In Praise of Shadows

Historical baggage complicates the praise: the claim that darker skin underneath drove a preference for shadow and dim rooms is the single most flagged complaint, called a stretch even by readers who loved the rest. Critics describe the underlying politics as “painfully dated and rather unfortunate musings on gender and especially skin color,” and one reviewer's judgment is blunter still, calling parts of it “beyond the pale.” Tanizaki's treatment of historical Japanese women, praised mainly for staying hidden in darkened rooms, reads to modern readers as fetishizing rather than admiring. A cluster of readers experience the essay less as meditative and more as “the usual rant from an angry man,” wandering into asides about Western convenience that don't connect back to shadows, and a reader wraps up the drift bluntly: it's “just a rant against everything which loses the main theme.”