in praise of _

Published in Harvard Urban Review 2022 Issue: Overlooked

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During the architectural modernist fever, renowned novelist Junichirō Tanizaki reminded Japanese architects of the value of Japanese tradition in his 1933 essay, In Praise of Shadows. This is his only text that critiques architecture directly. It responds to the accelerated import of western technology into Japanese homes, which in Tanizaki’s opinion,overlooked local culture. These notions are present in his fictional writings as well. Through his observations, Tanizaki collapses the separation of built architecture and made objects. Instead, they are material manifestations of cultural psychology intrinsically linked to one another. If this essay proves to be useful, it will shed light onto the underlying premises of Tanizaki’s conclusions and look to his fiction works, namely, Some Prefer Nettles and The Makioka Sisters, to uncover similar ideas. Further, it contemplates his ruminations in the context of globalization.

In the essay In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki opens with the tension between western technology and Japanese forms as they synthesize to make the modern home.

What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a

house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms-even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn.[1]

He argues that the problem is not merely visual because any attempt to hide “the placement of a single telephone” or “bury the wires” cannot mask the “nervous, fussy, excessively contrived” spirit behind these decisions. The reason is that people are no longer foreign to the western appliances, and so any pretense would be read as superficial and unnecessarily complicated. Interestingly, his sentiment against aesthetic dishonesty is shared by the western modernists. The insincerity of “fixtures patterned after old floor lamps, ceiling lights, candle stands, and the like” that Tanizaki underlines parallels the scorn of ornamentation by western modernist architects, who deem as “crime.”[2]

Nevertheless, honest display of the modern mechanics of the house disrupts the cohesion. Tanizaki laments, “No stove worthy of the name will ever look right in a Japanese room.”, as he continues to narrate his experiences with altering fixtures and appliances to accommodate his home. In this case, Tanizaki “buil[t] a large sunken hearth, as in an old farmhouse…installed an electric brazier, which worked well both for boiling tea water and for heating the room” to preserve the visibility of embers that create a warm atmosphere and mitigate the problems that came with loud, suffocating gas stoves and “ugly” electrical stoves. The procedure, Tanizaki admits, was expensive, and the result was only successful in terms of “looks”, yet that triumph is what the conditions could accommodate.

He plants curiosity in the reader with this preliminary outline of aesthetic conflicts and provokes us to consider the deeper reasons for the incompatibility of western and eastern objects in early 20th century Japan. This tension takes form in the sisters’ characterization in Tanizaki’s acclaimed novel, The Makioka Sisters, in which “Yukiko was the most Japanese in appearance and dress, Taeko the most Western, and Sachiko stood midway between.[3]” The drama among the three often mimics conflict of the west vs. east values despite being a Japanese family. It reveals the influence of west in Japan of Tanizaki’s generation.

Raised in late nineteenth-century Tokyo, which began receiving visitors from the west twenty years before his birth, Tanizaki was infatuated with western culture in his youth. He even moved to a western-style house in Yokohama as a young adult, to lead a “bohemian life[4]”. It was the 1923 Kanto earthquake that urged his move westward to Kyoto, where traditional Japanese customs and architecture were still relatively intact. There, the writer discovered the allure of his own heritage.

With the experience of both western and Japanese culture, the writer explains the differences between their artifacts and how they reflect different ideologies. In In Praise of Shadows, he investigates this by showing the reader different rooms of the house, in an artful manner that we do not feel shy even as he introduces the toilet. Tanizaki acknowledges that the western toilet is more practical for a typical household. “There no denying the cleanliness” of the modern western toilet, “every nook and corner is pure white.” In contrast, a traditional Japanese bathroom is detached from the main building, and its interior dim-lit, “surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood” with views to the garden and sky. These bathrooms can only be maintained “in a place like a temple, where the dwelling is large, the inhabitants few, and everyone helps with the cleaning.” Yet the sanitized environment is unsettling for Tanizaki. The white walls wash out the meditative atmosphere of a traditional bathroom and the human body is exposed to him or herself entirely. Tanizaki dramatizes this dislike in Some Prefer Nettles, borrowing an unnamed character’s voice to proclaim, “A pure white bath or toilet is a piece of Western foolishness.” For while one traces the body’s beauty in soft light and the delineation of shadows, (s)he can only discover flaws in “excessive illumination”. Here on, he explores the different ideas of beauty in western and eastern cultures, and how light in architecture participates in them.

