“We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim shadows far surpass any ornament.”

~ Junichiro Tanizaki

There is something to be said for the beauty that shadows bring to the home and the Japanese are masters at it. In his classic book, In Praise of Shadows (1933), Junichiro Tanizaki presented a fascinating and occasionally amusing essay that lauds and explains traditional Japanese aesthetics relating to light and its absence manifest in traditional houses, temples, gardens, and even in the presentation of food. Tanizaki argued that rather than light, it is the shadow that is the focus of decoration in these spaces. His favorite example is the tatami room for the tea ceremony, undoubtedly the mother of all Japanese cultural arts. Here is where we see the origins of the Japanese fondness for subtle lighting and shadow.

In every tea room, one finds an alcove (tokonoma). This space is minimally decorated with nothing more than a calligraphic scroll and a rustic vase with fresh flowers. The lintel above the tokonoma was designed to impart shadow against the light source, filtered through translucent shoji paper windows, giving the space a sense of quiet beauty and depth. Tanizaki contrasts this aesthetic with the western ones that prize directness over subtlety and light over shadow and asked if progress is necessarily good, particularly when it’s imported from another culture.

The following are extracts from the first English edition of Tanizaki’s essay, published in 1977 with minor edits.

“We Japanese … build our house in the dimness of shadows. It is not that we do not find a bright room more convenient than a dark one. It’s just that our ancestors, who lived of necessity in dark rooms, unwittingly discovered beauty in shadow and before long, came to use shadow to attain the goal of beauty. People like us enjoy the delicate glow of weak natural light that clings to the surface of a dusky-colored wall, eking out its last moments of life. For us, this light on the walls, now bright, now dim, surpasses any ornamentation, and we never tire of it.

It is true our tatami rooms include a tokonoma (alcove), where we set flower arrangements and hang scrolls featuring paintings or calligraphy, but those serve not to ornament so much as to length depth to the shadow. As if that were not enough, around the outside of the traditional room, which the rays of the sun pierce only with difficulty, we extend verandas and exterior breezeways, pushing the sunlight even father away so that the reflected light from the garden barely filters through the paper shoji screens.

If we think of a tatami room as an ink-wash painting, then shoji screens are the areas of the painting where the ink wash is faintest, and the tokonoma, the area where it is darkest. Whenever I see the tokonoma in a Japanese-style tatami room of concentrated refinement, I marvel that the Japanese people possess such a thorough understanding of the mysteries of shadow and such skill in differentiating light and shade. It requires no special furnishings; just neat and tidy walls and woodwork enclosing and isolating a space, the dim corners animated here and there by sunbeams lured into its emptiness. Nonetheless …, we are deeply moved by a sense that the atmosphere is quietly settling just there, and an eternal and unchanging peace is possessing the darkness.

The secret lies in the magic of shadows. If we expelled the shadows from every corner, the tokonoma would suddenly become nothing more than a void. The genius of our ancestors was to preserve a quality of yugen, surpassing any mural or other ornamentation.

Yugen (幽玄) is a traditional Japanese aesthetic concept that means a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe, pointing to what is hidden, implied, or felt rather than explicitly stated

Though this seems a simple technique, in fact, it is not so easy to accomplish. It is difficult to imagine the unseen effort that goes into determining each detail of the tokonoma’s design – the shape of the window in the study nook, the thickness of the lintel, the height of the threshold – yet I stop in front of it, amid the dim, pale light and I forget the passage of time.

[Meanwhile] light is filtering through the paper shoji, suitably dampening it. Again and again, I stop before such shoji and stare at the paper surface, bright but not in the least dazzling. And the paper is permanently stained as though dirt had accumulated in each and every corner of the grid-like shoji frame. At such moments, I blink in wonder at the dream-like light.

People today, living in brightly lit houses, cannot comprehend this sort of golden beauty.”

Shadows in Contemporary Japanese Architecture

Some contemporary Japanese homes are still designed to receive indirect light. In projects by Ken Yokogawa Architect & Associates, for example, sunlight is reflected off the landscaping into the main living area, transforming harsh direct sunlight into soft illumination. “I am always conscious of how the shadow works in the house I am designing.” he says.

Architecture professor Juhani Pallasmaa in his essay Dwelling in Light points out that shadows are essential because they “invite unconscious peripheral visions and tactile fantasies.” Paradoxically, when light is restrained, depth reveals itself, enhancing the sensory experience of space.

Shadows in Modernist Architecture

Tadao Ando is widely regarded as the preeminent Japanese master who shapes light and shadow in contemporary architecture. His signature style uses raw, smooth concrete and simple geometry to frame natural elements. Natural light is treated as a primary building material, letting sunbeams and shadows shift dynamically through minimalist spaces to evoke spiritual calm and contemplation. We see this interplay of light and shadow most prominently in his Church of Light in Ibaraki as well as the Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima Island.

Chichu Art Museum

The Church of Light

In the small town of Ibaraki, 25km outside of Osaka, Japan, stands one of Tadao Ando’s signature architectural works, the Church of the Light.  Completed in 1989, the minimalist building embraces Ando’s philosophical framework between nature and architecture through the way in which light can define and create new spatial perceptions equally, if not more so, as that of his concrete structures. 

Watch: Pablo Kujman, A Short Film of Light & Shadow