Wyjątkowy, napisany z wielkim urokiem esej o japońskiej estetyce.

Título: El elogio de la sombra
Autor: Junichirô Tanizaki (japonés)
Año de publicación: 1933
Cantidad de páginas: 80

De qué trata:

Ensayo donde se exploran las diferencias entre la cultura de occidente y oriente, en ámbitos sociales, arquitectónicos, estilísticos etc. enfocándose en su mayoría en La Sombra, y cómo esta es un resultado innato de la cultura japonesa (y por lo tanto algo qué hay que apreciar y mantener) El autor expresa su inquietud, ya que considera que la cultura de occidente es demasiado influyente y está arrasando con la cultura del oriente.

Opinión personal:

Dudo un poco de las generalizaciones que hace el autor, ya que él era un hombre de clase alta. Cuestiono que las cosas que dice hayan sido las que quería la sociedad (en general) de la época.

Si tanizaki hubiera vivido en nuestros tiempos hubiera sido muy infeliz jaja

Eso si hay muy buenas e interesantes reflexiones y definitivamente aprendí un poco más sobre la cultura japonesa.

Hay un par de capítulos enfocados en elementos arquitectónicos y las comparaciones que hace (Japón-resto del mundo) son muy interesantes!
En este libro se explica porqué la arquitectura tradicional japonesa es como es…

Occidente premia la luz
Oriente premia la sombra
Tanizaki busca la luz a través de la sombra.

4⭐️ de 5

Asombroso ensayo, lleno de fuerza evocadora y muy carente de objetividad: es todo pasión. No se miden estas cuestiones con la bara de la Ciencia, sino con la de Humanidades. El por qué sí y el por qué no de la belleza o de su ausencia están aquí muy bien argumentados, sin ser concluyentes. Una increíble lectura.

Junichiro Tanizaki helped me understand why I am so drawn to the Japanese aesthetic. He begins his essay, In Praise of Shadows, with an example I can relate to. Many Japanese people try to hide electrical wires because they don’t want to spoil the beauty of the traditional decor. I so get this. I wish I could hide all my electrical wires too. There are so many of them. Not to mention all the LED lights from appliances that once were luxuries and now are necessities. But don’t think for a moment that I could part with my computer or my coffee maker. I love them. I just wish they didn’t spoil the decor.

Tanizaki doesn’t reject Western conveniences either. He just wishes they could have been designed with a Japanese sensibility in mind. He thinks that if these same conveniences had been developed by the Japanese, they would be more in harmony with Japanese taste. But instead of the Japanese making these innovations in their own time, Japan’s contact with the West at the beginning of the Meiji era led to rapid modernization in the Western style. He thinks that if the Japanese had developed these things, they would be very different from the Western versions.

In Praise of Shadows is his tribute to the Japanese aesthetic, to the beauty of darkness, to moonlight rather than sunshine, shadow rather than glare, softness rather than neon. His argument is that this aesthetic arose, not from some mysterious “national character,” but from people’s actual way of life.

“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” (18).

In the course of the essay, Tanizaki writes of lamps, stoves, toilets (yes toilets), pens, paper, glass, lacquerware, ceramics, food, houses, picture alcoves, theater, women, clothing, skin color, and cosmetics. He fondly describes the austere beauty of darkness – the dreaminess, the softness, the silence, the mystery, the timelessness.

But it is not only darkness and shadow that the Japanese find beautiful. In fact, it is only because of this appreciation of darkness and shadow that the beauty of light and gold can be experienced. Gold is garish under the glare of harsh lights, but in a dim room it beautifully reflects the little light that is there.

“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty” (30).

The simplicity of traditional Japanese decor appeals to me: the shoji doors, the tatami mats, the alcove housing an old scroll and a single flower in a humble vase. I like the minimalism, the subtlety, the naturalness. And I like the night. It’s slower, quieter, softer than the day.

Would I like it as much if it were the only thing I knew? Maybe not. I might be as eager to experience the new, the bright, and the modern as the Japanese were when first introduced to the Western lifestyle. But the Japanese aesthetic isn’t the one I have always known. I am a child of the West, of the bright lights of Times Square and the clamor of Grand Central Station. Too much yang. Not enough yin. For me, the Japanese aesthetic restores the balance.

In Praise of Shadows is a book about beauty, but there is also a sadness in Tanizaki’s praise of shadows. He despairs that the Japanese aesthetic is dying because the old way of life is passing away. He tells of a moon-viewing ruined by electric lights. And he hopes that something of the traditional beauty and richness of the Japanese aesthetic might be saved – in literature at least if no where else.

