In Praise of Shadows

Refreshing to read an unabashed aesthetic defense, as well as one where the west is an alluring intruder set to destroy tradition with inventions like hideous electric lighting. The historical background of this being pre-WWII and an era of nationalism gives some context for the traditionalist sentiment, and with that in mind the essay is quite mild, much like the soft shadows that the author prefers. Some of this clash of civilizations can still be felt between the glass highrises interwoven with a traditional wood-joined temples when visiting Japan. Neon lights and shoji walls.

Tanizaki's essay on aesthetics is in the Western mind closer to a stream-of-consciousness narrative, exploring a multitude of topics with informed views, some of which might appear as idiosyncratic, such as the meditative value of the toilet or the tone of Japanese skin as an innate cultural defense mechanism. Before reading, I thought this text was going to be analysis of subjects such as ukiyo-e or Tanizaki's literary predecessors, though it is not quite that. It is a broad and almost haphazard series of meditations on everything from lacquerware to Kabuki theatre to how the style of a Japanese house lends itself to the shadows. However, Tanizaki does make a plea for literature and art to preserve the value of shadows and darkness as show more American aesthetics have, at this time, begun to supplant Japanese tradition. This an elegy more than an essay, and a fascinating one that is marked by Tanizaki's signature cynicism. show less

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”

This is a fascinating, surprising, occasionally amusing essay that lauds and explains traditional Japanese aesthetics relating to light and its absence. It’s applied to architecture, music, writing, the costumes of theatres and temples, women, and food. It contrasts Japanese principles with the western ones that were increasingly influential in 1933, and asks if progress is necessarily good, particularly when it’s imported from another culture.

Image: “The beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows show more against light shadows” - that’s why there are so few ornaments. (Source.)

Dark and Light, East and West

“How different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science.”

It’s not just a matter of taste. Tanizaki sees the differences arising from the landscape and the people themselves, giving rise to different paths of development - a cultural butterfly effect.

He explains how the fountain pen, "an insignificant little piece of writing equipment", was invented in the west, so there is no brush, no gentle seeping of black ink, and different paper is required. It makes writing a viscerally different experience, and its adoption in the east triggered suggestions to replace characters with Roman script, and will inevitably influence the type of literature Japanese writers write.

Image: You can now buy hybrid cartridge-filled brush pens. (Source.)

But I was challenged by the conclusions of this self-described Oriental that the fundamental reason for Japanese preference for dark and shadows was skin colour: how light plays on Japanese skin which, though pale, is "tainted by a slight cloudiness" akin to dirt in a clear pool. He even empathises with “pure-blooded whites” upset by the sight of those with other skin tones!

Protect Difference or Accept Hegemony?

In a broader sense, this is a topical question, nearly a century after it was written. How do we balance embracing the richness of other cultures with maintaining the essence of their distinct identities?

Tanizaki observes fundamental differences between east and west, and he doesn’t want to erase them, though he accepts some of the conveniences that come from afar.

I remember travelling in China in 2008, being struck by how different the fashion and cosmetic ads were compared with my previous trip in 1992. They all used the palest, least Chinese-looking models - apart from those that used western models. It’s one thing desiring western products, but wanting to look like a different race is tragic - except for the burgeoning cosmetic surgery sector, with specialisms in eye-surgery, skin whitening, and even leg lengthening.

Darkness to Enhance Other Senses

“Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness.”

I once went to a restaurant whose USP was eating in total darkness. It was an experience like no other, and flavours were surprisingly hard to identify. I relished the novelty, and the enhanced sensations of shape and texture. That’s not a viable option day to day, but eating in more normal low-light, and without the distractions of cluttered walls, and background music certainly engages one more in the food itself. Conversely, too many dinners in front of the TV, where you barely notice what you eat, let alone how much, surely contribute to the obesity problem.

Tanizaki is at his most lyrical when writing about aged lacquerware in traditional low light (see quotes below):
“Only in dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed.”

Image: Ōnishi Isao, a traditional lacquerware craftsman works by candlelight. (Source.)

Quotes

In places, this reads almost like poetry, but is by a novelist who was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964: Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.

• “The Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden.”

• “Japanese paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose… Western paper turns away the light, while our paper seems to take it in, to envelop it gently, like the soft surface of a first snowfall. It gives off no sound when it is crumpled or folded, it is quiet and pliant to the touch as the leaf of a tree.”

• “We find it hard to be really at home with things that shine and glitter. The Westerner uses silver and steel and nickel tableware, and polishes it to a fine brilliance… We begin to enjoy it only when the luster has worn off, when it has begun to take on a dark, smoky patina.

• “We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity.”

• “Darkness is an indispensable element of the beauty of lacquerware… [Traditional lacquerware] was finished in black, brown, or red, colors built up of countless layers of darkness, the inevitable product of the darkness in which life was lived.”

• “In the Gothic cathedral of the West, the roof is thrust up and up so as to place its pinnacle as high in the heavens as possible… In the temples of Japan, on the other hand, a roof of heavy tiles is first laid out, and in the deep, spacious shadows created by the eaves the rest of the structure is built.”

• “Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere… In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses.”

