In praise of shadows
Were it not for shadows there would be no beauty’. So concludes Junichiro Tanizaki’s mournful, evocative book In Praise of Shadows. Readers of this blog will have no surprise that his book instantly appealed to me. I am always charmed by shadows and, since I started photographing them last year, have noticed shadows, from striking to subtle, more and more. I’ve set up a ‘Museum of Shadows’ of my images, which people can also contribute to on Twitter with the hashtag #MuseumofShadows.
Yet, Tanizaki’s shadows are so very different to mine. His are not the shadows drawn harshly onto a pavement or wall by the bright midday sun, but the dim, mysterious shadows in the corner of a room: ‘the fearful dark corners of childhood’. These are the shadows that, he argues, are fundamental to the Japanese psyche, aesthetic and way of life. He sees shadows as under the oriental skin, a cloudy complexion, causing them to seek the flattering surroundings of shadow and shade.
Tanizaki’s shadows make the world softly beautiful. They dwell under the deep eaves of Japanese houses, and behind the softly lit traditional paper walls, providing cool and calm. They cushion and soften the edge between the home and nature, allowing dust and detritus to be part of life, not driven out by harsh electric light and a shining white environment. Shadows create the lustre of precious Oriental materials: paper, lacquer, jade and the soft reflections of gold. They create the subtle colours of food that it is worth meditating upon: miso, rice and yōkan.
Shadows are the layers that decorate a Japanese room. Tanizaki outlines how ‘our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms …came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends … the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows.’ He pines for the traditional shrouding and shading that gives beauty and seduction to a Japanese body, gives the power to Japanese drama.
And this, for Tanizaki, is what Japan lost in racing after Western modern life. With technological brilliance came the glare of lights and the blasting of music, driving the shadows, the mystery and the old into the corners and out of the cities. Where has the Japanese comfort in their own environment gone, he asks, how can they get back from the light to appreciate truly ‘the colour of that “darkness seen by candlelight”’? ‘I would call back at least for literature’ he concludes, ‘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.’
It is the subtle shadows that always most entice me, yet that are almost impossible to capture with my modern iPhone camera. This is, perhaps, what I should learn from Tanizaki: not only to appreciate the beauty of shadows cast by the sun, but the subtler beauty of shade and the possibility of rendering and enjoying it in forms other than the visual.