In Praise of Shadows

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki1933–1934JapanTEXTS / Book or essay

A short essay that treats darkness as a material: lacquer, paper, wood and skin judged by how they look in low light.

Black cover with a white grid like a paper screen, a black circle and a large black brush mark across it, titled In Praise of Shadows. — In Praise of Shadows, Leete's Island Books edition. Cover.
PHOTOGRAPH Cover: Leete's Island Books / leetesislandbooks.comReferenced from its source. Rights not established by SIMULACRA.

Plates 2

Overview

A long essay by the novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, first printed in a Japanese magazine across two issues in 1933 and 1934. It is written in the first person and moves by digression, from toilets and electric wiring to lacquerware, paper screens, food, theatre costume and the dim back rooms of old houses.

In plain terms, the argument is this: Western rooms are lit to remove shadow, while older Japanese rooms were built to use it, and many Japanese things only look right in that half-dark. Tanizaki sets this against the electric light and white tile arriving with rapid modernisation, and ends by saying he wants to bring the lost world of shadows back, at least in literature.

What to notice

01Lacquer in candlelightTanizaki argues that lacquer and gold maki-e were made for shadowed rooms and only show their beauty there. Try it with any glossy dark object: move it from under a lamp to a dim corner.
02Patina, not polishHe prefers silver that has darkened and wood worn by hands to things polished bright. Wear is treated as something added, not lost.
03It starts in the bathroomThe essay opens on wiring, heaters and white tile, not temples. Its subject is how modern equipment sits in an old room, which makes it closer to a renovation diary than a treatise.
04Beauty between objectsThe key claim is that beauty sits in the patterns of shadow things make together, not in the things themselves. That moves attention from the object to the room around it.
05Which translation you haveThe 1977 Harper and Seidensticker text is a slim 56-page paperback. The 2026 Tuttle edition is a new translation by Michael P. Cronin, with photographs and three other essays.

Historical context

Tanizaki (1886 to 1965) wrote it during Japan's rapid modernisation, which the essay treats as a threat to the older aesthetic. The first English edition, translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, came out in 1977 with a foreword by the American architect Charles Moore. Tuttle published a new translation by Michael P. Cronin in 2026.

A common misreading, offered here as interpretation: the essay is often taken as a sincere design manifesto for a timeless Japanese aesthetic. It is personal and nostalgic, and it has been read both as a straightforward account of Japanese aesthetics and as a parody of them. Parts of the argument also rest on claims about skin colour that a modern reader should weigh, not skip.

Connections

Formal resemblance

darkness makes the light ↔ with
Church of the Light, Tadao Ando
Ando's church is mostly dark so that one cut of light can read. Tanizaki argues the same order: shadow first, light as what it reveals. No source read links Ando to the essay.
dim rooms, material first ↔ with
Therme Vals, Peter Zumthor
Low light, stone and water, and surfaces you understand by touch and sound before sight. The essay supplies the argument for rooms like these, in a different culture and century.
richness in black ↔ with
Yohji Yamamoto — black volume, Yohji Yamamoto
The archive files Yamamoto for showing that black can stay visually rich. Tanizaki makes the same case for dark lacquer and dim rooms. A likeness of idea, not a documented debt.