In Praise of Shadows

"This is a powerfully anti-modernist book, yet contains the most beautiful evocation of the traditional Japanese aesthetic, which cast such a spell on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright.

"The contradiction is easily explained: Tanizaki sees the empty Japanese wall as not empty at all, but a surface on which light continually traces its fugitive presence against encroaching shadow. He constructs a myth of the origin of the Japanese house: it began with a roof and overhanging eaves, which cast a shadow on the earth, calling forth a shelter."

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