The Toy Story Rule
In 2019, when decluttering superstar Marie Kondo met the inevitable backlash every popular woman must endure, a friend of mine with a Korean immigrant mother shared an essay with me on the particularly Japanese antecedents to Kondo’s philosophy that were lost on Western audiences.
It’s a lovely think piece to chew on. Written by Margaret Dilloway, it details her Japanese immigrant mother’s adherence to Shintoist practice, the tenets she held and communicated to her daughter, how Kondo’s methodology evokes the beliefs of Dilloway’s late mother, and how the Western think-piece machine, lacking knowledge of Shintoist thought, may be misinterpreting Kondo en masse.
I will share the following block quote, and do my best to summarize the piece. I do hope, however, that the reader of this essay will go and read Dilloway’s contribution first, since it stirs and elucidates. And, well, so you know how sausage is made, I note in advance that as a writer attempting to convey thoughts of my own, the summary I present will be tailored to the ends of this particular essay, which I would say concerns itself with how Western, or at least non-Shinto and non-animist, traditions can adapt the animist properties of KonMari for their own benefit, and so there is inarguable benefit to going to the source and reading the take of someone with actual Shinto heritage rather than a Westernized writer trying to further adapt and relate these tenets to American beliefs, no matter the potential value of that endeavor.
Kami are Shinto spirits present everywhere — in humans, in nature, even in inanimate objects. At an early age, I understood this to mean that all creations were miracles of a sort… According to Shinto animism, some inanimate objects could gain a soul after 100 years of service ―a concept know as tsukumogami ― so it felt natural to acknowledge them, to express my gratitude for them.
—Margaret Dilloway
It is Kondo’s emphasis on thanking objects that evoked strong memories of Dilloway’s mother—after you have rounded up the objects that do not spark joy, KonMarie asks that you thank them before letting them go. Dilloway’s mother, daughter of a Konkokyo priest, taught Dilloway to celebrate objects and their relationship to us, to treat them with a kindness in order to please the Kami. This contrasted greatly with her Mormon father’s way of approaching things, which was acquisitional and saw objects as disposable. In her father’s words, the “The Japanese do everything backward.” Dilloway argues that it is this mentality that holds sway over many of the harsher critics of the KonMari method: Western thoughts on objects, combined with America’s tradition of viewing anything foreign as an uncivil element, inspired a backlash steeped in racism. The mangled interpretation of Kondo’s philosophy on books I think exemplifies this well: Kondo said she would personally keep no more than 30 books in her house, and many essays interpreted this as an anti-intellectual screed. Rather than being anti-book, of course, Dilloway knows, and those who take Kondo in good faith know, that this limitation on books is not out of a hatred of books, but out of respect for them; you shouldn’t cling to books that you never read because books are for reading. To let them go so long unused would defer their tsukumogami. It would take longer for them to earn their soul.
I have no Shinto or Animist background, and many parts of KonMari and Dilloway’s mother’s practices are foreign to me. My intellectual background is more similar to those who tar and feathered Kondo, which may give me some advantage in relaying the beauty I see in Kondo’s practices to those more skeptical.
I, of course, do not believe that objects earn souls. I’m generally a materialist. I have trouble conceptualizing an immortal soul housed in human bodies, so I hope I can be forgiven for not warming to the idea of souls housed in the inanimate.
Additionally, my upbringing was Christian and capitalist in character. From a Christian household, I grew up being told that this world is illusory, more like a camping trip than a permanent home. In Christianity there is a deep skepticism of objects and the physical world. The history of iconoclasm in the Eastern Church can illustrate: objects that look like Christ may be so close to the real thing, the theologians of the 8th century reasoned, that they could trick the worshiper into worshiping the depiction of Christ rather than Christ himself. Christians see material goods as temptations, indulgences, sins of sorts. The laughable image of granting sins and temptations the immortal soul after a hundred years of sinning shows the incompatibility of the Christian and Shinto views. In Christianity, objects are mirages at best and evils at worst, not sleepy suburbs for Kami.
Consumerism, the other tenet of Western modernity, adores possessing objects just as much as Christianity hates the object. Products lead to better living. The product is its function, defined not by its own material self but by how it improves our lives. The product is our better living may be the more apt phrase; a product’s identity only exists in service of us. Why, then, should we be interested in its soul? Why should we thank it?
