of cleansing light pouring through tall trees on parched skin. Another instance: mon koh refers to lighting incense, but translates as “listening to incense”, plunging you directly into the moment the fragrance greets the nose. You need to listen to hear the memories that lurk in the scent.

Mindfulness, a form of meditation rooted in Zen Buddhism, is the global flavour du jour. It has emerged as big business, with corporate trainers exhorting stressed-out bankers to focus on the rise and fall of their breath and celebrated universities like Cambridge offering courses that involve eating raisins attentively (to measure how far “mindfulness” can help combat anxiety). By some estimates the mindfulness industry is now worth over $1 billion.

In essence, mindfulness is simply paying attention to the moment without distraction. It is the antithesis of multitasking, the antidote to our gadget-fractured 21st-century attention deficits. Ironically, it is also part of the weft of everyday life in the very country most associated with gizmos and techno-futurism.

The reason for this lies in the Japanese archipelago’s pre-robot roots in Zen Buddhism, a way of being in the world that remains foundational. The habits and outlook of Zen are palpable in widely shared aesthetics, quotidian rituals as well as in the silences that inhabit much social behaviour—befuddling to cultures that prefer chatter and argument.