• “Light is used not for reading and writing or sewing but for dispelling the shadows in the farthest corners, and this runs against the basic idea of the Japanese room.”

• “So dilute is the light there that no matter what the season, on fair days or cloudy, morning, midday, or evening, the pale, white glow scarcely varies. And the shadows at the interstices of the ribs seem strangely immobile, as if dust collected in the corners had become a part of the paper itself. I blink in uncertainty at this dreamlike luminescence, feeling as though some misty film were blunting my vision.”

• “The color of that ‘darkness seen by candlelight.’ It was different in quality from darkness on the road at night. It was a repletion, a pregnancy of tiny particles like fine ashes, each particle luminous as a rainbow.”

Themes

After reading this, I discovered a different edition labels 16 sections. I couldn’t actually work out where all the section breaks would go, so I’m glad I read it as one continuous piece. All the themes are covered, but not solely in this sequence:

1. On construction
2. The toilet aesthetic
3. A different course
4. A novelist's daydreams
5. On paper, tin and dirt
6. Candlelight and lacquerware
7. Bowls of broth
8. The enigma of shadows
9. An uncanny silence
10. Reflections in darkness
11. Shadows on the stage
12. The woman of old
13. Beauty in the dark
14. A world of shadows
15. A cool breeze in total darkness
16. Final grumblings

See also

• The only fiction I've read by Tanizaki also switches between cold light and very dark. See my review of The Tattooer, HERE.

• For a collection of mini reviews of stories about people and their shadows in European tales, see my review of Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow, HERE. show less

Certainly an interesting read. It gives a glimpse into the kind of life that was already gone at the time of writing, nearly a century ago. It is fascinating to see someone baffled by something as natural for us as electric lights or flushing toilets. The observations on shadows, old and used objects, and other parts of Tanizaki's aesthetic stance were thought-provoking. I had a good laugh at the bits about toilets and soup. The book was entertaining. It didn't quite live up to the hype it was recommended to me with, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Esse pequeno relato incrivelmente evocativo e repleto de fascinante descrições e avaliações minuciosas, aborda, do ponto de vista de um nacionalismo reacionário, de um romantismo barroco, de um gótico muito observador, pra usar anacronismos, uma estética japonesa tradicional. Isso na década de 30, quando o Japão era tomado pela modernização. Assim, o autor contrapõe um estilo próprio da cultura local, especulativamente ligado à características fenotípicas (um povo, com uma gama de cores de pele específicas). Um que valoriza a sombra, o esconder, o encoberto (invocando o sinistro da beleza da mulher como um pedaço de madeira sem carne, estandarte para as roupas ali situadas; a ideia de marionete que paira aí), além do show more colocar-se em situação, contra uma tendência moderna, européia-ocidental, de iluminação, lâmpadas elétricas e equipamentos que relegam o estético a um papel menor, subsidiário. Nisso ele acaba avançando uma visão de que a estética deveria ser prioritária na harmonização das coisas da cultura, mas também que a modernização respondem a ensejos estéticos por clareza e limpidez excessiva, típica dos europeus, e ligada à compleição dos mesmos. Destaque para a descrição tão cativante quanto excêntrica das belezas das latrinas japonesas tradicionais. Ao final, entretanto, em que pese o mito do passado melhor, que o autor admite, há de fato, em meio a transições desenfreadas, a necessidade de pararmos e ponderarmos sobre a ligação entre o bem viver e a estética, sua colocação em situação, o que envolve a ideia de harmonização com o que já é dado. O refúgio das sombras, frente à modernização, acabará sendo a literatura, ele conclui. E pratica. show less

This is such a strange but intriguing treatise on Japanese vs. Western aesthetics, starting with lighting (the Japanese preference for low levels of natural light vs. the Western preference for high levels of electric light) and how many design and art and color decisions are founded on one lighting condition or another. This really becomes a mourning of the disappearance of many traditional forms of Japanese art and design, as Tanizaki discusses how what was meant to be alluring in low light often appears garish and loses its charm when overlit.

As someone who avoids turning on the lights whenever possible, I found his reasoning convincing, and was even motivated to go dig out a lamp that had been going unused to replace the bright show more overhead lights when I am reading in my library. But then there was also some weird gender stuff? Like rhapsodizing about the erotic power of a man's hands in Nöh theater, but then a lot about women that did not really seem like the author actually liked them? I started to wonder if Tanizaki were queer, but Wikipedia said no. And then I remembered that not much is more straight than not really liking women and reducing them to ornamental objects.

Still! I liked this overall! show less

Seems more like an essay about what it means to be Japanese in the face of Meiji-era Westernization, or even modernization in general. It's valuable, I think, to think about what "realities of life" led to the architectural or aesthetic choices in your culture, especially during a time of rapid change. It's a good snapshot of Japan in 1933, and it led me to consider what it's like to lose a world of deep cultural and historical import, years of "patina" on its surface that can be polished away without a second thought. Tanizaki seems to be looking to hold on to a past that's quickly becoming forgotten completely, like when he bemoans the excessive lighting that is now present everywhere that overheats rooms but no one seems to notice or show more care.

I liked the essay overall. At times it did ramble, but I don't fault it for that. It was a worthwhile read. show less