Tanizaki Junichiro on Japanese Aesthetics - In Praise of Shadows
2011年3月11日、東北地方太平洋沖地震が発生しました。あれから10年ほど過ぎようとしています。ちょうど、この谷崎潤一郎 のエッセイ「陰翳礼讃」が書かれたのも、関東大震災1923年の10年後でした。私たちはもう一度、清濁併せ持ち、自然と共に生きる日本の美意識について、改めて考える時期に来ているのではないでしょうか。「せめて文学の中で軒先を深めたい。電気を消してみよう。」On March 11, 2011, the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake occurred. About ten years have passed since then. It was also ten years after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 when Junichiro Tanizaki's essay "In Praise of Shadows" was written. It is time for us to reconsider the Japanese aesthetic sense of living with nature, which is both beautiful and chaotic. "I want to deepen the eaves of the temple we call literature. So let's turn off the lights."
Tanizaki Junichiro on Japanese Aesthetics - In Praise of Shadows
Tanizaki Junichiro's essay "In Praise of Shadows," first published in the 1930s, framed Japanese aesthetics through light and shadow, a perspective adopted by many artists and people of culture. For the optimal viewing experience, a 4K HDR display is strongly recommended.
1)
Tanizaki Junichiro's essay "In Praise of Shadows," first published in the 1930s, framed Japanese aesthetics through light and shadow, a perspective adopted by many artists and people of culture.
Beauty always arises from the realities of daily life.
Our ancestors, who of necessity lived in dark rooms, came to find beauty in shadows
and eventually began using them for aesthetic purposes.
2)
About 90 years ago, Tanizaki Junichiro wrote an essay.
About how a shadow is woven into traditional Japanese aesthetics and culture.
It is still read throughout the world today.
the 陰翳礼讃 Inei-raisin
In Praise of Shadows
Tanizaki Junichiro on Japanese Aesthetics
3)
Upon his return from Paris some years ago
the author Takebayashi Musoan remarked that Japanese cities like Tokyo and Osaka
were much more brightly lit than cities in Europe
even in the center of the champs-Elysees
one could still find Parisian homes lit with oil lamps
to see such lighting in today's Japan
one would have to go far out into the mountainous countryside.
4)
Mason went on to say that Japan and the United States are probably the world's most lavish in their use of electric lighting.
It's because Japan tends to imitate America in every way.
Upon reflection, it seems to me that we Japanese have been numbed by electric lighting
and are surprisingly insensitive to the disadvantages of excessive illumination.
5)
The beauty of a Japanese tatami room is created solely from variegated shadows.
There's nothing more to it than that.
Westerners are often surprised by the simplicity of tatami rooms.
However, they see nothing but undecorated gray walls
that perception is only natural
because they haven't grasped the enigma of shadows.
6)
The interiors of Japanese rooms are already well protected from sunlight.
But we take it even further by building extended eaves and adding verandas.
Shoji screens diffuse the reflected light that steals in from the garden.
7)
Indirect dim lighting is the crucial element that defines the beauty of a tatami rooms
moreover, to ensure that this faint gloomy, and transient light is serenely
and intimately absorbed into the sand-coated walls.
We purposely finish those walls in pale neutral colors.
The author Tanizaki Junichiro was born in downtown Tokyo.
His lifetime touched three of Japan's historical eras, the Meiji Taisho and Showa periods.
8)
In the Makioka sisters, a portrait of Shunkin, and many other novels and essays.
Tanizaki expressed the refined sensibilities of the Japanese and his perception of female beauty.
He was nominated for the novel prize several times.
In praise of shadows appears in a collection published in 1935 called Sitsuyo essays
It has been translated into about 20 languages and is highly regarded throughout the world
as a masterpiece that helps readers decipher Japanese culture.
9)
The second and third decades of the 20th century saw the rapid westernization of Japan.
The term Showa modern indicated the flowering of a consumer culture that blended Japanese and foreign elements
born in Tokyo Tanizaki was immersed in that hybrid culture
His early works were set against a backdrop of westernized manners and customs.
But Tanizaki experienced a transformation at the age of 37
when the great Kanto earthquake struck in 1923
leaving the ruined streets of Tokyo behind, he became a refugee in western Japan
where he subsequently settled in the following years
Tanizaki's eyes were gradually opened to Japanese traditional culture
which could be found in such cities as Kyoto and Nara.
10)
Ten years after leaving Tokyo, he wrote the essay in praise of shadows.
Robert Campbell has spent his career researching modern Japanese literature
He believes that praise of shadows came into being precisely
because Tanizaki relocated from Tokyo to western Japan.
11)
Tanizaki's literary turning point was the Great Kanto earthquake.
He immediately moved to Western Japan and..
life wasn't as sparkling and convenient.
Instead, he found great depth and a slow flow of time that felt eternal.
It was a distinctly Japanese sensibility that was being lost,
a way of thought, a sense of life that he discovered.
Those elements increasingly filled his work.
12)
In praise of Shadows focuses on Japan's living environment and food culture.
Technology, too. It's a discourse on civilization.
It's not the dichotomy of bright and dark, light and shadow.
That's his concern but rather the borders between them.
One feels darkness just ahead, which draws you in as a reader.
It's like being pulled into a black hole with enormously appealing darkness.
Almost like I'm getting absorbed into it.
Tanizaki Junichiro on Japanese Aesthetics [4K UHD] - In Praise of Shadows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C42INHwTfDM
In Praise of Shadows
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%99%B0%E7%BF%B3%E7%A4%BC%E8%AE%83