I would summarize this as the distinction between animist and Western thought on the subject of objects: the object, to the animist, has a life of its own, whereas Western thought can only see the object in relation to the subject, either as that which tempts or that which improves. I will say this is a distinction I have come to on my own, and since no true animism lies within my soul I think it would be fair for an animist, or even a more seasoned theologian of Christian thought, to critique my take as lacking nuance. But, blogs are only so long. Nothing ever receives the nuance it is due in a blog. I personally find this simplified distinction useful for understanding America’s distrust of Kondo: the reason a materialist-humanist, or consumerist, or Christian would not thank an object is because the object only exists in its relation to the self. It is just another organ of the self, and thanking it would be as frivolous as thanking one’s stomach after a Thanksgiving feast, or if one is a Christian, then thanking it would be a potential heresy before God who made the object for you, and if anything, you should pray to and thank God for the bounty before you, a stance my Christian parents often instilled in me. But, for an animist, the object has a whole life and you’re just one small part of it. You are coequal partners in a relationship, joint authors of an action, and one day your collaboration will end and it will head to a new home and will gain its soul and make joy with someone new, and remember you as fondly as you remember it, so you should thank it as you wave goodbye.
Wait a minute, doesn’t that sound like Toy Story 3?
Well, it also sounds like Toy Story 4, which I hear addresses this problem of collaboration, rehoming, and the personal soul of the toys better than Toy Story 3, but I have not watched this final entry in the saga of Buzz and Woody, and so will keep my analysis confined to the 2010 work that I sobbed through at the age of 14.
Pixar is the great animist of the Western world. One of my favorite memes, printed below, identifies the Pixar project as an inherently animist one, the question of what various things and concepts would do if given a soul.
And though I am sure there will be those who think comparing Toy Story, Shintoism, and Christianity sullies the latter two, using art to explicate religion—the Bamberg Apocalypse, the Everyman Plays, Zen no Kotoba to Ghibli—has antecedents both Eastern and Western, and is very hip in the age of Jenny Nicholson, Big Joel and Lindsey Ellis.
But, I believe that Toy Story 3 is the portal through which more Westerners can understand the animist influence of the KonMari method, because Pixar has made it its business to Westernize animism.
Toy Story 3 concerns itself with objects that no longer have a purpose. Andy will be off to college soon. He doesn’t play with these toys any longer. But, they are still alive. They still have their souls, their desire to play, their desire to be played with.
If they were the pedestrian objects that we Westerners see in our day-to-day life, we would feel no problem with throwing them into a landfill. But we, like Andy, have nostalgia and love for them. Unlike with the spatulas and oven mitts in our kitchens, we see in the toys the two previous adventures we’ve undertaken together, and Andy sees the many rootin’ tootin’ adventures which animated his childhood.
Toys are easy to anthropomorphize. With faces and eyes and a love of play, the idea that Buzz and Woody would earn a soul after one hundred years of service only seems silly because that seems too protracted an obligation: a beloved toy from childhood is an old friend, and earned its soul in a few months rather than a century. Even though Andy does not know that the toys of Pixar literally have souls, to him they have earned a soul, and he does his damnedest to ensure that they go to a good home where they can continue to live their life and continue to spark joy. It is his duty to do so. Anything less would not be worthy of the friend that Woody has in Andy, as the Randy Newman tune goes.
He thanks them, and gives them to a girl named Bonnie. He thanks them, and says goodbye.
Here’s my addendum to the KonMari method, which I call The Toy Story Rule.
“Would the object before you have a better life if it moved to a more loving home? In this situation, are you Andy, and would this object be happier with a Bonnie? If so, it is your duty to give it to her.”
This rule has been of personal value for me, and I want to show why I think it may be of value for you. The reason why I like it better than the spirit that originally animated KonMari, that of whether or not the object “sparks joy,” is that I think it makes the KonMari method more appealing to the Christian, materialist, consumerist, and may be even of value for animists with a more Western rather than Buddhist background, New Age and Magick types. Let me explain why the rule may work for you:
For Christians, it highlights a sense of community and charitable giving. A complication in the above described hatred of objects is that many Christians do believe in and love charitable giving. If something sparks a dull bit of joy, but would spark more joy in someone else, would spark more joy in you through the mere act of giving it away, then you should give it away! Certainly, Woody still gives Andy a touch of joy through nostalgia, but to not give it to Bonnie would be to cheat Bonnie of something. Or, in other words, if Christianity preaches no sincere love for objects, it does preach a sincere love for our fellow human, and so a KonMari that demands us to spark joy in others should sit well with Christians.
