This eloquent work on the Japanese sense of beauty explores the subtle interplay of shade and light in several important aspects of Japanese life - architecture, drama, food, femininity and literature - and traces the retreat of this mature, shadowy aesthetic tradition before the brighter, more garnish products of Western technology. Junichiro Tanizaki, one of the most eloquent Japanese novelists, leads readers through 'darkness seen by candlelight' replete with a 'pregnancy of particles like fine, ashes, each particle as luminous as a rainbow'. His flowing, wandering meditation cannot fail to delight all lovers of the traditions of the East.
Author
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.