The writer turns to everyday objects, drawing attention to the materiality and the space that they are used in. In the dining space, Tanizaki remarks that

dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed. The rooms at the Waranjiya are

about nine feet square, the size of a comfortable little tearoom, and the alcove pillars and ceilings glow with a faint smoky luster, dark even in the light of the lamp. But in the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty I had not before seen.[5]

The connection between shadows, space and object become prominent here. Tanizaki explains how the harmonious play between the dim, flickering light and the architectural elements of the intimate room elucidate the allure of Japanese dining ware in this captivating scene. He emphasizes the crucial synchronization of architecture and lifestyle, implying that any other lighting or spatial condition cannot allow this beauty to be experienced. In this sense, Tanizaki argues that everyday objects are designed to be used in a certain architectural and lighting context.

The interest in the phenomenology of space and the difference between east and west is reflected Tanizaki’s fiction pieces as well. He details “the sensation as he stepped into the theater, the smooth, cool wood against the soles of his feet,[6]” in Some Prefer Nettles. Tanizaki’s focus on the tactile interaction between the protagonist Kaname’s feet and floor not only paints a vivid picture but also illustrates the Japanese customs of removing shoes indoors, even in public spaces. Again, the writer wants us to see how traditional architecture aligns with Japanese habits of mind. The argument is persuasive, especially because he has done it in such a poetic way. Upon deeper reading, one can see how Tanizaki is calling for an appreciation of traditional architecture in modernist Japan.

He pushes this further by contrasting dark, luscious lacquerware with western cutlery,

The Westerner uses silver and steel and nickel tableware, and polishes it to a fine brilliance, but we object to the practice. While we do sometimes indeed use silver for teakettles, decanters, or sake cups, we prefer not to polish it. On the contrary, we begin to enjoy it only when the luster has worn off, when it has begun to take on a dark, smoky patina.[7]

The strive for a “fine brilliance”, achieved by consistent polishing, reflects the western preoccupation with light and cleanliness. Here, Tanizaki subtly suggests the western fixation on the new, and how the impression of time is a mark of beauty in eastern objects. He establishes the value of jade, “a strange lump of stone with its faintly muddy light, like the crystallized air of the centuries, melting dimly, dully back, deeper and deeper”, as something that only “Orientals” can comprehend. Due to this difference, light or shimmer is used generally as an accent than a dominant feature in eastern artifacts, whether it be tableware or jewelry or architecturally,

in the darkness of the innermost rooms of these huge buildings, to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast into the enveloping darkness, like the glow upon the horizon at sunset.[8]

As modern technology, designed for standardized mass distribution, intrudes the Japanese living space, Tanizaki brings to light the coherence of the design of traditional objects and spaces. They are characterized by the passage of time and light, which gives them a quality of their own kind.

The stylistic free-flowing essay and serene tone of his novels embody the “reticence[9]” of Japanese culture while being effective in its criticism. At heart, Tanizaki is not attacking western culture, instead he illuminates the beauty of tradition obscured by the blind imposition of western forms onto Japanese architecture and artifacts. He implores a more conscious adaptation of new technology into Japanese landscape and a recognition of the merits of their own culture. This consideration is crucial in the current globalization, and similar threats of cultural erosion present themselves in emerging economies, such as China’s rapid urbanization, as they assimilate into the global cultural fabric. Further, in the post-covid environment, how will new spatial rules reconcile with traditional practices and aesthetics? At heart, underlying Tanizaki’s musings is the friction between preservation and innovation, a universal issue that designers, present and future, cannot neglect.

Bibliography

Gibberd, Matt, and Albert Hill. Ornament Is Crime: Modernist Architecture. Berlin: Phaidon, 2017.

Keene, Donald. Five Modern Japanese Novelists. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Mccarthy, Paul, Junichiro Tanizaki, Thomas J. Harper, Edward G. Seidensticker, and Charles Moore. "In Praise of Shadows." Monumenta Nipponica 33, no. 4 (1978): 489-91. doi:10.2307/2384358.

Tanizaki, Junichirō. In Praise of Shadows. Translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker. New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977.

Tanizaki, Junʼichirō. Some Prefer Nettles. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. London: Vintage,

2001.

Tanizaki, Junichiro. The Makioka Sisters. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. London: Everymans Library, 2015.

"Tanizaki Junichiro." New World Encyclopedia. Accessed May 06, 2018. http://web.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tanizaki_Junichiro.

[1] Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977), 1.

[2] Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill, Ornament Is Crime: Modernist Architecture (Berlin: Phaidon, 2017).

[3] Junʼichirō Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker (London: Vintage, 2001), 49.

[4] "Tanizaki Junichiro," New World Encyclopedia, , accessed May 06, 2018, http://web.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tanizaki_Junichiro.

[5] Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977), 13.

[6] Junʼichirō Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker (London: Vintage, 2001), 27.

[7] Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977), 10.

[8] Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977), 22.

[9] (Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1977), 9.