In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃) might just change how you view shadows.
Imagine, for a moment, where you are without any artificial lighting. No electric lamps, no street lamps glistening outside, no charming neighbors’ solar lights flickering between blowing branches. While some areas of the world have brightened and others have dimmed, you are statistically likely to live in a lit-up place.
If you’re able to, turn off the lights, and go ahead and settle in the darkness for a bit. By doing so, you’re taking a step into the world inhabited by the author and darkness-appreciator Jun’ichirō Tanizaki.
This essay, published in 1933, captured a rapidly changing Japan. Perhaps it appeals to me as a nostalgic millennial, looking back at the world before the internet. But Tanizaki could look back at the world before mass electrification. And while aesthetic appreciation of ma, negative space, and indeed, shadows can still be seen today in modern Japan. Many people think of the bright lights of Tokyo when thinking about Japan.
But that wasn’t always the case. Like so many others who have read this essay, it now hides in the shadows on my own head. It’s a short, haunting read in many ways. What parts of culture created for a world of shadows sit strangely in our world of light? How much of new technology is in tandem with world powers’ aesthetic preferences?
Tanizaki presents a value set different, but accessible, for the general illumination-obsessed Western reader. From bathrooms to kabuki, Tanizaki questions it all. While I think if this sounds at all interesting or you’re interested in aesthetics, you should read it yourself. (You can do so here) But the following are some quotes about various topics to ponder in our current age.
All of it seems to ask the reader: what do we lose when we gain? Or “how do you give into the new, even when you love the old?”
On tile
Tile, of course, is infinitely more practical and economical. But when ceiling, pillars, and paneling are of fine Japanese stock, the beauty of the room is utterly destroyed when the rest is done in sparkling tile. The effect may not seem so very displeasing while everything is still new, but as the years pass, and the beauty of the grain begins to emerge on the planks and pillars, that glittering expanse of white tile comes to seem as incongruous as the proverbial bamboo grafted to wood.
On science
I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. […] would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art – would they have not suited our national temper better than they do?
On fountain pens
…if the device had been invented by the ancient Chinese or Japanese it would surely have had a tufted end like our writing brush. The ink would not have been this bluish color but rather, black, something like India ink, and it would have been made to seep down from the handle into the brush. […] But more than that: our thought and our literature might not be imitating the West.
On film
One need only to compare American, French, and German films to see how greatly nuances of shading and coloration can vary in motion pictures. In the photographic image itself, to say nothing of the acting and the script, there somehow emerges differences in national character. If this is true even when identical equipment, chemicals, and film are used, how much better our own photographic technology might have suited our complexion, our facial features, our climate, our land.
On radio
Most important are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and the radio render most of these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.
On paper
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.
On shine
As a general matter we find it hard to be really at home with things that shine and glitter. […] While we do sometimes indeed use silver for teakettles, decanters, or sake cups, we prefer not to polish it. On the contrary, 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 prefer a pensive luster to a shadow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity.
On candles and lacquerware
And I realized then that only in dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed. […] In the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty I had not before seen.
Artisans of old, when they finished their works in lacquer and decorated them in sparkling patterns, must surely have had in mind dark rooms and sought to turn to good effect what feeble light there was.
On architecture
I possess no specialized knowledge of architecture, but I understand that 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 — and that herein is thought to lie its special beauty. 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.
Nor is this true only of temples; in the palaces of the nobility and the houses of the common people, what first strikes the eye is the massive roof tile or thatch and the heavy darkness that hangs beneath the eaves. Even at midday, cavernous darkness spreads over all beneath the roof’s edge, making entryway, doors, walls, and pillars all but invisible.
On the shadows on the wall
The light from the garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors, and it is precisely this indirect light that makes for us the charm of a room. We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying rays can sink into absolute repose. […] We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them.
They [Westerners] paint their ceilings and walls in pale colors to drive out as many of the shadows as they can.
On gold in shadow
And surely you have seen, in the darkness of the innermost rooms of these huge buildings, to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast into the enveloping darkness, like the glow upon the horizon at sunset.
…for this same reason were the fabrics of the past so lavishly woven of threads of silver and gold. […] But when you attend a service at an old temple, conducted after the ancient ritual, you see how perfectly the gold harmonizes with the wrinkled skin of the old priest and the flickering light of the altar lamps, and how much it contributes to the solemnity of the occasion.
On women’s beauty standards
Their clothing was in effect no more than a part of the darkness, the transition between darkness and face. One thinks of blackening the teeth. Might it not have been an attempt to push everything except the face into the dark?
Our ancestors made of woman an object inseparable from darkness, like lacquerware decorated in gold or mother-of-pearl. They hid as much of her as they could in shadows, concealing her arms and legs in the folds of long sleeves and skirts, so that one part and one only stood out — her face.
[…] Was not the shaving of eyebrows also a device to make the white face stand out?
The woman of old was made to hide the red of her mouth under green-black lipstick, to put shimmering ornaments in her hair; and so the last trace of color was taken from her rich skin.
The progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light — his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Read More:
- Read In Praise of Shadows or purchase a newly translated edition or find it from your local library
- Darkness aside, beauty exists in Tanizaki’s shadows – Japan Times
- BBC interview all about the essay including voices from design, a Noh theatre expert, and more
- Mirrors of the Mind: The Noh Masks of Ohtsuki Kokun
- My post on The Mustard Seed Manual of Painting and perspective-breaking art in the Tale of Genji