His plea touches my heart. To lose this world of shadows is to lose something essential to the human spirit. Light is good, but too much of it is blinding. Sound is good, but too much of it is deafening. Activity is good, but too much of it is exhausting. Without darkness, the light will soon overwhelm us and leave us longing for the shadows we have unwisely banished.

Shadow Captain

شاید چکیده کتاب را بتوان در این بند آن دید:

"این سوال مدام پس ذهنم موج می‌زند که اگر شرق دانش فنی خودش را گسترش می‌داد، دانشی مستقل از غرب، جامعه ما چه فرقی با وضعیت کنونی‌اش می‌داشت؟ مثلا فرض کنیم که ما فیزیک و شیمی خودمان را داشتیم، آیا در آن صورت فنون و صنایع متکی به این علوم هم خود به خود مسیر تکامل دیگری را طی نمی‌کردند و کارخانه‌های ما ابزار و داروها و سایر وسایل زندگی را به صورتی نمی‌ساختند که با خلق و خوی ملی ما سازگارتر باشد؟"

کتابی است که نکات خواندنی فراوان درباره سنت‌های فرهنگی و زیباشناسی ژاپنی دارد اما این سوال را پیش می‌آورد که آیا مرز بین علاقه به سنت، و ضدیت با دنیای مدرن، تکنولوژی و گیرکردن در نوستالژی‌های شاعرانه، باریک نیست؟

A beautiful, fascinating read.

3.5/5

n  Indeed the thin, impalpable, faltering light, picked up as though little rivers were running through the room, collecting little pools here and there, lacquers a pattern on the surface of the night itself.n

Unless I'm hellbent on some epic project à la Proust or Gibbons, I rarely swing around to the same author twice in one year. Technically I started Naomi in December of 2016, but the majority of mulling it over happened firmly in '17, so the fact that I was able to bounce back so quickly is worthy of note, even if the half-star rating in this case happened to tip backwards rather than forwards. True, this work is obscenely short and my still ongoing effort to destabilize my Most Read Authors tower biases my direction in a predictable fashion, but all I can think of is how I regret not having more Tanizaki on hand. Much as it is with Mishima (less, actually, what with Tanizaki's increased heteronormativity), I don't know what it is about this long dead Japanese man's writing that keeps me coming back, but I'm not one to criticize providence; leastwise, not much.

Aesthetic: adjective - concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty; noun- a set of principles underlying and guiding the work of a particular artist or artistic movement. Aisthesthai: ancient Greek, to perceive goes to aisthēta: perceptible things goes to aisthētikos in combination with German coining the sense of "concerned with beauty" in the mid 18th century goes to aesthetic: English, in the early 19th century, controversial till much later on. Somewhere along the centuries it wasn't considered wise to have everything in the eye of the beholder, so beauty pushed all else out and has reigned supreme till this day. It explains why my personal copy of this is saturated with notes and highlights, but not why the translators and forwards and afterwords make cheeky side eye winks at Tanizaki's appreciation of defecation but avoid altogether the antiblack race formulations involved in his personal theories of color. This may have something to do with the artistic field's discomfort with the true renderings of their beloved ancient marble statues of Greek and Rome origin, or English's insistence on calling white people white when I, motherfucking pale that I am, at most can lay claim to a sort of pasty beige with spots of brown and red and hairs all over. Let's be honest, though: we all know why.

Beyond the aesthetic, I enjoyed the amateur anthropology when it stuck to the speaker's own origins, as well as the preliminary glimpses of the awareness of light pollution and a wonderful outlook on various forms of Japanese theatre. I didn't enjoy the hatred of black people being chalked up to white sensitivities (the cart did not come before the horse), or the usual bemoaning of the youth, as if any country's youth had the means to control its respective form of capitalism. In any case, I am satisfied that Tanizaki concluded that change is change, and to forgo the accommodations of technology for the sake of warmly tinted toilet rooms and complete lack of utilities was beyond his standard of comfortable living. Leaving aside the afterword's obsession with Tanizaki's "lack of structure" (harping yet again on Proust, has no one in the business of translating Japanese philosophical works read him?!), I'd recommend this, on the grounds that the reader acknowledge the pandering to white supremacy lurking within a text resplendent with shadows. After all, academia does love its irony, does it not?

n  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 humor in his answer.

-Thomas J. Harpern

Bir kahve içimlik Tanizaki ile tanışma kitabım oldu. Beklentimden çok farkli bir içerikle karşılaştım ama ilgiyle okudum. İnsanı kendine çeken, şaşırtan ve düşündüren bir dili var Tanizaki'nin. Şimdi kurgu eserlerini daha da merak ediyorum.

