Shadows, Objects, and Life Arguments – Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows

In many ways, the Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows can be read as a companion to Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea, which I read this summer. Where Okakura’s book is ostensibly about tea, Tanizaki’s essay is ostensibly about aesthetics – but actually, both are really about the differences between certain ideas of Western and Japanese culture, and more broadly about separate ways of life. In Praise of Shadows is a flowing work, one as hard to pin down as the shadows themselves. It ranges in subject from traditional Japanese theatre to Japanese architecture, from food to lacquerware. Yet certain repeated ideas make for an argument, at least for an implicit one, on a few key topics – the passage of time, the development of Japanese culture, and finally about objects themselves.

Time, Pessimism, Development

In Praise of Shadows is steeped in pessimism – Tanizaki is writing as a culture he loves is ebbing away – but he is not writing as a force of reaction. One tension of the essay lies between his desire to preserve the past and his unwillingness to completely disregard the present. Early on he describes the building of a house and the ingenuity one might employ to maintain the traditional shapes and forms of old Japanese homes while incorporating wires and electric lights, only to remark that an ideal of simplicity now can be a lightbulb hanging alone and unadorned – what previously might seem sacrilegious to a world used to candles.

Tanizaki is no fan of much that the West had brought Japan, however. He directs particular ire towards the electric fan. But still he notes that our opposition must be limited by each specific context. We can leave such things out of our own homes, but if we have a business operating in the summer heat we must also defer to the customer. This idea that we have to adapt and make compromises to the reality we face is a key idea within the text. He does not dismiss Western medicine or science or inventions out of hand, but rather notes that they bear with themselves an adaption to Western modes, and not his own in Japan. Hospitals, for example, need not be built according to Western models, but instead could use more bamboo and wood. The problem with all of this is that perhaps things would have been better if Japan had been left to itself. “We would have gone only in a direction that suited us.” Like Herder in the German lands, Tanizaki views each nation or grouping as having their own distinguishing characteristics which better internally developed than copied from others.

Western things bring western thinking. The fountain pen brings with it a different way of writing, and an implicit exhortation to copy Western literary modes. At times Tanizaki seems to go too far in these arguments, such as when he finds even paper bearing distinctive signs of whether it was produced in the West or Japan. Now, fountain pen users will know that Japan’s paper is extraordinary, such as that produced by Tomoe River. Indeed, Japan’s fountain pens and inks are also rather amazing – those of Sailor and Pilot are particularly lovely, and some of their pens have the most brilliant lacquer work designs. This is adaption in practice, taking a thing of the West and transforming it using Japan’s particular characteristics and modes. I imagine Tanizaki might have approved.

Still, In Praise of Shadows is a work where we are witnesses to something slipping away. Ways of eating, theatre shows, even the role of women, are being changed in ways that leave tradition in the dust. The essay ends with a hope that “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”. The mansion he refers to us that of artistic and literary culture, the area where he hopes resistance to Western influences may be most effectively pursued. It now makes sense to turn to that sphere and see what the fuss with shadows is all about.

Shadows, Objects and Life Arguments

Tanizaki defines Japanese culture as being one of shadows; the West as one of light. This seems slightly ridiculous at first glance, but worth taking seriously as out of this dichotomy Tanizaki draws all of his arguments about ways of living in the world. And is he not right, anyway? Our rooms are very bright – we certainly do not like the dark. We prefer spotless, shining cleanliness to the dirt that accumulates with age and contains within itself something akin to a history. (Think only about the hordes of servants who once went around polishing the silverware.) We are served food on white bowls, white plates; our bathrooms are tiled. We purchase great cleanliness with a great emptiness of character in many of our surroundings.

For light is a thing that reveals, whereas dark and shadows do more than that – they contain the space where the imagination plays. Puppets, Tanizaki notes, seem more real in the dark. They movements gain a certain magic. And puppets are not alone. Food can be supremely enhanced by the atmosphere of its serving. A dark lacquer bowl works better than a plain white bowl because in that darkness a soup’s contents are not on display as at market. Instead, there is an air of mystery – a taste of mystery, in fact:

“Lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in at a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, or overtones but partly suggested.”

