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In Praise of Shadows Paperback – September 1, 2006

by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 73 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 80 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Books (September 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099283573
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099283577
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.2 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.1 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #834,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsLet there be... Shadows!
By Mary Wendell on January 9, 2014
Format: Paperback
I feel like one of the original translators trying to describe "In Praise of Shadows." Junichiro Tanizaki wrote this paean for a fading way of life in 1933, and it was later translated to English in 1977 - quite well I must say. I can't imagine it was easy though, because the Western and Eastern cultures are so different. This book sensitized me to how our different cultures use light and the role shadows play in the beauty of architecture and everyday objects.

Although it has been eighty years since this essay was first written, the words of this "ecological prophet" are still insightful and relevant to today's issues of modernity and culture. Japan is now one of the most modern countries in the world, particularly of the Far East, and they still have not abandoned its heritage. In fact, there is a fantastic book called Sacred Calligraphy of the East, that I just finished which presents the history and contemporary synthesis of this honored tradition.

I would highly recommend In Praise of Shadows for the person who is nostalgic and traditional. Today when technology advances put smartphones out of style in mere months, many of my friends are dreaming of the days of typewriters. I think they would find this book fascinating because it recalls the beauty of simpler times without being a jeremiad.
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5.0 out of 5 starsWabi Sabi - not to be confused with "wasabi"
By Boris Bangemann on April 4, 2005
Format: Paperback
The Japanese have an aesthetic concept called "Wabi Sabi." This term consists of two words. "Wabi" literally means "poverty," but in the aesthetic context it stands for simplicity; "Sabi" is literally "solitude, loneliness," and for aesthetic purposes it means something like natural impermanence. Wabi Sabi encourages, as one observer put it, a profound feeling of inner melancholy, and an appreciation of quietly clear and calm, well-seasoned and refined simplicity.

Andrew Juniper's "Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence" summarizes the concept by saying that "the term wabi-sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rooted in the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection. ... Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things." (pages 2 and 51)

In order to appreciate Junichiro Tanizaki's 50-page pamphlet "In Praise of Shadows" it helps to keep the concept of Wabi Sabi in mind. While many people would object to Tanizaki's anti-modernist view of art (and call it "reactionary" or "nationalist"), it is in fact a contemporary take on an ancient aesthetic concept that favors obliqueness (shadows) over brightness, weathered naturalness over functional novelty, the crude over the polished, and - ultimately - irrationality over rationality.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe subtle beauty of the shadows
By C. E. Stevens VINE VOICE on December 10, 2002
Format: Paperback
The ideas in Tanizaki's essay on the Japanese appreciation for shadows and nature-based arts and architecture should come as little surprise for those familiar with the Japanese culture and tradition. Tanizaki's suggestion that these inclinations came from practical origins made sense (a lot better than the still-common theory that the Japanese idea of aesthetics is a result of different, Japanese genes). It also seemed to me that the Japanese were more inclined to resign themselves to fate and find beauty in what was at hand (like the shadows) than to fight nature and create light at the expense of beauty.
What interested me most was the fact that Tanizaki has a "us versus them" mentality, not so much that Japan or the West is better than the other, just different. However, it seems that if a young Japanese person were to read this essay today, it would seem just as "foreign" as it does to an American.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to read Tanizaki's essay, which discusses everything from the theatre to the bathroom, gold and lacquer, women and race. One cannot help but read Tanizaki's essay without feeling his loss at the erosion of traditional society and the innate beauty within it. At the same time, it makes you look around and notice the lack of beauty in our everyday lives (in terms of art and architecture). America, too, was once a land of shadows and a people who we probably able to appreciate their beauty. Tanizaki probably never considered the fact that his culture and ours are really not so fundamentally different.
If you read this essay, don't get caught up in Tanizaki's occasional bad-mouthing of Western culture (remember that he probably would have never dreamed that this short essay would be translated and read in the West!) Instead, treat this as a rare look into a common Japanese mindset and an opportunity to see for yourself whether Tanizaki's praise of shadows is a worthy one or not.
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4.0 out of 5 stars"The quality that we call beauty ... must always grow from the realities of life."
By Steven Reynolds on March 18, 2006
Format: Paperback
In this classic 1933 essay, novelist Jun'ichiro Tanizaki explores the idea of shadows as a key note of Japanese aesthetics. Shadows are a natural function of traditional Japanese architecture - large rooms with broad eaves to keep rain and snow away from paper walls naturally create richly dark and quiet interiors, where shadows seem to have a presence all of their own. Tanizaki extends this idea, following the shadows from temple toilets to the darkness of lacquered tableware, into the folds of women's traditional clothing, and onto the Japanese stage. Some of his notions are purely fanciful - that gold was only valued by the ancients for the way it reflected candlelight; that the Japanese have an implicit distaste for their own skin given the way the light reveals its imperfect whiteness - while he is spot-on when it comes to articulating the beauty of No actors, and the way candlelight changes the quality of a restaurant meal. The essay's meandering structure might surprise those more accustomed to a rigorous argument, but as Thomas J. Harper notes in his insightful afterword, it invokes the Japanese artistic tradition of following the line wherever it leads. Along the way, Tanizaki makes a none too subtle critique of Western incursion into Japanese life. He mourns the displacement of candlelight by neon, the patina of a well-used bowl being reinterpreted as 'filth', and the white faces of Kabuki made monstrous by American spotlights. Tanizaki's essential contribution with this enduring piece is to remind us of something which, in the West, is so often forgotten: the quality of the materials and light from which a space is constructed - for light really is a tangible architectural element - will dictate on the subtle level the quality of human experience possible in that space. Modern life is too brilliantly lit, which might be why it so often lacks reverence and solemnity.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Thanks

Published 7 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Thought-provoking.

Published 1 month ago by Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 starsQuite dated

I hoped to understand a different aesthetic but this seemed more like a cranky curmudgeon.

Published 1 month ago by Diane Kelly
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat short read

Having been to Japan before, this book gave me new insight and also reassured some of my thoughts on Japan. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mimi
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Beautiful, a painting which describes with words!

Published 1 month ago by C.S.C.
5.0 out of 5 starsSuper Fun Read

As an architecture student, I found it really refreshing to read descriptions of Japanese architecture and the like from this author, a non-architect. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsWhat is a well-lit space?

Very interesting exploration on how the experience of objects and places can be drastically changed by evolving technology. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Clayton Moraga
5.0 out of 5 starsmany angles

A trip into Tanizaki's mind, and much more than a exploration of yugan (that which lies beneath)
or something barely seen behind a curtain, or pealing away onion like layers... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Peter B.
4.0 out of 5 starsThe Japanese and Western aesthetic systems have great contrasts and...

I read this book nearly a decade ago. I remember it being an interesting and slow meditative read lime many very old texts. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Nicholas Driscoll
5.0 out of 5 starsRequired reading

An excellently written and unique perspective on Japanese aesthetics. A must read if you want to learn about Japanese art.

Published 7 months ago by Dr. RJ

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