Morrison

Study Guide: Tanizaki Junichir In Praise of Shadows (Inei raisan; 1933)1

*To purchase Edward G. Seidensticker and Thomas J. Harpers translation, click here.
*To read the original, click here.
Tanizaki Junichir (1886-1965): Novelist, essayist. A prolific writer
whose popularity extended through the reigns of three emperors, Tanizaki is perhaps
best known for Sasameyuki (1943-48, tr. The Makioka Sisters, 1957). A detailed account
of an Osaka family that embraces a tradition-bound way of life, it was the first major
Japanese work of the post-World War II period. Tanizakis other novels include a
modern version of The Tale of Genji; Some Prefer Nettles (1928, tr. 1955); Quicksand
(1928-30, tr. 1994); The Key (1956, tr. 1961), and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961, tr.
1965). A witness to the Tokyo earthquake of 1923, which destroyed half the city, he
moved to the Kansai region (the greater Kyoto-Osaka area), where a more traditional
lifestyle still prevailed. The new environment influenced his outlook, and many of his
works carry an implied condemnation of excessive interest in Western things. Tanizaki
often writes of women, taking as his themes obsessive love, the destructive forces of
sexuality, and the dual nature of woman as goddess and demon. His other work includes
the selected short stories of Seven Japanese Tales (tr. 1963) and The Gourmet Club (tr.
2001) and the novellas The Reed Cutter (1932, tr. 1994) and Captain Shigemotos
Mother (1949-50, tr. 1994). (Source: The Columbia Encyclopedia).
Warning: Do not read this essay as a tract on Japanese aesthetics. Tanizaki is a novelist.
Novelists perform. They make up stuff. They entertain. They play roles. Here he is
playing with the public persona of an old grumpy man who dislikes everything about
modern civilization and complains a lot, yet does nothing about it, and constantly fails
to live up to own standards. The key to the essay is in the last paragraph.
Study Questions
1. The essay consists of sixteen sections. Discuss this structure. How does it move from
one subject to the next? What is the overarching theme?

Originally published in x in 1933. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker and Thomas

J. Harper in 1977.

2. Who is the narrator? Why does he refer to himself as an old man (Tanizaki himself
was only in his mid-40s when he wrote this)? Is the narrator the author? How does he
resemble the old man in Tanizakis novel Tade kuu mushi (Some Prefer Nettles; 1929)?
3. Describe the tone of the essay. Where is the narrator joking/being ironic? Where is he
serious? How can you tell?
4. Among the topics Tanizaki discusses are: traditional architecture, electric lights, fans,
candles, screen doors (shji), electric stoves, gas stoves, fireplaces (danro), bathrooms,
tile roofs, wood, radios, films, oil paintings, traditional lacquer (urushi), ceramics, roofs
in traditional Japanese architecture, uses/value of gold, Japanese food, ykan
confectionary, walls, study bays, alcoves (toko no ma), hanging scrolls (kakejiku),
flower arrangement (ikebana), traditional Japanese rooms, the importance of
silence/quietude/pauses, temple architecture, priests robes, Noh costumes, the skin of
Noh performers, Kabuki, puppet theater (bunraku), teeth blackening (o-haguro), etc.
Discuss each of these and their relation to the essays main theme (the importance of
shadows). How do they each illustrate the magic of shadows?
5. Discuss the narrators remarks on the toilets in the East. Is he being ironic? What is
he parodying? Explain.
6. What value does the narrator place on dirt, grime, stains, impurity, uncleanliness,
oldness, rusticity, patina, etc.? What does he mean by elegance is filthy? Can these
remarks be read as a challenge to the discourses of Japanese purity that were
prevalent at the time? Is his insistence on the importance/beauty of grime dirt
impurity a challenge to cultural nationalists of day?
7. Make a list of all binaries that appear in the work (e.g. East/West, country/city,
Kyoto/Tokyo, night/day, light/shadows, vulgar/elegant, etc.). Are these binaries
problematized/collapsed at any point? Explain.
8. Discuss the narrators description of the Japanese national character (kokuminsei)?
What examples does he give to illustrate this character? What is a national character?
Is there such a thing? What is Japans/your national character?
9. Explain the narrators comments about the possibility of an alternative modernity, of

a science/technology/arts more suited to our national character. What would this

alternative look like? Is an alternative modernity possible?
10. According to the narrator, how did Japans process of modernization differ from that
of the West?
11. Can this essay be read as a critique of the Meiji-era ethos of civilization and
enlightenment (bunmei kaika)? What other anti-bunmei kaika works have we read?
Explain.
12. How does this essay relate to the return to Japan (Nihon kaiki) cultural movement
of the 1930s? Does it challenge/subvert this dominant discourse in any way? Explain.
13. How is China (and to a lesser extent India) described in this essay? How does the
narrator view the traditional paper, jade, food, and crystals of China? Is the China he
describes the China of 1933, or the China of the ancient past?
14. Explain the phrase elegance is frigid. How do these remarks about elegance
compare with other treatises on elegance (fryron) written around the same time?
15. Explain the narrators view of the relationship between beauty and everyday
life/material conditions/fdo. Discuss the significance of the line: The quality that we
call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life (18).2
16. Discuss the narrators description of Japanese women/female beauty. What are the
defining features of the typical woman of old (29)? How does he recall his mother?
17. The narrator makes numerous generalizations. For example: Such is our way of
thinkingwe find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light
and the darkness, that one thing against another creates (30). Are such generalizations
verifiable, consistent with evidence? Is it true that the West has placed less of a value on
shadows (30-31)? Doesnt Western art abound in shadows? (Think: Edgar Allan Poe,
Charles Baudelaire, gothic writers, fin de sicle writers, Romantic/Symbolist poets,
2

Watsuji Tetsur wrote Fdo ningenteki ksatsu from 1928-1935; its main theme:
climate, in a broad sense, determines national character. Traces of work can be seen here,
perhaps in parodized form.

chiaroscuro in Renaissance painting; extreme chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, El Greco,

Rembrandt; Shakespeare, etc.) Is there any validity to the narrators claim that
East=shadows, West=light? That We Orientals find beauty not only in the thing itself
but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and darkness which that thing provides. (31)
18. Discuss the narrators concept of races/skin colors and their relation to cloudiness
and grime (31-32).What contemporary racial discourses are evoked in essay? Explain.
19. Discuss the connection between the narrators description of women as white
disembodied ethereal faces wrapped in darkness, and the female characters in Tanizakis
fiction. Is it true that women exhale/exude darkness from their orifices/bodies?
The darkness wrapped her round tenfold, twentyfold, it filled the collar, the sleeves
of her kimono, the folds of her skirt, wherever a hollow invited. Further yet: might
it not have been the reverse, might not the darkness have emerged from her mouth
and those black teeth, from the black of her hair, like the thread from the great earth
spider?
20. The narrator decries Japan as the worlds second greatest wastersecond only to
Americaof energy/electricity (35-38). How might we read these remarks today in the
wake of the 2011 Thoku earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis? What might Tanizakis
answer to the current energy crisis be? What does the narrator recommend for keeping
cool in the summer?
21. In the final section, the narrator compares himself to the old griping women of
England who complain about the modern age. How is he similar?
22. On page 9, the narrator states that behind shadows is a mere void, i.e. that shadows
are the reality/more real that the object that casts them. In what other works of this
period have we seen this idea? (Think: Tanizakis Mr. Bluemound, Kajii Motojirs
Ascension of K, Hagiwaras Town of Cats, etc.) Explain.
23. The last paragraph is the key to the entire essay. After reading this paragraph, what
do you think the essays actual/implicit subject is? What are shadows a metaphor for?
I am aware of and most grateful for the benefits of the age. No matter what

complaints we may have, Japan has chosen to follow the West, and there is nothing
for her to do but move bravely ahead and leave us old ones behind. But we must be
resigned to the fact that as long as our skin is the color it is the loss we have
suffered cannot be remedied. I have written all this because I have thought that
there might still be somewhere, possibly in literature or the arts, where something
could be saved. I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are
losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls
dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that came forward to clearly, I
would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere,
but 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. (42).

Further Reading
1. Margherita Long. This Perversion Called Love: Reading Tanizaki, Feminist Theory,
and Freud.