Kurashi
Overview
Kurashi (暮らし, くらし) is a Japanese word meaning 'housekeeping', 'living', or 'day-to-day life', and it is a cultural keyword that refers not merely to a form of housing or a level of consumption but to the everyday rhythm and attitude encompassing food, clothing, and shelter. In Korea it is frequently borrowed to describe Japanese-style household goods, minimalist living, and the culture of lifestyle products associated with Muji (無印良品), and it has expanded into a lifestyle discourse focused on 'how one lives' rather than 'what one owns'. Recently it has drawn renewed attention in conjunction with wellness, slow life, and the revaluation of domestic labor.
Key Content
Etymology and Basic Meaning
'Kurashi (暮らし)' is the noun form of the verb 'kurasu (暮らす)'. Originating from the Chinese character 暮, meaning 'the day grows late', it came to mean 'the whole of daily life—eating, sleeping, and working—within the cycle of the sun setting and rising again'. Kurashi therefore refers not to special events but to ordinary days that repeat, that is, the totality of a sustainable life. In Japanese it carries nuances of both livelihood and living, as in 'ひとり暮らし (living alone)', '暮らしぶり (one's manner of living)', and '暮らしを立てる (to make a living)'.
Kurashi as a Lifestyle-Culture Keyword
In Japan's publishing and magazine culture, kurashi has established itself as a genre. A representative example is Kurashi no Techo (暮しの手帖), a lifestyle magazine that since its founding in 1948 has consistently covered product comparison testing and ideas for improving daily life, shaping a perspective of consumer sovereignty and everyday rationalism. This current later gave rise to the distribution category of 'lifestyle goods (生活雑貨)', and objects that consider both function and aesthetics—such as dishes, baskets, towels, and kitchen tools—became symbols of kurashi culture.
Muji and Global Spread
The occasion for the popular spread of the kurashi discourse was Muji (無印良品). Its restrained design philosophy—'this is enough' rather than 'this is good'—touches the core value of kurashi. The brand has since expanded beyond simply selling products into a lifestyle-proposal business spanning housing, food culture, clothing, and travel, and in major Asian cities kurashi has become both a consumer taste and a marker of identity.
Reception in Korea
In Korea, kurashi took hold after the 2000s boom in Japanese lifestyle culture and the 2010s culture of SNS-based 'homemaking accounts'. Discourses such as 'minimal life', 'the art of tidying', 'one-bowl living', and 'slow life' merged with kurashi, and a visual grammar was shared around solid wood furniture, matte ceramics, linen materials, and neutral color palettes. At the same time, it has been read as a practice of creating 'a room like my own home' as a reaction against conspicuous consumption.
Critical Perspectives
Kurashi is often criticized for being consumed as a romanticized image. Photographs of tidy spaces easily obscure the time and cost of actual domestic labor, and 'frugal living' can produce the paradox of demanding expensive objects. There is also the pointed risk that aestheticizing unpaid care and domestic labor conceals gender inequality. Accordingly, the discourse has recently been shifting its center of gravity from 'a pretty life' to 'a sustainable and equitable life'.
Latest Trends
As of 2024–2025, the kurashi discourse is changing in three directions. First, it is being reorganized around 'zero waste' and 'repair and resale', which do not increase the number of objects, and the skill of using things for a long time rather than buying new ones is emerging as a virtue. Second, combined with wellness, interest is shifting toward the design of sensory environments such as sleep, lighting, smell, and sound, and lighting, fragrance, and texture are treated as factors that determine the quality of life. Third, as AI and digital tools are applied to increase the efficiency of housework and homemaking, the expression 'kurashi tech' has appeared. In Korea, with the increase in single-person households, the expansion of pet-owning households, and the spread of small housing, how to operate narrow spaces has become a key agenda, while at the same time region-based small lifestyle-goods brands and tool and craft-workshop culture are growing. In short, kurashi is in the process of being redefined from 'consumption of taste' to 'sustainable operation', and from image-centered to practice-centered.
Related Topics
- [[Muji]]
- [[Minimalism]]
- [[Lifestyle goods]]
- [[Slow life]]
- [[Japanese culture]]
- [[Wellness]]