Reading Junichiro Tanizaki’s highly evocative essay ‘In Praise of Shadows’ (1977) has the effect of ‘switching on‘ more of the body’s physiological and psychological sensibilities. Tanizaki writes, for example, of listening to the sound of rain softly falling from the trees and seeping into the earth. He is listening from a toilet, where dim lighting and raw materials add to his aesthetic pleasure of this kind of place where he imagines that over the ages haiku poets have been inspired. Tanizaki prefers the ‘soft voice and the understatement’.
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