This imagination from darkness is connected very much to the arguments about simplicity that Okakura makes in The Book of Tea. There, one of the most memorable chapters concerned the decoration of tea rooms. To us Westerners, a room with only a single painting would strike us as sparsely adorned. But for Okakura, a single object focuses our attention on a single thing. It creates a much purer and more effective atmosphere – and thus a more pleasant tea-drinking experience. If adorning a room sparsely creates a stronger effect then why would we do anything otherwise? (The argument does not suggest that lush decoration is wrong, but rather than clutter is wrong – harmony is the lesson to be learned from this, and harmony is easier to achieve using simplicity).

But there is something else at play here, lying behind this argument about simplicity, something connected to Tanizaki’s pessimism earlier. What makes us value light, and the Japanese dark? In Tanizaki’s view, it’s a kind of stoicism:

“We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light – his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.”

We may disagree with this characterisation of the West – and people familiar with Japan may well disagree with Tanizaki’s view of his own culture. But once again we encounter an argument for making the most not just of fewer things, but also of present things instead of what we lack. Just as he regrets that Japan’s development has been so influenced by the West instead of Japan developing independently, we can see a corresponding idea in why we might choose to value shadows:

“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.”

If we find beauty and value in what we have, we will have no need of anything more.

Conclusion

Tanizaki’s characterisation of the West as a collective block is at times tedious, but unlike Okakura he was writing for a domestic audience in his own language and we must forgive him that. What he says is interesting and worth reading because although we may have heard the ideas before – simplicity good, unthinking acceptance of foreign technology and influence is not always a great plan – by focusing on shadows he adds further depth to these arguments and makes them still more attractive to us. We may already know that objects can be better appreciated in isolation, but in In Praise of Shadows we learn about how shadows work to help objects make that better impression. In our quest to make a beautiful world, after reading this short essay we have another tool in our toolbox for making that happen.

The Salon

I have always been jealous of the poets and writers of yore. The name on a book tends to be singular, but the reality was that almost every great name lived at one time or other as part of a circle, whose every member buoyed each other up, so that the work that came out the other end always bore the marks of collaboration. I think of Goethe’s friends at Jena and Weimar in particular, or the various literary-revolutionary circles in Russia. The best things anyone has ever achieved have always been the work of groups, and literature is no exception. The salons, the visiting evenings of the nineteenth century’s aristocracy always left me feeling more than a little jealous, for our world has changed, and such things are little possible today. But not, it must be said, impossible altogether.

In my case, I was inspired by a friend of mine. One year, he invited me and several other friends round to his house in Jurmala, on the Baltic coast, to meet his girlfriend. I had met her before, but not his friends. One was a refugee from Russia, a revolutionary featured in the papers who was now living in the US, another was a Czech interested in China and AI while still able to speak Latin, and the third was a genius in the truest and most chaotic sense of the word. Every day it was politics, history, art, and conversation heaped upon conversation. Good food, walks around Riga and along the Baltic coast – nothing could top the impression it left upon me. The girl herself spent the time hiding upstairs. In all honesty, I cannot blame her. I remember walking out of my room one midmorning to hear some of the guys downstairs talking about British fascism in a way that wasn’t quite condemnatory enough for my tastes, then wheeling around and going back to bed.

But the time I had there left a strong impression on me, and eventually, I decided to organise something similar with my own friends. We are extremely lucky to have a Swiss chalet in our family’s possession, and I took the approach that not sharing it with others would be a terrible waste. Switzerland, that legendary neutral country, is also at the centre of Europe and easily accessible from any of its corners – or indeed, from further afield. It was a logical choice for a friend group that has since university been scattered like marbles from an upturned bag.

As I get older, I have come to certain realisations that may seem quite ridiculous to those who have already reached them, but which would seem equally ridiculous to those who have yet to have made them their own. The good life, at least the kind of good life that I am after, is so simple that I sometimes feel I must have missed something. Good food, fresh air and nature, meaningful and impactful work, the company of people I love, the self-realisation that comes through creative endeavour, the expansion of the soul that comes through learning and sharing one’s thoughts with others – these are simple things. Yet to notice them and then to live according to them, to make them real and present – that’s the task of our entire lives.

