COLUMN ONE : Seeking Solace in Simplicity : After years of fat living, some Japanese embrace the idea that less is more. They also find inspiration in the feudal Edo era, and the belief that ‘This was pure Japan, the way we were, the world we lost.’

Fumiaki Kuraishi has every material possession he could want: a 1991 Nissan car, a new refrigerator and washing machine, three televisions, two stereos, a videocassette recorder, a computer and word processor--all crammed into the home he shares with his wife and two children.

But as the worst recession in two decades continues to cast a long, lingering shadow over Japan, Kuraishi says the heady materialism of the recent past is, for him, passe.

“I’m a little tired of finding new electronic gadgets,” the 50-year-old government economist said. “I want to change my habits from spending to more spiritual satisfaction.”

So Kuraishi has sought inspiration by reading the works of renowned educator Yukichi Fukuzawa and others born in the late Edo era. Although the Edo--from 1603 to 1868--may be best known for the Tokugawa shogunate’s foreign isolation and feudalistic repression, it also was a time of unparalleled peace and the blossoming of a vibrant, distinctive Japanese culture.

“We inherited many habits and ways of thinking from the Japanese in the Edo era,” Kuraishi said. “By reading these older books, I found I can understand present Japan better.”

As uncertainty and recession grip a land where many have sated material appetites during a long economic boom, experts say more Japanese are seeking lifestyles rooted in simplicity and spiritual wealth.

Advertising giant Dentsu calls it a shift from “valuing the tangible to the intangible.”

The Japan External Trade Organization, in a new report on the Japanese in the 1990s, says the economic downturn, wide disgust at political corruption and boredom with excessive consumption have led many to seek a life “with emphasis on moderation, quality rather than quantity and spiritual satisfaction.”

The paths toward more psychically enriching lives are diverse, ranging from nature activities to volunteerism to self-help seminars.

But some, like Kuraishi, are exploring their roots--in particular, the lifestyle, arts, culture and economy of the Edo.

Books on the period, many recasting the former feudalistic image into a more creative one of simple living and cultural innovation, enjoy brisk sales; a plethora of new titles describe everything from Edo energy and technology to exorcists and cuisine.

Eisuke Ishikawa has written five books in the last seven years on the Edo but says they only began selling well in 1993--hitting the 20,000 mark, unusual for the genre.

Ishikawa and other authors depict the Edo as a dynamic time in which the Japanese lived in harmony with nature, using solar energy and vegetable oil, recycling everything from ash to straw slippers. This portrayal has caught the public fancy as a potential trove of lessons for modern Japan.

“The trend was started before the bubble burst, but it was probably intensified by it,” said Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a senior fellow in Japanese history at Australian National University in Canberra, who recently analyzed the Edo book trend. “At one level, it’s a fad. But at another level, it’s an important part of the debate about Japanese identity: how Japan will define its identity now that it has caught up with the West.

“Now Japan is trying to find its own models within itself,” Morris-Suzuki said. “Edo is seen as a model, because it was the last period before Japan got heavily Westernized. So there is the idea that ‘This was pure Japan, the way we were, the world we lost.’ ”

The period produced much of what is typically associated with Japan, from ukiyoe woodblock prints to brilliant Basho haiku poetry.

For those overdosed on materialism, the traditional Japanese aesthetic offers a soothing balance of understatement and tranquillity. At the same time, its popular culture, including sumo wrestling and Kabuki, offer raucous escape.

(The rich development of arts and leisure was promoted partly by more than 250 years of internal peace. But it also grew out of the need to entertain thousands of samurai, who were forced to travel yearly to Edo--the former name for Tokyo--to pay homage to Tokugawa shoguns, who found the costly trips a handy way to prevent regional lords from acquiring excessive wealth and power.)

Today, Kabuki--the highly stylized art form that combines dance and drama and that has typically attracted older audiences--is drawing younger fans who have helped the theater record sellouts.

Sanae Hirama, 23, began attending performances last year; her frequent encounters with foreigners sparked a desire to explore her roots. A specialist in French literature who has been abroad five times, she was embarrassed at not being able to answer questions about Kabuki, geisha and ukiyoe.

Traditional music collections are enjoying record sales; tea ceremony and other cultural classes are gaining new followers.

The government’s 1993 Leisure White Paper reported a 15.8% increase in participation in calligraphy and a 4.8% increase in tea ceremony in 1992 over the previous year.

Seibu, the retail and transportation conglomerate that is one of the nation’s quickest trend-spotters, two years ago began a special “Japan Is Good” series of classes at the community college it operates in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo.

Many of the classes, ranging from tea and Kabuki appreciation to samurai art, have waiting lists.

The city’s ultimate monument to the life of the era, the new Tokyo Edo Museum, has drawn more than 2 million people--double the number projected--since opening in March.

The cavernous museum features displays such as a life-size Kabuki theater replica, merchants’ quarters, the famous Yoshiwara pleasure district, woodblock prints and the nagaya , or long rows of connected houses that gave Edo village life its distinctive communal feel.

For Tomie Sekiguchi, 51, the row houses stirred a nostalgia for a warm community life, in which families and neighbors traded gossip, laughter and meals; she rarely finds such camaraderie in this bustling 21st-Century city, where many complain that they live surprisingly isolated existences.

At the same time, she said, seeing the magnificent workmanship of Edo pottery underscored the wastefulness of modern society, where “everything is so cheap you just throw it away.”