For materialists and humanists, it helps to relate the animist tendencies inherent in “spark joy” to a non-animist. I don’t believe in the soul of an object, in Kami, in pantheism or animism. What I like about using Toy Story to explicate these underpinnings is that I can see it as a parable rather than an explicit metaphysics. It lets me use irony and metaphor, two things my shitpost generation oft warms to. It also, as described above, keeps the sentiment honed into human needs rather than the needs of objects. It also echoes Peter Singer’s philosophy: the small inconvenience of having one less object in your life is so outweighed by the potential joy it will give another that it becomes a duty to give it away. Finally, while I know that the KonMari method does explicitly call us to donate and recycle when possible, I think those entrenched in consumerist thought see the call to find joy or discard not as an animist love of object but as another way to accrete waste into landfills. By highlighting the fact that I believe the object should continue to live its fine life, and that I should ensure it a good home, I make sure that I don’t misinterpret decluttering as a FastPass to the nearest junkyard. Instead, it’s just giving the object a new and longer life elsewhere.
For consumerists, who believe that objects are mere functionaries of how they serve subjects, it situates the object within such a valuation scheme without being too selfish. Many consumers see thanking objects as cringe. In this version of the rule, we only see the animism as a parable, a way of thinking, rather than adhere directly to the animist preceps. The object still exists to make lives better, not to live its own life. Let someone else feel your consumerist bliss, to feel the joy of products.
For Westerns animists unaware of or resistant to the Buddhist idea of tsukumogami, it highlights the soul of the object that Dilloway described in a more culturally neutral way. Likely, it is easy to adapt the Toy Story rule into whatever particular animist belief one holds, and so it can be a jumping off point to further explore the act of joy sparks in one’s animist mode. If you believe that there is something inherently miraculous about objects, then you should try to make sure it has as many opportunities as possible to work its miracles. If it is 100 years of service that an object requires to have a soul, then a crockpot you haven’t touched in ages or a hat you no longer wear has suddenly run into an unforseen delay on its path to a soul. Let it continue to conduct its duties. Keep it from getting bored. Find it its blithe Bonnie.
But, let’s show how this thinking has worked for me in practice. When I moved to LA from Madison, I had to consider a lot of objects. In particular, I had my stuffed animals. I love Pusheen and Hello Kitty, and keep stuffies at my desk and on my bed. But, I had many of them. Certainly, I loved them, many of them, but I knew in my heart that I had enough, and that someone would love them more.
So, I donated them to a girl in my apartment complex. I know that they will be happier there. It wasn’t exactly a repeat of the end of Toy Story 3—I bought these stuffies as an adult, not as a child, and my stuffies had not gone through a three movie arc. But I think they’re happier than the stuffies I took with me, most of which haven’t been unpacked from the box they shipped in.
My kitchen table was a more sentimental example. Here, an immigrant family, a father and a son, found me on Facebook and took it on Thanksgiving Day. The father was an Arabic speaker—when we talked on Facebook, he sometimes sent a text in Arabic on accident, and would then promptly add the Google translated version of his words. I know, I am being schmaltzy, but I am happy that this table has found a second life with a first-generation family in middle America. I know it will continue to make everyday miracles for them, probably greater miracles than it ever did me, since it mostly served as my lonely WFH office.
And then, of course, there’s the subject of books, that thing for which so many arrows are slung at Kondo. I donated many books to the library when I moved from Madison. To those who believe in hoarding and collecting books, I pose a simple question: all of the books that are in your house, that you keep for sentimental reasons, that you have not read in years, don’t you feel sad that you are cheating someone out of the wonders that they gave you? Does Middlemarch belong on your shelf, or does it belong to someone else who will fall in love with Fred and Dorothea? And why are you taking from them the new soul that George Elliot once gave you?