Light Extracts

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“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.”

“But as the poet Saito Ryoku has said, ‘elegane is frigid.’

Page 10

“As a general matter we find it hard to be really at home with things that shine and glitter. The Westerner uses silver and steel and nickel tableware, and polishes it to a fine brilliance, but we object to the practice.”

“On the contrary, we begin to enjoy it only when the luster has worn off, when it has begun to take on a dark, smoky patina.”

“Tableware made of tin, a material the Chinese could only admire for the patina it acquires. When new it resembles aluminium and is not particularly attract I’ve; only after long use brings some of the elegance of ages is it at all acceptable. Then, as the surface darkens, the line of verse etched upon it gives a final touch of perfection.”

Page 18

“We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artefact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity.”

“If indeed ‘elegance is frigid’, it can as well be described as filthy.”

“Yet for better or for worse we do love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them. Living in these old houses among these old objects is in some mysterious way a source of peace and repose.”

Page 20

“But in the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark, a beauty I had not before seen. It had not been mere chance, I realized, that our ancestors, having discovered lacquer, had conceived such a fondness for objects finished in it.”

Page 22

“Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness.”

Page 27

“In the making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.”

Page 28

“If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a Western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visor as possible so as to allow the sunlight to penetrate directly beneath the eaves.”

“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 towards beauty’s ends.”

Page 29

“We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying rays can sink into absolute repose. The storehouse, kitchen, hallways, and such may have a glossy finish, but the walls of the sitting room will almost always be of clay textured with fine sand. A luster here would destroy the soft fragile beauty of the feeble light. We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them. We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim shadows far surpass any ornament. And so, as we must if we are not to disturb the glow, we finish the walls with a sand in a single neutral color. The hue may differ from room to room, but the degree of difference will be ever so slight; not so much a difference in color as in shade, a difference that will seem to exist only in the mood of the viewer. And from these delicate difference in the hue of the walls, the shadows in each room take on a tinge peculiarly their own.”

Page 30

“This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.”

“But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the study bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time.”

Page 33

“There is a cold and desolate tinge to the light by the time it reaches these panels. The little sunlight from the garden that manages to make its way beneath the eaves and through the corridors has by then lost its power to illuminate, seems drained of the complexion of life. It can do no more than accentuate the whiteness of the paper. I sometimes linger before these panels and study the surface of the paper, bright, but giving no impression of brilliance.”

Page 34

“Have not you yourselves sensed a difference in the light that suffuses such a room, a rare tranquillity not found in ordinary light? Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and gray?”

Page 35

“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.”

Page 46

“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.”

Page 48

“Light is used not for reading or writing or sewing but for dispelling the shadows in the farthest corners, and this runs against the basic idea of the Japanese room.”

Page 58

“One of the oldest and most deeply ingrained of Japanese attitudes to literary style holds that too obvious a structure is contrivance, that too orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart, that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to ‘follow the brush’. Indeed it would not be far wrong to say that the narrative technique we call ‘stream of consciousness’ has an ancient history in Japanese letters. It is not that Japanese writes have been ignorant of the powers of concision and articulation. Rather they have felt that certain subjects – the vicissitudes of the emotions, the fleeting perceptions of the mind – are best couched in a style that conveys something of the uncertainty of the mental process and not just its neatly packaged conclusion.”

Page 68 – 69

“Questions of the sort he raises have no final answers, and the mind of the writer who takes them up must always be groping, his statements always tentative. Susan Sontag has put the matter well in explaining her choice of style in ‘Notes on camp’: ‘To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility.’ Tanizaki would surely claim the same for the aesthetic he attempts to delineate.”

Page 69

“Architecture developed as it did because of climatic conditions and the nature of available building materials. Gold served as a reflector of light as well as an ornament. ‘The quality that we call beauty… Must always grow from the realities of life.’ And to Tanizaki this meant the whole of life, the base as well as the noble, eating and defecating as well as playgoing and the contemplation of calligraphy.”

Page 70

“Mrs Tanizaki tells a story of when her late husband decided, as he frequently did, to build a new house. The architect arrived and announced with pride, ‘I’ve read your In Praise of Shadows, Mr Tanizaki, and know exactly what you want.’ To which Tanizaki replied. ‘But no, I could never live in a house like that.’ There is perhaps as much resignation as humour in his answer.”

Page 72