The inaugural salon had as its goal the bringing together of a number of my friends in an environment that would allow people to rest, to think and to walk, with as little stress and as much freedom as possible. I imagined everyone lounging on sofas discussing Kant or some other interesting topic, perhaps with a glass of wine dangling precipitously over the carpet, exhausted physically after a day spent hiking in the mountains.

I miscalculated. I miscalculated both in ways that were positive and in ways that were negative. My first mistake was a certain overconfidence. You would have thought that an invitation to spend up to a week staying in a Swiss chalet for free with no obligations other than occasionally croaking something interesting for the host’s entertainment would be extremely popular. It was not so. There were many mumbled apologies and sorry-I’m-busys, which in the latter case at least was almost certainly partly my fault for being a little disorganised about sending invites. In the end, instead of two weeks and eight to twelve guests, the salon was only one week and only four guests, plus myself and my girlfriend. For a trial run, which this was, I think it was for the best.

First, those positives. I found myself enjoying things that I wouldn’t have expected. Being a host was actually a lot of fun – setting the table, cooking meals, doing the washing up, and maintaining a certain amount of order and cleanliness. It wasn’t just my desire to control things that made me have fun; it was also a certain amount of pride in offering a service to others and trying to make it the best I could. Whether it was getting up early to make the house nice or standing by the sink half-hearing conversations after dinner, there was real romance in what I was doing that I had hardly expected.

I also discovered that my ideal of people just lounging about philosophising isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I ended up with four people in all – and to simplify in a way that is a little uncharitable to the people themselves who are far more complicated than this makes it sound, there were two people who were quiet and philosophical, and two who were much louder and “normal”. I discovered that the person with whom I probably had the best chats, the one most obviously deep down a certain spectrum I myself belong on, was also the one who was outright unable to help with the cooking or cleaning, and whose behaviour was generally fairly odd. (There is a restaurant I will be embarrassed to return to on his account). But on the bright side, one evening while the others danced drunkenly inside, I stood with him on the balcony discussing Aquinas and the challenges of interpreting early Biblical texts that remain even when one knows the original languages, for he is studying Ancient Hebrew in Israel.

Those loud people, who did not necessarily always want to discuss the loftiest topics – though, of course, we managed that perfectly well as well – turned out to provide things I hadn’t counted on needing when I started planning. They were great around the house, cooking, cleaning, and making such a hubbub that everything was bathed in a warm orange glow. What I had forgotten was that intellectual conversations without much life surrounding them, no matter the passion behind them, feel somewhat sad and empty after a while. In short, I realised that I should put far more weight behind factors that I had not previously considered important.

Things I had not counted on were mostly related to the actual running of things. There was a certain amount of stress concerning money and making sure nobody spilled anything on the carpet. More difficult, however, was the tiredness that sunk its teeth ever deeper into me as the week-or-so went on. Now, true to the salon’s aims, I could just disappear upstairs for a nap – the guests, left to themselves, were happy to go for walks or read Jane Austen or do whatever work they had – but even so, I found myself getting grumpier and ever more tired as the time went on, which obviously turned me from that prim and proper host I had been at the beginning into a terrible creature much befitting the mountains around us and their mood of Romantic desolation. I am extremely grateful to my girlfriend for not only taking on the lion’s share of the housekeeping, but also doing it fantastically. Without her I think we might have starved conversationally and definitely would have starved culinarily. 

Now that everyone has gone, I am able to reflect. Already the tiredness is dripping away, and what remains are the good things – the photos, the memories, the numbness in my legs from all those walks, and last but not least my newly-acquired knowledge of the early Church Fathers. The fundamental idea behind the salon, of bringing my friends together, worked like a charm. There were good conversations, both with and without me. People who knew each other, got to know each other better, and those who did not know each other, managed to make at least a new acquaintance, and possibly in a case or two, a new friend.

What we are doing in this life, I still don’t know. We make decisions whose consequences we cannot apprehend, and even those decisions are made with the desperation of someone being carried down a hurtling river, reaching for something to hold on to. But I can say that, except for my wallet, which is not that important anyway, the salon achieved what I wanted it to do. It made a break in the torrent, a space for rest and for caring about people rather than one’s goals and ambitions, and for that I am grateful. I hope that next year we may manage two weeks instead of just the one and get new people to experience the wonder of the Swiss Alps and the peace of the mountain peaks.  

