Tanizaki’nin 1933 yılında yazdığı ve Japonya’nın terkedilen değerlerine karşı hislerini düşüncelerini anlattığı denemeler, biraz bilinç akışı tekniği denilebilecek şekilde yazıldığı için birbirinden kopuk fikirlermiş gibi duruyor. Ama alttaki o özlem be umutsuzluk duygusunu hissediyorsunuz.

“Eskimeyenin karşısında bir tür korku duymadınız mı hiç; zamanın geçtiğine dair bilincinizi kaybedeceğiniz, sayısız yılların geçeceği ve kendinize geldiğinizde kendinizi yaşlanmış ve saçlarınızı beyazlamış bulacağınız korkusunu?”

Subdued Aesthetics

A finely wrought essay on esthetics, or is it an elegantly gathered bunch of musings on the old ways of Japan as opposed to Western-imported technics and contraptions. That is, as far as I can judge from the English translation by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker.

I am still at a loss to figure out what Jun'ichirō Tanizaki meant - in Chapter III especially - when he brought up the "national" or "Eastern" science. Here is the excerpt I have in mind. The italics are mine:

'There are those who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life is an extravagance, that as long as a house keeps out the cold and as long as food keeps off starvation, it matters little what they look like. And indeed for even the sternest ascetic the fact remains that a snowy day is cold, and there is no denying the impulse to accept the services of a heater if it happens to be there in front of one, no matter how cruelly its inelegance may shatter the spell of the day. But it is on occasions like this that I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art—would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form.

Of course I am only indulging in idle speculation; of scientific matters I know nothing. But had we devised independently at least the more practical sorts of inventions, this could not have had profound influence upon the conduct of our everyday lives, and even upon government, religion, art, and business. The Orient quite conceivably could have opened up a world of technology entirely its own. [...]

To take a trivial example near at hand: I wrote a magazine article recently comparing the writing brush with the fountain pen, and in the course of it I remarked that if the device had been invented by the ancient Chinese or Japanese it would surely have had a tufted end like our writing brush. The ink would not have been this bluish color but rather black, something like India ink, and it would have been made to seep down from the handle into the brush. And since we would have then found it convenient to write on Western paper, something near Japanese paper—even under mass production, if you will—would have been most in demand. Foreign ink and pen would not be as popular as they are; the talk of discarding our system of writing for Roman letters would be less noisy; people would still feel an affection for the old system. But more than that: our thought and our literature might not be imitating the West as they are, but might have pushed forward into new regions quite on their own. An insignificant little piece of writing equipment, when one thinks of it, has had a vast, almost boundless, influence on our culture.'

'If my complaints are taken fore what they are, however, there can be no harm in considering how unlucky we have been, what losses we have suffered, in comparison with the Westerner. The Westerner has been able to move forward in ordered steps, while we have met superior civilization and have had to surrender to it, and we have had to leave a road we have followed for thousands of years. The missteps and inconveniences this has caused have, I think, been many. If we had been left alone we might not be much further now in a material way than we were five hundred years ago. Even now in the Indian and Chinese countryside life no doubt goes on much as it did when Buddha and Confucius were alive. But we would have gone only in a direction that suited us. We would have gone ahead very slowly, and yet it is not impossible that we would one day have discovered our own substitute for the trolley, the radio, the airplane of today. They would have been no borrowed gadgets, they would have been the tools of our own culture, suited to us.'

'And had we invented the phonograph and the radio, how much more faithfully they would reproduce the special character of our voices and our music. Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loud-speaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines. These machines are the inventions of Westerners, and are, as we might expect, well suited to the Western arts. But precisely on this account they put our own arts at a great disadvantage.'

Time and again, throughout its history, hasn't Japan successfully adapted imported ideas and technics to its own uses, however? Is this dolorous (dolorist?) celebration of Japanese uniqueness truly in agreement with the roots and the blossoms of Japanese culture? Isn't Japanese culture more of an exquisitely sublime, ever-changing, evergreen blend than an unsurpassable and ultimately all-too singular and preternaturally opaque culture radically clashing with the West?


Other quotes:

'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.'

'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. [...] Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.'

'With lacquerware there is an extra beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth, when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation... a moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.'

'it is on occasions like this that I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. […] Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art - would they not have suited our national temper better than they do?'

'Whenever I see the alcove [床の間, tokonoma] of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway.'

