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    In Praise of Shadows
    In Praise of Shadows
    In Praise of Shadows
    Ebook60 pages1 hour

    In Praise of Shadows

    By Junichirô Tanizaki

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    An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combiningan acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateJul 1, 2017
    ISBN9780918172679
    Author

    Junichirô Tanizaki

    Junichiro Tanizaki (Tokio, 1886-Yugawara, 1965). Uno de los principales exponentes de la literatura japonesa del siglo XX, se licenció en la universidad de Tokio y pronto se sintió atraído por la literatura occidental. En 1949 fue galardonado con el Premio Imperial de Literatura por su obra La madre del capitán Shigemoto. En 1956, suscitó una gran polémica con su obra La llave por su audacia.

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    Reviews for In Praise of Shadows

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    • 4/5
      On the surface, an inconsequential set of ramblings about how Japan's pursuit of Western illumination has ruined certain aesthetic traditions. I had to remind myself that it was written in the 1930s, at a time when Western-style "progress" was eating away at centuries of tradition in Japan. Tanizaki posits some interesting theories about why Japanese architecture and notions of beauty developed the way they did, embracing shadows and focusing on single aspects of beauty to be highlighted by the existence of the surrounding shade. I'm one of the Westerners he's perplexed by - I love light, and would throw open curtains, doors and windows to let it in. But I also understand his love of muted light, natural light, preferring it to the harsh glare of electric light as he does. Japan has changed too much over the past 80 years for me to ever experience the aesthetics Tanuzaki appreciated and mourned, so I won't ever be able to fully understand this essay, but I enjoyed it all the same.
    • 4/5
      Six-word review: The beauty in things seen dimly.Extended review:Earthy and sublime by turns, this brief study sheds light--and shadow--on the aesthetic principles of a culture that typically mystifies Westerners. Never on my own would I have thought of the still, spare lines of a dim and empty Japanese room as a showcase of shadows. Never would I have realized that the bold glare of black lacquerware was meant to be seen as a muted glow within a darkened space.The Japanese novelist writes with an awareness of Western sensibilities that enables him to look at his own native tradition as if from the outside, zeroing in on what seems so alien to us, while at the same time honoring the sense of beauty and harmony so prized in that tradition.Donald Richie's 1977 A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics clearly owes something to this 1933 work, which Richie references in his bibliography, and the two essays make excellent companion pieces. Together they have significantly enlarged my understanding. This is a five-star work on its own scale, not possible for me to rate appropriately alongside books ten times its size and scope.
    • 5/5
      I found this essay tremendously interesting. it is basically a renowned novelist's musings on the Japanese aesthetic. It touches on everything from architecture, to women, to toilets, and generally makes a stark contrast between Easy and West. It made many things fall into place for me regarding Japanese art/architecture, literature, film, and food. Although the style was rambling and not entirely cohesive, it was fine that way-- a nice combination of serious analysis and humor, and very accessible. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in anything Japanese. It will change your perspective and understanding. 4.5 stars
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting book about light and shadows, but it's more or less a commentary on the differences between cultures and a desire to maintain a cultural identity and values in the modern age. I use the term "modern" loosely, because while the book was written several decades ago (the publication date is listed as 1977, but the essay appears to have originated much earlier), the basic principles of aesthetics still apply today. We're still grappling with influences in architecture, technology, and design that have the potential to change the manner and pace through which we approach life.
    • 5/5