Leaving an Impression: My First Dickens – Bleak House

Well, that took a while. A month and a half, pretty much exactly. Bleak House, which I read because I had heard it was the best Dickens, was also my first Dickens – the first I finished anyway. I think I started Great Expectations about ten years ago. And how do I feel? Overwhelmed, that’s for sure. This wasn’t the life-changing event that some other books are, but it was awe-inspiring in its own way. I know about Dickens, of course – how can you avoid him? That he is larger than life, that his characters and books and everything else are all massive – well, yes, I was half-ready for it. But still, faced with such a whirlwind, no amount of preparedness will let you stay anchored to the ground. Readers, I was blown into the air by this mad book, and only now am I beginning to sink back down to earth.

Bleak House has a hugely intricate, complicated plot, filled with more characters than I and my extended family have fingers and toes to count on. It is a state-of-the-nation novel, one that aims to contain everything and everyone, every idea, and every thought, every word, and every punctuation mark. And so, it does, so far as I can tell. We deal with a murder mystery, our narrator’s mysterious parentage, and many other bits and pieces as Dickens accumulates and articulates everything he wants to say about the world. Much as with War and Peace, which I read and couldn’t write about here, I struggle to know where or how to begin. But as this is my first Dickens, perhaps there’s some value in thinking about that most distinctive of Dickensian elements – his characters.

Character

I think it was James Wood who said of Dickens’ characters that they are real, far more real than real people, not because of their depth, but precisely because of their flatness. Most of the people here can be reduced to a single trait or mood or thought or image. Mrs Jellyby is surrounded by papers, so obsessed with bringing civilization to the Niger delta that she neglects to bring it to her own family, who live in squalor. Mr Chadband sweats oil whenever he speaks. Mr Turveydrop is extremely proud of his deportment, to the detriment of everything else. Volumnia Dedlock is as airy as her name. I could go on. Give me one of the silly names and the character returns, here bent over like Mr Smallweed, there standing tall like the ex-soldier George.

In the preface to my edition, Terry Eagleton suggests that Dickens’ broad-brushstroke method of characterisation reflects the urbanising environment in which the novels were written. When we see people for only a brief moment, on a street corner say, then they will inevitably be reduced in our minds to their simplest and most striking characteristics. I quite like the idea, save that the characters really do not have any depth, for the most part. They are who their name literally says they are, mostly incapable of change, mostly without any complexity going on behind the scenes.

And yet they are real. The more I read and live, the more I appreciate that character is the hardest thing for a writer to make. A simulacrum of a human being, this can be done – “a man enters the room”. But the realification of the image within an author’s mind is a sacred mystery. Plots, by comparison, are easy. Intelligence alone and a bit of time will allow the majority of us to weave some interesting interconnection(s), to build a network of symbols and thoughts and motives. But a network is dull and empty without life, without character.

Who are the characters that I remember? Dostoevsky’s mostly, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Dostoevsky simply adored Dickens, and there are even legendary if false stories of their having met in London. Dostoevsky’s characters – the ones we remember – burn with passion for ideas. This fact simplifies them just as Dickens’ characters are simplified. But Dostoevsky understood that to take an idea into your soul and to live by it is to transform yourself utterly so that no interaction is left unaltered. This is inspiring, which is why we want to be, especially when we are young, like his characters. With the exception of those whose lives end in suicide, nobody can accuse Dostoevsky’s people of being empty. Repulsive at times, doubting-stricken, but always filled.

Dickens’ characters are not like this. They are startling because of their lack of interiority – it does not matter if their souls are filled because they do not seem much concerned with them, to begin with. Very few of them seem capable of reflection or thought, only our occasional narrator Esther and a few of her friends. The rest float through life in an uncomprehending daze.

A character’s reality lies in the little details, more even than the big ones. One of the first moments in Anna Karenina that had me on the verge of awestruck tears is when Levin, at a party, repeats the same joke twice. Few authors would consider writing something similar because it’s a waste of space and might convince an editor that they don’t actually proofread their own work. But it’s also a truth, a real truth, that some of us social incompetents really are socially incompetent. It is showing, rather than telling, at its very best. Thomas Mann got from Tolstoy the importance of such details for allowing for many characters within a relatively short book. Buddenbrooks, that supremely realist novel, features a number of minor characters who are distinctive only because every time they are mentioned we hear the same thing about them – whom they tailor, for example.

