In Praise of Shadows
Ratings41
Average rating3.5
I really, really tried reading this, but I had to drop it. One reason why I dropped it is that while it's great to appreciate old, antiquated things, dismissing everything new is a bit much. And, okay, maybe I can see where the author is coming from, but it still feels extreme.
Another reason why I dropped it is that it simply can't keep me engaged.
And I think there's some historical context relevant to this essay, but I'm not a history enthusiast and I only read some references about it so I won't develop on it, I just thought that that is interesting and that maybe the essay is more than just about aesthetics.
A quick and interesting read about how rampant modernization tramples the aesthetics of the society.
2025 Side Readings ~ 01
While visiting various bookstores in Japan with my girlfriend during our January vacation, I fell into a familiar pattern. As it usually happens whenever I'm there, I got caught up in the Japanese passion for detail and their obsessive interest in specific topics. I ended up buying everything in sight, caught up in the fantasy that I could somehow take a slice of these characteristics—these ideas and ways of seeing the world—back home with me in book form. One of these purchases was “In Praise of Shadows,” picked with some help from Mr. GPT and intended as a brief introduction to Japanese ways of thinking.
What I found was unexpected. Curious. I don't have much else to say about it. The text is a remarkably varied and restless essay where Tanizaki bounces between different ideas with considerable agility and grace. Some points are more engaging than others—the section about the West's obsession with absolute cleanliness or the part examining the role of materials in traditional cooking implements, for instance—but the text's overall brevity makes everything digestible.
I have no idea what relevance this reading will have for me later on. If you ask me now, probably not much.
Still, the book made for good company during a couple of days traveling through Fujikawaguchiko, Osaka, and Kyoto, and that's enough for me.
Less of a book about aesthetics and more about the Japanese appreciation for nuance and the beauty of transience/time (which is most easily expressed through talking about the visual, I guess). Tanizaki crafts compelling arguments rooted in history/reality rather than abstract philosophical argument, but I can't help feel that his undercurrent of disdain and condescension sours his praise a little. You can appreciate the difference in tastes (western vs Japanese) without putting the other side down.
Like the title states, this book is written in praise of shadows. It compares a lot of the Japanese ideals with the western ones and interestingly draws parallels between them.
It reiterates how subtle, mindful, and intentional the Japanese are with just about everything, and in it's own unique way calls out to the Japanese youth to embrace themselves, to embrace a part of them that while it may be different, has its own beauty.
The characteristics described sort of put my explorations of East Asian art and literature in a new light and has made me appreciate the importance of shadows in a way I'd never thought of before.
An aesthetic exploration of Japan. One statement I found particularly interesting was that if Japan had been allowed to advance on its own cultural and aesthetic terms, instead of being forced to adopt Western inventions and practices, its inventions would have been more suited to traditional practices (i.e brush fountain pen). Would re-read.
This seemed to me like an interesting opinion on the subjectivity of beauty and value of impurity before we got to full-blown “old man yelling at the cloud”-moments with an unhealthy dose of sexism and racism, and some completely confused views on science.
All while reading I tried to refrain from being too judgmental but in the end there were too many things that I can't easily gloss over. Someone called it a tongue-in-cheek work but I honestly couldn't see it as such. Even when Tanizaki was describing the poetic qualities of toilets (confusingly, this I actually felt the most agreeable of his opinions).