“During Edo, people really treasured things and kept them for a long time,” Sekiguchi said. “Although they were poor, the family life was very warm. I want to pass these teachings on to my children.”

Spokesman Masaichi Sugaya attributed the museum’s unexpected popularity to the societal reflection that he says is occurring as many Japanese search for their next goal, now that material needs have been fulfilled.

“A lot of people are wondering what kind of lifestyle to lead from now,” he said. “Amid the Edo boom, as they look into the past, they are groping for answers.”

A cultural revival of sorts is also occurring with food.

Displacing Thai and Italian cuisines, 1993’s hottest trend was yatai mura , or colorful stalls selling down-home Japanese cooking, such as shrimp pancakes and boiled vegetables.

Hirano Hisawa, a 33-year-old restaurateur, last year put up a food village in the Ikebukuro district, offering lively wooden stalls illuminated with red paper lanterns. His aim: to revive the flavor of old Tokyo and offer cheap, filling food amid the recession’s gloom.

The village attracts crowds and long lines every night; his monthly revenue of $270,000 is running 50% higher than predictions. This year, he plans to open another food village in the nearby Okubo district with a stage for traditional plays and comedy and an area to demonstrate the art of pounding rice cakes.

Masako Yamazawa, a teacher waiting in line, said she came back to the food village not only because the recession has curtailed her spending but because she enjoys the rare, old-Tokyo flavor amid Ikebukuro’s skyscrapers, department stores and ubiquitous fast-food joints.

When the Japanese stay home and read, they also encounter the Edo influence, experts say.

The top buzzword of 1993, according to an annual poll of the mass media here, was seihin , which translates as “honest poverty.”

It was popularized by the runaway bestseller “Seihin no Shiso,” which examines the lives of 15 painters, scholars, monks and other paragons in the Edo and other periods and urges Japanese to end their mindless materialism.

Author Koji Nakano had been hammering the same theme in 40 books for 25 years, but most of his works sold about 10,000 copies each. In 1993, however, his “Seihin” sold 700,000 copies in a success that startled the publishing world and made him a national celebrity.

Nakano said that reflection is occurring not only in Japan but also in Europe and America, as industrialized nations seek ways to reconcile their voracious consumption and production with their limited natural resources.

If the United States has its Puritan ethic to draw upon for answers, Japan has the Edo, he said.

Sarai, a magazine devoted to finding simple pleasures in Japanese history and tradition, was a surprising success among the many new publications launched during the “bubble era” of exploding prosperity.

As other magazines on real-estate and other material themes floundered with the recession’s onset, Sarai has doubled its circulation, to 350,000 in 1993 from 170,000, when it first started in 1989 as a deliberate counterpoint to “the bubble’s” excesses.

Recent issues have featured the art of cultivating bonsai , living in modern nagaya row houses and good-luck totems. The largest group of readers are in their 50s--people who devoted their lives to rebuilding Japan into an economic titan.

“Until now, people have not had the time to look at themselves; they’ve just been busy running,” said Satoshi Iwamoto, Sarai editor. “Now they’re coming back to the basics.”

That is exactly what one Tokyo publishing employee has been yearning to do. She is bored with spending money. During the prosperous days, she bought the most expensive perfume, ordered the most lavish French cuisine, took fancy vacations and accumulated a house filled with the latest electronic gadgetry.

Now there is nothing left she wants to buy. Since the economy crashed, she does not feel like spending in the gloomy environment anyway. So what does she seek next?

“Tranquillity,” she said. “I want to go to a faraway temple that no one knows about, sit in a bamboo forest with moss-covered rocks and drink tea from a beautiful Japanese cup.”

To pursue that quiet time for herself, she is thinking of taking up calligraphy.

But her husband, a computer specialist, is still happily spending.

And Dentsu, even as it proclaims an era when the intangible will be valued, notes that more than 80% of people recently surveyed still had something they wanted to buy.

As Japan Monitor put it: People want simpler lifestyles, not simple ones.

The move toward simplicity, in fact, could be bad news for the lagging economy, which is depending on consumer demand to revive itself.

The Japan Economic Research Assn. estimates that a 5% decrease in consumption would push the economy down to zero or negative growth.

Fujitsu Chairman Takuma Yamamoto is blunt in critiquing the “honest poverty” movement: “This is the thinking of social dropouts. As a businessman, the ideal is to earn enough money and consume to some extent. Nobody wants to live not getting things you want.”

Some people also worry that Edo nostalgia could spark a worrisome nationalism or a trend toward that era’s sakoku , or isolationism.

But no one is talking about shutting the world out, as if such a thing could be done.

Shinji Kuroki, 26, and Hajime Hosoda, 22, may eschew the guitar and choose to study biwa , a Japanese-style mandolin.

They may say that playing the biwa gives them a greater feeling of peace than Western instruments and better suits the Japanese language in which they sing of great battles between the Heike and the Genji clans.

But as they practice in a tatami room (one with bamboo mats) with their teacher, Yukihiro Goto, they mix their ancient instrument with the accordion and meld the traditional rhythms with the modern influences of jazz and rock.

Masayuki Kurokawa, an architect, has also returned to his roots by designing works such as teahouses, instead of the exclusively Western buildings of his past. But he retains a blend of old and new, combining washi paper with computer graphics in his latest design.

Kurokawa and others say that if the search for spiritual enrichment leads many back to their cultural roots, all the better: It will help Japan and the world comprehend each other.

“It’s not nationalism,” he said. “If you can love Japan, you can love the world. By questioning who we are, we can deepen international understanding.”

Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.