Japan: An Ode to Light

“A flickering light, a faint gleam. This the charm of all things Japanese.” -Yasunari Kawabata

Light feels different in Japan

The warm washi glow of Akari, the flickering filament in a dim-lit izakaya, and the dull neon scaling Tokyo’s skyscrapers come together in a warm, muted haze that envelops you like fog. In this peculiar glow, soft light becomes a beacon, a bonfire that invites a kind of primordial proximity I struggle to name.

What explains the allure of that glow?

In his 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows —written during the early Shōwa period, a period of industrialization and Westernization—writer and cultural critic Junichiro Tanizaki noticed something peculiar about the Western attitude toward light.

“Westerners attempt to expose every corner of their dwellings to light, scoop the shadows out of every nook, while we delight in a pensive luster, the glow of waning light.”

It’s true.

In the West, even if we’re reluctant to admit it, we are afraid of darkness, of what lurks in the shadows: our past, our mistakes, our unspoken thoughts.

That same year, on the other side of the globe, Ernest Hemingway wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, which cast all-night cafés and restaurants as a kind of panacea against the threat of the void. Narrating the interior thoughts of a deaf, drunk octogenarian, he writes: “What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing he knew too well. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanliness and order.”

In their time, both writers were responding to the same modern unease from vastly different cultural frames.
Tanizaki sought solace in shadow, a Zen-like acceptance of ambiguity. Hemingway, a kind of solipsistic salvation in the sterile clarity of light.

Nearly a hundred years later, those modern maladies (alienation, anhedonia) still hold sway. But perhaps it’s time we recognize that we can’t banish the darkness. We must learn to live with it.

For me, I’ve found myself following the soft glow of Akari lamps, taking comfort in Tanizaki’s reminder:

“Our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.”