'In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but 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.'


Suggestions:

Le livre du thé
Le Gourmet solitaire

Le Japon
Les japonais
A Concise History of Japan

I like to go walking at night. I've always done it. 15 years ago I lived on the edge of a great sweeping moor. Within a few minutes, after following the pavement along my hill-top neighborhood, I was out in the dark, in the wind, and under the stars. It was bleak, inky, quiet but for the wind. I did some of my best thinking out on those rolling plains. Pacing away whatever teen angst had pushed me out of the house in the first place.
I still get those urges now. But these days when I go out for a walk I am in the Bay Area and there is no way to escape the incessant artificial lighting. Sometimes on my nocturnal wanderings I find a street where the streetlight is out. However even walking down the middle of the road I cannot escape the motion sensors guarding every driveway that blast away the subtleties of the night with bleached LEDs.
So, look, all of this to say that I get where Tanizaki is coming from with subtle lighting and that peace that can be found in the understated. But that's about where my empathy for the book ends.

The best way I can describe In Praise of Shadows is the letters section of a Sunday broadsheet. An impeccably well-educated senior citizen bemoaning the changing nature of his culture and reminiscing over the state of the past. And a lot of racism.
It starts off innocently enough with a complaint about building your own house in the traditional Japanese style whilst maintaining modern sensibilities like lighting and plumbing. He then spends around 8 pages talking about toilets. Apparently modern plumbing, and its associated ceramic bowls and tiles, have ruined the mental health of many a Japanese poet. There was a very interesting section around page 17 where he talked about the pen: if the modern mechanical pen had been of Japanese origin, how might it have differed from the imported American number? Instead of a ballpoint, maybe it would have had a soft, fibrous tip like a brush? Instead of blue ink, perhaps the more traditional black? Perhaps paper too would have been softer and yellowed?

The next part of the book looks at cookware (black, laquered bowls reflecting the murky promise of a good miso soup by candlelight vs the sterile, shallow western style bowls which remove all of the mystery) and communal spaces like restaurants and temples. This was all great, even if still channeling 'disgruntled pensioner writing to the Times'.

Then things start getting weird.
We are at the theatre. Kabuki is contrasted with Nō, notably what skin is allowed to be shown. He also has a real penchant for the male physique in a dimly lit Nō theatre, for example how one actor's hands were "indescribably beautiful" as "in the Nō only the merest fraction of the actor's flesh is visible." Fair enough. There's also an eyebrow-raising comment about how a fine young actor has a 'seductive charm' that far surpasses as a woman, and he can sympathise with how feudal lords would 'lose themselves' in it. Mm ok.

Page 43 is where is all goes downhill. We move from the theatre to women. I think I'll just quote:

n
The chest as flat as a board, breasts paper-thin, back, hips, and buttocks forming an undeviating straight line, the whole body so lean and gaunt as to seem out of proportion.[...]
Giving the impression of flesh on a stick. As with dolls their substance is made up of layer upon layer of clothing, bereft of which only an ungainly pole remains. But in the past this was sufficient. For a woman who lived in the dark it was enough if she had a faint, white face - a full body was unnecessary. [...]
The curve-less body may, by comparison with Western women, be ugly. But our thoughts do not travel to what we cannot see. The unseen for us does not exist.

Now I know that is a lot of text, and I omitted a lot, but the picture starts to build here that despite his protestations about Western vulgarity of lighting up houses and soup alike, their real crime is to expose the ugliness of japanese people, which before passed for beautiful because it was hidden in the shadows.
He builds on this idea in the rest of the book:

n
From ancient times we have considered white skin more beautiful, more elegant, than dark skin and yet somehow this whiteness of ours differs from the whiteness of the white races.
[Sets the scene for a banquet in Yokohama where both Japanese and 'western' women are present.]
The Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by cloudiness. These women were in no way reticent about powdering themselves. [...] Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water.
[...]
But the skin of the westerners [..] the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling.
n

I hope, truly, that this sickens you as much as it sickens me. This is blatant, outrageous colorism. Plain and simple. The lexicon used is familiar even to the closet racist. At this point I knew we were, pun intended, beyond the Pale.
Incredibly, it gets even worse.

