Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the faroff shrill of an insect, lost in contemplation of flavors to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into
a trance. The experience must be something like that of the tea master who, at the sound of the
kettle, is taken from himself as if upon the sigh of the wind in the legendary pines of Onoe.
It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go
further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination
of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark. Natsume Sōseki, in
Pillow of
Grass, praises the color of the confection yōkan; it is not indeed a color to call forth meditation?
The cloudly translucence, like that of jade; the faint, dreamlike glow that suffuses it, as if it had
drunk into its very depths the light of the sun; the complexity and profundity of the color—
nothing of the sort is to be found in Western candies. How simple and insignificant cream-filled
chocolates seem by comparison. And when yōkan is served in a lacquer dish within whose dark
recesses its color is scarcely distinguishable, then it is most certainly an object for meditation.
You take its cool, smooth substance into your mouth, and it is as if the very darkness of the room
were melting on your tongue; even undistinguished yōkan can then take on a mysteriously
intriguing flavor.
In the cuisine of any country efforts no doubt are made to have the food harmonize with the
tableware and the walls; but with Japanese food, a brightly lighted room and shining tableware
cut the appetite in half. The dark miso soup that we eat every morning is one dish from the dimly
lit houses of the past. I was once invited to a tea ceremony where miso was served; and when I
saw the muddy, claylike color, quiet in a black lacquer bowl beneath the faint light of a candle,
this soup that I usually take without a second thought seemed somehow to acquire a real depth,
and to become infinitely more appetizing as well. Much the same may be said of soy sauce. In the
Kyoto-Osaka region a particularly thick variety of soy is served with raw fish, pickles, and
greens; and how rich in shadows is the viscous sheen of the liquid, how beautifully it blends with
the darkness. White foods too—white miso, bean curn, fish cake, the white meat of fish—lose
much of their beauty in a bright room. And above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice
cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite.
Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black
container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam—here is
a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is
inseparable from darkness.
I possess no specialized knowledge of architecture, but I understand that in the Gothic cathedral
of the West, the roof is thrust up and up so as to place its pinnacle as high in the heavens as
possible—and that herein is thought to lie its special beauty. In the temples of Japan, on the other
hand, a roof of heavy tiles is first laid out, and in the deep, spacious shadows creates by the eaves
the rest of the structure is built. Nor is this true only of temples; in the palaces of the nobility and
the houses of the common people, what first strikes the eye is the massive roof of tile or thatch
and the heavy darkness that hangs beneath the eaves. Even at midday cavernous darkness spreads
over all beneath the roof’s edge, making entryway, doors, walls, and pillars all but invisible. The
grand temples of Kyoto—Chion’in, Honganji—and the farmhouses of the remote countryside are
alike in this respect: like most buildings of the past their roofs give the impression of possessing
far greater weight, height, and surface than all that stands beneath the eaves.
In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth,
and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house. There are of course roofs on Western
houses too, but they are less to keep off the sun than to keep off the wind and the dew; even from
without it is apparent that they are built to create as few shadows as possible and to expose the
interior to as much light as possible. If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a
Western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visor as possible so as to allow the sunlight
to penetrate directly beneath the eaves. There are no doubt all sorts of reasons—climate, building
materials—for the deep Japanese eaves. The fact that we did not use glass, concrete, and bricks,
for instance, made a low roof necessary to keep off the driving wind and rain. A light room would
no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. 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.
And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows,
heavy shadows against light shadows—it has nothing else. Westerners are amazed at the
simplicity of Japanese rooms, perceiving in them no more than ashen walls bereft of ornament.
Their reaction is understandable, but it betrays a failure to comprehend the mystery of shadows.
Out beyond the sitting room, which the rays of the sun can at best but barely reach, we extend the
eaves or build on a veranda, putting the sunlight at still greater a remove. The light from the
garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors, and it is precisely this indirect light that
makes for us the charm of a room. We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying
rays can sink into absolute repose. The storehouse, kitchen, hallways, and such may have a glossy
finish, but the walls of the sitting room will almost always be of clay textured with fine sand. A
luster here would destroy the soft fragile beauty of the feeble light. We delight in the mere sight
of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what
little life remains to them. We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim
shadows far surpass any ornament. And so, as we must if we are not to disturb the glow, we finish
the walls with sand in a single neutral color. The hue may differ from room to room, but the
degree of difference in color as in shade, a difference that will seem to exist only in the mood of
the viewer. And from these delicate differences in the hue of the walls, the shadows in each room
take on a tinge particularly their own.
Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and a flower
arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the
shadows. We value a scroll above all for the way it blends with the walls of the alcove, and thus
we consider the mounting quite as important as the calligraphy or painting. Even if the greatest
masterpiece will lose its worth as a scroll if it fails to blend with the alcove, while a work of no
particular distinction may blend beautifully with the room and set off to unexpected advantage
both itself and its surroundings. Wherein lies the power of otherwise ordinary work to produce
such an effect? Most often the paper, the ink, the fabric of the mounting will possess a certain
look of antiquity, and this look of antiquity will strike just the right balance with the darkness of
the alcove and room.
We have all had the experience, on a visit to one of the great temples of Kyoto or Nara, of being
shown a scroll, one of the temple’s treasures, hanging in a large, deeply recessed alcove. So dark
are these alcoves, even in bright daylight, that we can hardly discern the outlines of the work; all
we can do is listen to the explanation of the guide, follow as best we can the all-but-invisible
brush strokes, and tell ourselves how magnificent a painting it must be. Yet the combination of
that blurred old painting and the dark alcove is one of absolute harmony. The lack of clarity, far
from disturbing us, seems rather to suit the painting perfectly. For the painting here is nothing
more than another delicate surface upon which the faint, frail light can play; it performs precisely
the same function as the sand-textured wall. This is why we attach such importance to age and
patina. A new painting, even one done in ink monochrome or subtle pastels, can quite destroy the
shadows of an alcove, unless it is selected with the greatest care.
A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper-paneled shoji being the
expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the alcove where it is the darkest. Whenever I see the
alcove 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. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak
probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel
an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never
penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the
shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they
imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to
that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so
simply achieved. We can imagine with little difficulty what extraordinary pains were taken with
each invisible detail—the placement of the window in the shelving recess, the depth of the
crossbeam, the height of the threshold. But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow
of the shoji in the sturdy bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time.
The sturdy bay, as the name suggests, was originally a projecting window built to provide a place
for reading. Over the years it came to be regarded as no more than a source of light for the alcove;
but most often it serves not so much to illuminate the alcove as to soften the sidelong rays from
without, to filter them through paper panels. There is a cold and desolate tinge to the light by the
time it reaches these panels. The little sunlight from the garden that manages to make its way
beneath the eaves and through the corridors has by then lost its power to illuminate, seems
drained of the complexion of life. It can do no more than accentuate the whiteness of the paper. I
sometimes linger before these panels and study the surface of the paper, bright, but giving no
impression of brilliance.
In temple architecture the main room stands at a considerable distance from the garden; so dilute
is the light there that no matter what the season, on fair days or cloudy, morning, midday, or
evening, the pale, white glow scarcely varies. And the shadows at the interstices of the ribs seem
strangely immobile, as if dust collected in the corners had become a part of the paper itself. I
blink in uncertainty at this dreamlike luminescence, feeling as though some misty film were
blunting my vision. The light from the pale white paper, powerless to dispel the heavy darkness
of the alcove, is instead repelled by the darkness, creating a world of confusion where dark and
light are indistinguishable. Have not you yourselves sensed a difference in the light that suffuses
such a room, a rare tranquility not found in ordinary light? Have you never felt a sort of fear in
the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of
time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and
gray?
by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, (Leete’s Island Books, 1977) |
Read more:Image: Wikipedia
[ed. When I realized this famous Tanizaki essay was published in 1933, I thought surely it must be out of copyright by now. And here it is. From Wikipedia:]
***
In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃, In'ei Raisan) is an essay by
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki about
Japanese aesthetics. Tanizaki's observations include cultural notes on customs and tradition, people, historical places and buildings, discussion of various materials and craft techniques, as well as food and even unusual recipes as seen through the author's metaphorical lens of light and shadow. [...]
The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures. The West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of East Asian art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety, closely relating to the traditional Japanese concept of
sabi. In addition to contrasting light and dark, Tanizaki further considers the layered tones of various kinds of shadows and their power to reflect low sheen materials like gold embroidery, patina and cloudy crystals. In addition, he distinguishes between the values of gleam and shine.
The text presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings,
traditional crafts, finishes,
jade, food, cosmetics and
mono no aware (the art of impermanence). Tanizaki explores in close description the use of space in buildings,
lacquerware by candlelight, monastery toilets and women in the dark of a brothel. The essay acts as "a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age".