'Bütün bunları yazmamın sebebi, muhtemelen edebiyatta ve sanatta, hâlâ kurtarılacak bir şeyler olduğunu düşünüyor olmam. En azından edebiyat için kaybettiğimiz bu gölgeler dünyasını tekrar hatırlatmak isterim. Edebiyat denen kutsal yerin saçaklarını kalın ve böylece duvarlarını gölgeli yapıp apaçık gözüken şeyleri gölgeye saklamak, gereksiz süslemeleri ise söküp atmak istiyorum. Bu her yerde yapılsın demiyorum ama en azından biri böyle olsa yeter. Nasıl olurdu acaba, ışıkları söndürüp onlar olmadan etrafın neye benzediğini görmek…”

A compelling meditation on the power of shadows.

کتابی عالی برای علاقه‌مندان به فرهنگ سنتی. نویسنده با نگاهی تیزبینانه نشان می‌دهد که چطور دریافت سنتی ژاپنی‌ها از زیبایی تحت تأثیر الگوهای غربی تغییر می‌کند. در حین خواندن کتاب مدام الگوهای فکری ژاپنی و غربی را با الگوهای خودمان هم مقایسه می‌کنید و به نکاتی درباره‌ی روان‌شناسی جمعی خودمان پی می‌برید که شاید پیش از آن هرگز به آنها توجه نکرده بودید. ترجمه و طراحی کتاب هم حرف ندارد

تکه‌هایی از متن

سال‌ها پیش یک بار در مقاله‌ای که برای مجله‌ی بونگی شونجو نوشتم، خودنویس را با قلم‌مو مقایسه کردم. آن‌جا گفتم که اگر خودنویس را در زمان قدیم احیاناً یک چینی یا ژاپنی اختراع می‌کرد، چه بسا سر آن مو کار می‌گذاشت، نه از این نوک‌های فلزی. برای جوهرش نه از رنگ آبی، که از مرکب مشکی هندی استفاده می‌کرد، و کاری می‌کرد که جوهر از توی مخزن به موهای قلم نشت کند. در این صورت کاغذ فرنگی هم دیگر به کار نمی‌آمد؛ نیاز به کاغذی بالا می‌گرفت شبیه به کاغذ سنتی ژاپنی، نوعی هانشی که البته بتوان آن را به صورت انبوه هم تولید کرد. اگر کاغذ و مرکب و قلم‌مو این مسیر را طی می‌کردند، چه بسا خودنویس و جوهر امروز این قدر محبوب نمی‌شدند، حرف طرفداران خط لاتین این همه شنونده نداشت، تمایل مردم به خط چینی و ژاپنی همچنان برقرار می‌ماند و، مهم‌تر از همه، فلسفه و ادبیات ما این همه مقلد غرب نبود، چه بسا پا به عرصه‌هایی نو و مستقل می‌گذاشت. این مثال نشان می‌دهد که حتی یک ابزار پیش‌پاافتاده‌ی نوشتن هم قادر است تأثیرات گسترده و دامنه‌داری بر فرهنگ ما بگذارد
(ص 26)

در مورد گرامافون و رادیو هم همین طور است. اگر ما این دستگاه‌ها را ابداع می‌کردیم، لابد آن‌ها را به شیوه‌ای طراحی می‌کردیم که ویژگی‌های موسیقی ما را بهتر بروز دهند. موسیقی سنتی ما ذاتاً محجوب است و بیش از هر چیز متکی بر حس و حال. به همین دلیل، وقتی روی صفحه ضبط می‌شود و از بلندگو پخش می‌شود، بیشتر آن حس و حال از دست می‌رود. در فنون گفتاری و هنرهای روایی هم ترجیح ما بر استفاده از صدای آهسته و کلام کمتر است، و سکوت به‌جا بیش از هر چیز دیگری برای‌مان اهمیت دارد. ولی این سکوت در روند ضبط و پخش به‌کلی نابود می‌شود. و چنین است که ما هنرهای‌مان را به دست خود از شکل می‌اندازیم تا با دستگاه‌ها هماهنگ شویم
(ص 28)

Audiobook narrated by David Rintoul

As the blurb says: "An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings." I cannot believe poetry can be made from describing toilet aesthetics but Tanizaki succeeded. 10 minutes of narration about toilets and I was enthralled. Besides toilets there is a comparison between the Japanese style and the Western style in terms of aesthetics which was fascinating. Regarding the title, the author advocates for less light, more darkness in order to soften the atmosphere, preserve a bit of mystery etc. Also ,toilets look better in the darkness, they appear cleaner :)).

I bought the The Makioka Sisters Today because I like this author so much.