n
We can appreciate, then, the psychology that caused the white races to reject the colored races. A sensitive white person could not but be upset by the shadow that even one or two colored persons cast over a social gathering.
[There is another passage here about the American Civil War and how even mixed race people were persecuted but I shan't repeat it. It's pretty vile. Let's skip ahead]
Because no one likes to show himself to bad advantage, it is natural we should have chosen cloudy colors for our food and clothing and houses, and sunk ourselves back into the shadows.
n

Upon first reading these pages: women, color, and his thesis on shadows I had to reread it. Because surely someone this beloved both of and by traditional Japanese culture could not hate his own people so much. But upon reread it becomes even more clear: the Japanese, according to Tanizaki, built their lives in soft hues and shadows not solely because of the inherent beauty of the aesthetic but to give the illusion of beauty that disappears in direct illumination, i.e. if you squint, a person of Japanese origin might look as good as a westerner, but only in poor lighting.
The remainder of the book discusses geisha makeup that was designed to enhance whiteness (e.g. Benihana green lipstick, Ohaguro black teeth) and bizarrely gives a long list of complaints about how Japanese society has evolved to make life more difficult for the old (entirely embracing the Sunday Telegraph letters section).

But to be honest I read that latter section in a daze. The thing that kept running through my mind was: how on earth is this book so popular, lauded even!? The quote on the back says: 'Elegant... a delight to read'. Is comparing a Japanese person in a group of Westerners to 'a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper' a delight to read? Is calling them 'dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water' elegant?
Look, I'm not a fan of judging older pieces of work by modern standards but I think it is reasonable to take note of something this overtly racist. I mean seriously, what is this? I went back after rereading the main text to check out the foreword and afterword. The foreword is from architect Charles Moore who notes his 'excitement' of Tanizaki's embrace of shadows. I'm guessing Moore didn't get past the section on toilets?
The afterword on the other hand is definitely written by somebody who read the entire thing: its translator, and senior lecturer Thomas J Harper from the Australian National University. Ah finally, I thought, Australia is also a country with an appalling history of colorism. There will at least be some mention of how bizarre this essay is.
But there wasn't, not a hint of it. Here are some words lifted from the afterword used instead to describe it: extraordinary, charming, authoritative. The afterword gives a brief biography of Tanizaki and then spends the rest of the time praising the 'flourishing' trend of fiction authors writing whimsical essays on non-fiction topics.

So, am I missing something here? Is this to-the-bone satire? It doesn't give any indication that it is.
Two stars because the writing not about how much Tanizaki hates women or his own people is quite beautiful at times. Not one I'll revisit I think.

Although this book is primarily about aesthetics, I cannot entirely avoid mentioning the historical context. This short essay was written in 1933 when the nationalist agenda permeated every aspect of life in Japan. It is also noticeable in the pages of this book and in the mind of the author.

Written two years after the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent withdrawal of Japan form the League of Nations, one year after the assassination of a moderate prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, this essay praising traditional Japanese ways and criticizing shallow Western concepts of beauty must have fallen on fertile ground. Everything Japanese could be lauded, everything Western - dismissed. The author goes as far as suggesting that physics or chemistry could have been different and definitely more suitable had they been originally developed in Japan.

There is another notion implanted in the author's head by the prevailing attitudes: Pan-Asian union. Everything originally Chinese and already accepted in Japan should be praised, acknowledging cultural similarities and forgetting about differences, thus covertly justifying the invasion of China as some sort of desirable unification.

Keeping political context of the times aside, there are other issues that could raise objections from a reader. Grumbling about the new ways displacing the preferred traditional ones is one issue that has appeared over and over again and is treated much better elsewhere. One does not even have to leave Japan to find a more interesting discourse on the subject in 'The Master of Go' by Kawabata or in works of Mishima. Another issue is an attitude to women as objects, an echo of the past that even the contemporary Japan is still struggling with. Just one quote: "Our ancestors made of woman an object inseparable from darkness, like lacquerware decorated in gold or mother-of-pearl".

Returning to aesthetics, and specifically shadows, the analysis is quite good. There are multiple observations that make the reading of this tiny book worthwhile. The importance of the interplay of light and shadow in architecture, painting, performing arts and even cooking is elegantly explained. Most importantly, finding the beauty in the everyday, the need for the beauty we all crave and the easy ways to satisfy this need, is something the author insists on: "The quality that we call beauty ... must always grow from the realities of life."

Another quote, with which this reader wholeheartedly agrees, is found in the closing paragraph of the book: "In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration".