Book ‘In Praise of Shadows’ by Tanizaki

In Praise of Shadows is a 1933 essay on Japanese aesthetics by the Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. Tanizaki’s eye ranges from architecture to food and combines an acute sense of the use of space in buildings with perfect descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and women in darkness of a house of pleasure. The result is a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age. It was translated into English, in 1977, by the academic students of Japanese literature Thomas J. Harper and Edward Seidensticker.

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