      A delightful little book, more of an article or an essay really, which juxtaposes the traditional Japanese aesthetics of home design with the Western style. It meanders into many other avenues and anecdotes and becomes a small treatise on Japanese culture in the end. A fantastic companion to any trip to Japan, and especially to Kyoto- the place where Tanizaki spent many years of his life, and which proudly remains one of the most traditional of Japanese cities.
    • 5/5
      I found this in a gift store at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House, not knowing what it was about but enjoying the discussion about patina and oldness. Perhaps that is what hooked me into Japanese literature for sure.
    • 3/5
      This was a fascinating and quick read. The author has an interesting viewpoint.
    • 3/5
      Tanizaki discusses the role that darkness plays in the Japanese aesthetic and the jarring realization that light (influenced by Western architecture) forces upon objects and styles created in and meant to be viewed in low-light. Although he recognizes the utility that modern architecture and lighting brings to a room, he laments the loss of "visible darkness." Like the silences of John Cage, darkness is a presence, a tangible object of beauty rather than an absence. His meditation flows from discussions of architecture to women, from calligraphy to history, and from theatre to food.
    • 3/5
      Wanting to see the Oriental perspective of space, I was eager to read this book. Jumping from one subject to another, Tanizaki is quite easy to follow, yet his over-all study of light, shadows and space aren't fleshed out in this book. It may have to do with the translation, though, and the afterword by the Australian professor doesn't do the book justice at all, too, and only reminds us of the nuances and, perhaps, impossibilities of translation.
    • 5/5
      I had a professor of Japanese history who argued that this book was actually meant to praise modernity and mock the old ways. I agree with him wholeheartedly after a few more reads.
    • 3/5
      It can be easily said of this essay that it is a set of jottings about the aesthetic power of darkness. The author's writing is like a stream that runs through architecture, takes a turn into gastronomy, goes swiftly by human beauty and ponders on old age, with a turn of prose so compelling that makes you wish you owned minimalistic decorated japanese house and were reading by candle light.The considerations on architecture and decoration can be taken as the oriental counterpart to Bachelard's Poetics of Space, taking the way the lived experience of the space is that which matters for his aesthetics and practical purposes.Tanizaki is a man who can write beautifully about sensuous experiences like sight or taste never losing from sight his theme.But what exactly is the theme? It seems to me to be a mourning of a traditional way of life, or should we say of lighting, that was quickly disappearing. The view that glorifies darkness which makes lacquer and gold stand out or that softens the whites as opposed to artificial light which makes everything glitter and brings the unbearable brightness can also be just a romantic vision of a lost Japan that never existed. But that really isn't an issue if you are aiming to enjoy this book for its sheer beauty and bits of witty humor.*****"It has been said of japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is food to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark."*****This edition is lacking a glossay of unstranslated japanese terms used throughout.
    • 4/5
      The book was written in the 1920s and is a very personal critique of modernity (electric light, modern livestyles) changing the traditional Japanese way of life. Interesting is Tanizki poetic sensitivity and his unique observations. The english translations is not very good, whereas the German version captures his style much better. As a result its quite popular with German designers.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Plucked at random from the shelves of my local library, this proved to be a gently enjoyable read. The tone is intelligent, yet conversational. An interesting look into aesthetics, culture, and change.
    • 4/5
      Super. short. read. In a nutshell: The times are a-changing and technical progress doesn´t pay attention to japanese culture - sadly.
    • 1/5
      This book was originally published in 1933, first translated to English in 1977. It's widely considered to be a nifty monograph on Japanese aesthetics and contains paragraphs that at first may seem bizarre and navel-gazing, like this one, on the toilet:

      Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but 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. The novelist Natsume Sôseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

      Still, the short monograph pulls you in, letting you get into the contents and kind of made me think of stuff at home in an existentialistic way. Further on the toilet:

      As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantô region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the leaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature. Compared to Westerners, who regard the toilet as utterly unclean and avoid even the mention of it in polite conversation, we are far more sensible and certainly in better taste. The Japanese toilet is, I must admit, a bit inconvenient to get to in the middle of the night, set apart from the main building as it is; and in winter there is always a danger that one might catch cold. But as the poet Saitô Ryoku has said, “elegance is frigid.” Better that the place be as chilly as the out-of-doors; the steamy heat of a Western-style toilet in a hotel is the most unpleasant.

      The author questions the basic ideas of what "we" dislike:

      One reason we hate to go to the dentist is the scream of his drill; but the excessive glitter of glass and metal is equally intimidating.

      The praises of materialistic things are quite interesting:

      Darkness is an indispensable element of the beauty of lacquerware. [...] I know few greater pleasures than holding a lacquer soup bowl in my hands, feeling upon my palms the weight of the liquid and its mild warmth. The sensation is something like that of holding a plump newborn baby. [...] It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark.

      Also, on the older trend of blackening teeth:

      One thinks of the practice of blackening the teeth. Might it not have been an attempt to push everything except the face into the dark?

      However, the "we" and "they" devolves into sheer nationalism and racism at times:

      Yamamoto Sanehiko, president of the Kaizô publishing house, told me of something that happened when he escorted Dr. Einstein on a trip to Kyoto. As the train neared Ishiyama, Einstein looked out the window and remarked, “Now that is terribly wasteful.” When asked what he meant, Einstein pointed to an electric lamp burning in broad daylight. “Einstein is a Jew, and so he is probably very careful about such things”—this was Yamamoto’s interpretation. But the truth of the matter is that Japan wastes more electric light than any Western country except America.

      That's just sad. Even though Junʼichirō Tanizaki quotes another person above, it's not good, rational or anything other than demagogy. Furthermore:

      The Japanese quite aside, I cannot believe that Westerners, however much they may prefer light, can be other than appalled at the heat, and I have no doubt they would see immediately the improvement in turning down the lights.

      All in all, it's like reading a well-written monograph with bits of "Mein Kampf" in it, which ultimately brings this down. The fact that it's written in 1933 does not excuse anything.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely bizarre, rambling book of thoughts on toilets, plates, trains, shadows. The kind of text that is like catnip to writers.
    • 4/5
      In the morning of August 6th 1945 the American B-29 aeroplane Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Reports always speak of the blinding light and fireball that formed with a surface temperature hotter than the sun. Estimates suggest that the Little Boy atomic bomb killed 80,000 people in a single day and another 140,000 of radiation poisoning and burns by the end of the year.Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows was published in 1933, an essay length reflection on a Japanese architecture and sensibility destroyed by modern (Western) illumination. Though published 12 years before the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tanizaki’s polemic is haunted with a prefiguring of the mass destruction that was to come.As in most recent Western-style buildings, the ceilings are so low that one feels as if balls of fire were blazing directly above one’s head. ‘Hot’ is no word for the effect, and the closer to the ceiling the worse it is – your head and neck and spine feel as if they were being roasted.No clairvoyance was involved in Tanizaki’s elegy. It is a privileged viewpoint. His essay is more ironic in tone, a baggy, rambling piece of writing that ranges from architecture to hygiene to jade to women to heating levels. And I use those terms as a reader that loves to read discursive, seemingly unstructured essays.Tanizaki writes, ‘Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty’. To read his essay is to recall a lost world, liminal spaces no longer permitted in a time of of what Pascal Quignard refers to as ‘dazzling, puritanical, imperialist, American neon light.”Quignard draws a central part of The Roving Shadows from Tanizaki’s essay, about which he writes: ‘I think these pages are among the finest ever written in any of the various societies that have arisen over time …’
    • 5/5
      One of my real joys about reading fiction involves a literary novel sprinkled with art, music, or literary allusions, which usually help round out a character. These novels tend to the inhabit the category of intellectually challenging. One writer who constantly challenges, amuses and intrigues me is Muraki Harikami. Of the three of his novels I have read, all have music and art as a background. His literary allusions – of Japanese and Western literature – always intrigue. As I near the end of his latest novel, I have already ordered three books, which play an important role in the story. Most often, these obscure books come as a complete surprise. In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki really surprised me.Tanizaki was born July 24, 1886 and he died July 30 1965) was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki, who happens to be my favorite Japanese author. Some of Tanizaki’s works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions, while others, are less sensational and subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. His stories frequently narrate a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed.This essay on aesthetics was originally published in 1933, and the English translation was published in 1977 by Leete's Island Books. The translation contains a foreword by architect and educator Charles Moore and an afterword by one of the translators, Thomas J. Harper. Harper was Senior Lecturer in Japanese Literature at the Australian National University in Canberra. The other translator, Edward Seidensticker, was Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University. Much shorter than the author's novels, this book is a small meditative work tells the story of building his dream home, which he freely admits cost more than he could afford.Tanizaki writes, “What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms – even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn. For the solitary eccentric, it is another matter. He can ignore the blessings od scientific civilization and retreat to some forsaken corner of the countryside, but a man who has a family and lives in the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life – heating, electric lights, sanitary facilities – merely for the sake of doing things the Japanese way. The purist may wrack his brain over the placement of a single telephone, hiding it behind the staircase or in a corner of the hallway, wherever he thinks it will least offend the eye” (1).As a person who lives in a home decorated in the style of post-modern clutter – that is, everything in the place where it fits – I would have the opposite trouble: finding more wall space, more book shelves, and fewer empty spaces.I now have a window on the character in the novel, whose meticulous attention to order seemed odd to me. In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki is a pleasant read with a cup of tea one fine afternoon. 5 stars--Chiron, 7/30/14

