In Praise of Shadows
Vintage Design Edition
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:7th Nov '19
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£9.99(9780099283577)
A special edition of the famous and influential essay on Japanese culture and beauty, now beautifully produced and illustrated throughout.
A fully illustrated, beautifully produced edition of Junichiro Tanizaki's wise and evocative essay on Japanese culture.
‘We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.’
This book is in fact a portal. Reading it, you will be led by Junichiro Tanizaki’s light touch into a mysterious and tranquil world of darkness and shadows, where gold flashes in the gloom and a deep stillness reigns. If you are accustomed to equate light with clarity, the faded with the worthless and the dim with the dreary, prepare for a courteous but powerful realignment of your ideas.
In Praise of Shadows is a poetic paean to traditional Japanese aesthetics – in a free-ranging style that moves from architecture to No theatre, and from cookery to lighting, Tanizaki teaches us to see the beauty in tarnished metal, the sombre dignity in unglazed pottery, the primacy of organic materials that bear witness to the regular touch of human hands. It is also astonishingly prescient, offering a gentle warning against the quest for airbrushed perfection, and reminding us that too much light can pollute and obscure our natural world.
In this special edition, the text is accompanied by specially selected images to complement Tanizaki’s reflections and further illustrate the pattern and beauty of shadows.
An elegant essay on traditional Japanese aesthetics by the great novelist. A delight to read * Independent on Sunday *
A highly infectious essay lauding all things shady and subtly hidden * Guardian *
The outstanding Japanese novelist of this century
This is a powerfully anti-modernist book, yet contains the most beautiful evocation of the traditional Japanese aesthetic... More like a poem than an essay * Building Design *
I am convinced that Tanizaki is one of the few great writers of our time. He is an author of outstanding stature and deserves to be far better known outside Japan than he is
ISBN: 9781784875572
Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 10mm
Weight: 268g
128 pages