Dickens’ characters are their details, as I’ve said. Name, description, and speech with them are all possessing a certain unity. They create an overwhelming impression which means that within a few lines we know all we need to know and know enough to remember them even as a wave of other such characters crashes over us. I never remember what a character looks like – hair colour, eyes, and all those traditional bits and pieces – I cannot even picture most characters in my mind as I read the description. But Dickens does it, easy as that. In Bleak House, their simplicity, and their purpose, give them energy.

And I suppose that’s what makes them interesting, beyond the book. What does it say that these people are so powerful in our minds? I am no Dickens, but I have been alive. How many people do I know whom I could write about as Dickens does? Nobody, because people in real life are not so simplistic – I am being ridiculous to suggest that such a thing is possible. But I also think I can say, begrudgingly, that few people, even those close to me, leave such a vivid impression as these characters have. And is that not something to be regretted, even worried over?

Perhaps only if we are as anxiety-ridden as I am. We look at ourselves and find ourselves wanting. If only I could be so distinctive, as one of Dickens’ characters. I won’t change my name, but all the rest… – don’t I want to be remembered? For one thing, success in life is at least partly dependent upon standing out in people’s minds. We don’t just want to be an office drone, we want to be the guy who is selected for a promotion, or the girl whose work is remembered for a commendation. If we want an active social life we should message other people, but we should also be the person who comes first into someone’s head as they lie on their bed, aimlessly scrolling through their contacts looking for something to do.

All this raises the perennial question, what must we do? Must I focus on one distinctive facet of my character and ham it up to no end? As a ginger, ought I not perhaps exclusively dress in reds, so that the impression of being aflame is so overwhelming that people rush for a fire extinguisher every time I enter the room? There was a moment, after watching the anime Death Note as a young teen, when I started crouching on tables and making structures from match sticks – do I need an obnoxious hobby, perhaps, or an unattractive habit?

Almost certainly not, for the simple reason that memorability is not the only reason why we might succeed in life. We must marry it to being attractive – having those traits that make others think of us positively when we come into their minds. The last thing I want to be known as is that ginger with the dreadful dress sense. But it must be admitted also that the traits that are most attractive are also, for the most part, ones that are less memorable than their Dickensian counterparts. Esther Summerson, our narrator for part of Bleak House, is boringly good and kind. As Eagleton notes in his preface, Dickens was faced with the rather common problem of “how to make virtue artistically attractive”. Esther, whose defining trait is her radiating goodness, is ultimately memorable for being annoying.

Working hard, being clever, being kind – these are all things that leave a positive impression. But they are also to some extent incompatible with leaving a strong impression. If you work hard, you have no time for being distinctive in other ways, and being kind requires modesty to really leave a positive impression, or else it just annoys people. And modesty is quiet. Some things work for positive impressions and strong impressions, but I cannot think of many – things like wit and the ability to laugh easily and make people feel at ease.

Where, then, does Dickens come in? We are often told to be ourselves, and authenticity is almost always an attractive trait in a conforming world. Being an individual then, perhaps, is already enough to be distinctive. Mixed together with some good traits, we may not be as memorable as Mr Tulkinghorn or Detective Bucket, but we will still be pretty well-off compared to some. Have a hobby, read the odd book, go outside, think for yourself, and do your own thing. We cannot achieve a Dickensian personality, nor should we aim to. But there is plenty we can do to avoid being a forgettable a side character in everyone’s lives, even our own.

If there is something in Dickens that we must take note of for our own lives, besides the obvious social messages, it must be the importance of distinctiveness. When we meet many more people over the course of a week than we do even in the madness of Bleak House, we see just how important being a non-mushy part of someone’s experience of the world is. Sometimes this is impossible, for example because at work people may adopt a mercantile attitude towards others that only allows them to exist provided they bring a benefit, but for the most part it is not so. So, reader, let’s go and exist distinctively, so that we may become memorable for the right reasons, and fill the hearts of others with joy.

Anyway, these are some of the thoughts that my first full encounter with Dickens inspired in me.