The Little Book of Japanese Contentments is a Cliff Notes version of a coffee table book for those curious about Japanese culture. The author Erin Niimi Longhurst strives to capture subtle and nuanced aspects of a Japanese lifestyle, and she does so in a tiny gift sized book with a magazine-like formatting. Short chapters dive into deep ideas, accompanied by 
beautiful illustrations and photographic images of iconic Japanese rock gardens, Mt Fuji, and city streets lined with storefronts and paper lanterns.
In less than 300 pages, Niimi Longhurst covers many topics from Japanese approaches to life purpose, beauty and imperfection, to the ancient Japanese rituals involving forest bathing and calligraphy.
Her chapter on flower arranging impressed me most with explanations of its deeper significance to community and world. The three main stems of an arrangement “represent the relationship between humanity, a higher power, and the earth or natural world.” The longest branch, or shin, is a symbol of heaven, reaching higher than the others. The middle branch, or soe, represents humankind, and the tai or hikae represents the natural world. Each stem is elegantly positioned and cut to fill each third of the arrangement, with other rules aimed at creating a pleasing minimal and asymmetrical design (122).
One is immediately struck by how much more powerfully each component of the arrangement emerges, in contrast to what one would find at a local florist in Northern California, where flowers are tightly bundled into large happy sprawling bouquets. Flower sellers here go in for a “the more the merrier” look, and often the exquisite and delicate nature of each piece in such a bouquet is lost to the sheer mass of the bundle.
But Japanese arrangements are thoughtful, designed for deeper connections to the world and reflections on nature. Arrangements stand upright in a tool called the kenzan, or flower frog (Wikipedia calls it a “spiky frog”). Stems are pressed down into what Niimi Longhurst likens to an inverted pincushion, reminiscent of a pet brush. I like the idea that in the ancient art of flower arranging, under Japan’s symbolic heaven, humanity and earth, there is a little sword forest keeping things upright and watered. The elegance and nuanced aspects of Japanese culture with its deeper, richer meanings and thoughtful ancient guidelines is a kind of kenzan for the people of Japan, keeping them upright and safe in a globalized world often diluted with cynicism and void of meaning.
Niimi Longhurst, Erin. A Little Book of Japanese Contentments. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2018.
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