In Praise of Shadows

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.