In Praise of Shadows

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

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.

For a woman who lived in the dark it was enough if she had a faint, white face—a full body was unnecessary.

It was a repletion, a pregnancy of tiny particles like fine ashes, each particle luminous as a rainbow. I blinked in spite of myself, as though to keep it out of my eyes.

So benumbed are we nowadays by electric lights that we have become utterly insensitive to the evils of excessive illumination.

perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.

fugitive sensibility.”

But for Tanizaki a museum piece is no cause for rejoicing. An art must live as a part of our daily lives or we had better give it up.

to pretend that we can still participate in it is mere posturing.