This essay by Japanese novelist Tanizaki is a rich and subtle meditation on beauty and aesthetics. His descriptions of light are sublime, or
perhaps a more humble relative of sublime, since light for him is best contemplated in
its least spectacular effects. Light is
variously described as frail, desolate, dilute, clinging, pensive, limpid, or delicate; gold leaf in shadow has a dull, sleepy luster,
white paper panels have a dreamlike luminescence, the candy yokan is possessed
of a cloudy translucence … as if it had drunk into its depths the light of the
sun.
But for Tanizaki it is the magic of shadows that
makes light effects visible at all, and he reserves
his greatest powers of concentration for them.
Shadows are infinitely graded, always mysterious, uncanny, quiet,
cloudy, inky, dull, soft, etc. They fill collars and hollows and folds, they
gather, soak, fall, press in …
I loved his descriptions of food, of miso soup in a black lacquer bowl,
its muddy, claylike color; the viscous sheen of black soy sauce, the soft glow
of white fish, of heaped white rice in clouds of steam against black pots
…. Our cooking depends upon shadows and
is inseparable from darkness. Darkness
hangs heavy above the No stage like the interior of a huge temple bell; gold leaf and gold dust draw light from the air, glow brighter
as you back away. Women blacken
their teeth, wear iridescent green-black lipstick, shave their eyebrows; their
black hair is the thread of the great earth spider.
And Ghosts have no feet …
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