in praise of shadows

This regained dimness in Tokyo, to which my eyes are slowly and gladly getting used, has brought back memories of a book I always re-read with mixed feelings, Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows. *

Published for the first time in the early 1930s, the essay can be read as an interesting example of nihonjinron, a constellation of discourses revolving around Japanese cultural identity which, in an ethnocentric, essentialist and a-historical manner, stresses the uniqueness, exceptionality and 'mystery' of the national psyche and customs on the basis of simplistic binary oppositions like Japan / the West, traditional / modern, inner / outer.

In Praise of Shadows discusses Japanese aesthetics in its various dimensions - from architecture to food, from ideals of beauty to ghosts - by contrasting it with Western thought. In Tanizaki's view, Japan differs from the West in the distinct relationship it establishes with light and shadow. While the West, in its obsessive quest for Progress, privileges the clarity and assertiveness of light, Japanese sensibility delights in the subtle play of shadows, in ambiguity and understatement:

But what produces such differences in taste? In my opinion it is this: we Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But 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. **

Shadows appear in Tanizaki as the ultimate symbol of a Japanese authenticity on the verge of extinction, and he entertains no illusions about the survival of a sensibility fostered by ways of life and material conditions which have altogether disappeared. Such pessimism, which also pervades his novels, makes Tanizaki an unorthodox figure who does not easily square with the artistic establishment and its commodities - commodities that have shaped Japan's official imagery for Western consumption: the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, calligraphy, traditional dance and theatre.

Since for Tanizaki beauty is not a substance in itself but a mere configuration of shadows -- 

Such is our way of thinking—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.

-- what truly begets his nostalgia is not so much the physical disappearance of certain practices and objects - the Noh costumes, the wooden toilets, the lacquerware, the decorative metals - as the removal of all these things from their vital source of beauty in the shadows of a dimly lit theatre, a temple, or a home, and their conversion into inert museum pieces (because) exposed to an excess of light.

In comparison with Lafcadio Hearn/Yakumo Koizumi, another nostalgic of vanishing Japan, Tanizaki seems to be more acutely aware of the sheer impossibility of bringing back a whole way of life whose very existence the import of western ideas, institutions, technology, and, above all, notions of Progress, has relentlessly eroded. Yet both converge in the identification of the one and only place where the shadows, memories and phantasmagorias of this agonising culture may still be rescued from the inevitability of oblivion. It is thus with the following words that Tanizaki closes his Praise:

I am aware of and am most grateful for the benefits of the age. No matter what complaints we may have, Japan has chosen to follow the West, and there is nothing for her to do but move bravely ahead and leave us old ones behind. But we must be resigned to the fact that as long as our skin is the color it is the loss we have suffered cannot be remedied. I have written all this because I have thought that there might still be somewhere, possibly in literature or the arts, where something could be saved. I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.

Well, I couldn't agree more - and that's why I'll go on reading Tanizaki (and Hearn), despite all the mixed feelings.

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Notes:

*This text draws heavily on another one I wrote in Portuguese a few years ago, and which was posted here.

**All excerpts from In Praise of Shadows are taken from this English translation available on line.