This short essay lays out a Japanese aesthetic vision about the power of light to create darkness and shadow. Junichrio Tanizaki is writing in Japan of the 1930s, and as I have said in reviews previously of his work, this places him in an interesting and fraught position to argue for Japanese sovereignty and liberation of Western control, while also placing him well within the space of Japanese imperialism over the East Asian continent (especially China and Korea). So in arguing against the influence and […]