26 pages • 52 minutes read
Jun’Ichirō Tanizaki, Transl. Thomas J. Harper, Transl. Edward G. SeidenstickerIn Praise of Shadows
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of Darkness in Japanese Aesthetics
The main theme that is imparted throughout this essay is that Japanese culture has a special affinity with darkness, which has many significant social and cultural implications. Tanizaki brings together numerous examples of darkness’s role in Japanese culture to present this as both a signifier of Japanese national characteristics and a vital element in preserving historically rooted ways of living.
First, darkness is connected to tranquility for Tanizaki. He finds that objects and spaces that generate productive relationships with darkness—which are as varied as the toilet, lacquerware bowls, or shoji paper windows—produce an unmatched sense of tranquility and peacefulness. For instance, he claims that lacquerware decorated in gold “should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery” (14). This sense of tranquility also relates to a powerful relationship with time in which one can become lost in time in a profoundly beautiful manner. Tanizaki sees that these tranquil experiences produced by darkness are decreasing in Japanese society, however, as the country becomes increasingly modernized.
Second, Tanizaki argues that darkness creates significant ties to the past. Before the use of electric light was even a possibility, people in Japan generally had to spend more time with darkness. That relationship with darkness led to distinct social and cultural meanings regarding the ways in which it can be used and navigated. This historically situated understanding of darkness is incredibly powerful for Tanizaki, who argues:
The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows toward beauty’s ends (18).
These lines reveal that the way people in previous eras lived helped create a definition of beauty that is socially rooted. Moreover, the idea that these Japanese ancestors were able to “guide” shadows to produce beauty shows that Tanizaki is calling on a distinctly Japanese ability and tradition, despite most of these older generations’ lack of access to electric lights.
Lastly, the Japanese affinity for darkness relates to a productive relationship with the surroundings and environment that they find themselves in, rather than a desire to change these surroundings. Even the construction of homes with shoji does not fully close off the home from the outside, as Western walls and windows do. Rather, this reflects a preference for working with what is already present and being connected to and inspired by it. Another example that Tanizaki discusses is the Noh theater, in which the stage was originally set outside to engage viewers with a greater relatedness to their natural surroundings. This is a quality that continues to decrease in modern Japanese society.
The Role of Light in Western Aesthetics
In contrast to Japanese culture, Tanizaki argues that Western culture rejects darkness, the past, and the environment in its desire for light, which carries significant political meaning that is rooted in the Western desire for expansion and modernization. Tanizaki provides several examples regarding the centrality of light to Western aesthetics, and he often critiques the increasing adoption of this perspective in Japan.
First, light is connected to progress for Tanizaki, who uses the example of the Westerner’s urge to invent increasing forms of brightness: “From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases” (31). Historically, this is also evident in the Western categorization of the 18th-century shift toward a focus on reason and intellect as the Enlightenment. The West also equates progress with increasing light, as in the nomenclature that until recent decades categorized pre-Renaissance Europe as the “Dark Ages.” The coming of light is presented in the West as synonymous with social progress. This view presents progress as the use of rationality and evidence, rather than spirituality and feeling, to move society forward and reach new levels of achievement. Tanizaki is critical of such a perspective, however, due to its erasure of already existing beauty.
Relatedly, the Western desire for light is future-oriented, which conflicts with Tanizaki’s preference for the past. This is also one of the greatest issues that Tanizaki has with the status of Japan in the 1930s, as past forms of living continue to be pushed to the side to make way for the future of Western modernization. This is seen most clearly in Tokyo, where the prominence of electric lights and urbanized forms of living that no longer maintain a strong relationship to the past continues to increase. Indeed, cities are often seen as markers of the future, while rural areas keep closer ties with the past.
Lastly, Tanizaki clearly states that Western culture is interested not only in light, but specifically in excavation. It seeks “to eradicate even the minutest shadow” (31); he views this as another example of the West’s tendency to remove that which is already present to create something newer and supposedly more beautiful. For instance, he notes that the roofs on Western homes are intended “less to keep off the sun than to keep off the wind and the dew; even from without it is apparent that they are built to create as few shadows as possible and to expose the interior to as much light as possible” (17). To Tanizaki, this desire to create as few shadows as possible equates to removing the culturally significant forms of beauty that exist in relation to darkness.
The Importance of National Character and Cultural Difference
In addition to his critique of Western modernization, Tanizaki highlights the significance of each nation’s character and the important role that cultural specificity plays in how people live their lives. The issue is not just that the West is encroaching on Japanese space but also that Western cultural forms—or any other cultural forms—do not properly apply there. This relates to Japanese society’s historical rootedness in and connection to its surroundings, as these singular aspects of the country produce its culturally distinct definition of beauty.
The concept of cultural difference refers to the notion that people cannot universally share certain experiences, such as the viewing of art, as the different cultural contexts in which they are embedded produce distinct rules, values, beliefs, and preferences that necessarily alter these experiences. For example, Tanizaki notes that gold has long served a practical purpose as a source of reflection in Japanese culture, whereas most Western countries see it simply as a source of opulence. In a Japanese work of art, then, gold may be used as a metaphor for reflection, but this would be lost on viewers who are not aware of this association.
This theme is most prominently explored in the example of inventions and technology. Tanizaki first discusses the reasons why a Japanese fountain pen might align with the specific qualities of Japanese paper better than the standard Western one does. Then, he moves to a discussion of media technologies: “The phonograph and radio, if it had been designed for Japan, would have played to the reticence and atmosphere of Japanese music better” (9). He states that there is a distinctly Japanese relationship to sound that shows greater attention to silence and to the nuances of quieter tones than is typical of Western culture, which is generally more focused on louder tones. This directly transfers to the aesthetics of playing music on a Western phonograph, which is designed with the louder tones of Western music in mind. To accurately pull out the softer tones that make its music and sound cultures distinct, Japan would have to design its own version of a phonograph.
In this sense, Tanizaki is arguing for not only Japan to break away from Western systems but for all countries to be able to produce their own technologies and apply them to their unique cultural contexts. This would ensure that the aesthetic forms that best represent these societies can be presented and experienced to their fullest potential.