    Book preview

    In Praise of Shadows - Junichirô Tanizaki

    Front Cover of In Praise of ShadowsHalf Title of In Praise of ShadowsBook Title of In Praise of Shadows

    English translation, Foreword, and Afterword copyright © 1977

    by Leete’s Island Books, Inc.

    Eleventh printing

    Library of Congress Catalogue Number 77-75035

    ISBN 978-0-918172-02-0

    Published by Leete’s Island Books, Inc. Box 1

    Sedgwick, ME 04676

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Design by Susan McCrillis Kelsey

    This essay has been made available to Leete’s Island Books with the gracious permission of Mrs. Jun ‘ichirō Tanizaki.

    Cover photo: Entrance to the Koizumi House in Hiroshima City, in The Essential Japanese House, photographs by Yukio Futagawa, text by Teiji Itoh, published by Harper & Row, 1967.

    This translation has received an award from the Translation Center at Columbia University, made possible by a grant from the National Endowments for the Arts.

    FOREWORD

    One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. This is not, especially in the tumultuous present, an easy act (as is attested by the uninhabited and uninhabitable no-places in cities everywhere), and it requires help: we need allies in inhabitation.

    Fortunately, we have at hand many allies, if only we call on them; other upright objects, from towers to chimneys to columns, stand in for us in sympathetic imitation of our own upright stance. Flowers and gardens serve as testimonials to our own care, and breezes loosely captured can connect us with the very edge of the infinite. But in the West our most powerful ally is light. The sun never knew how wonderful it was, the architect Louis Kahn said, until it fell on the wall of a building, And for us the act of inhabitation is mostly performed in cahoots with the sun, our staunchest ally, bathing our world or flickering through it, helping give it light.

    It comes with the thrill of a slap for us then to hear praise of shadows and darkness; so it is when there comes to us the excitement of realizing that musicians everywhere make their sounds to capture silence or that architects develop complex shapes just to envelop empty space. Thus darkness illuminates for us a culture very different from our own; but at the same time it helps us to look deep into ourselves to our own inhabitation of our world, as it describes with spine-tingling insights the traditional Japanese inhabitation of theirs. It could change our lives.

    Charles Moore

    School of Architecture, UCLA

    Half Title of In Praise of Shadows

    What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms—even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn. For the solitary eccentric it is another matter, he can ignore the blessings of scientific civilization and retreat to some forsaken corner of the countryside; but a man who has a family and lives in the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life—heating, electric lights, sanitary facilities—merely for the sake of doing things the Japanese way. The purist may rack his brain over the placement of a single telephone, hiding it behind the staircase or in a corner of the hallway, wherever he thinks it will least offend the eye. He may bury the wires rather than hang them in the garden, hide the switches in a closet or cupboard, run the cords behind a folding screen. Yet for all his ingenuity, his efforts often impress us as nervous, fussy, excessively contrived. For so accustomed are we to electric lights that the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it. Seen at dusk as one gazes out upon the countryside from the window of a train, the lonely light of a bulb under an old-fashioned shade, shining dimly from behind the white paper shoji of a thatch-roofed farmhouse, can seem positively elegant.

    But the snarl and the bulk of an electric fan remain a bit out of place in a Japanese room. The ordinary householder, if he dislikes electric fans, can simply do without them. But if the family business involves the entertainment of customers in summertime, the gentleman of the house cannot afford to indulge his own tastes at the expense of

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