In Praise of Shadows and the Beauty of Japanese Ghost Girls (A Post for Halloween 2016)

A Japanese Ghost Girl or Yūrei [幽靈]

The Land of the Rising Sun is also the Land of the Falling Shadow; a place in which the gathering gloom of twilight and the brilliance of daybreak are held in equal regard and darkness causes no anxiety or discontent. The Japanese accept the moon at midnight and resign themselves to the presence of bats, ghosts, and witches, etc.  

Perhaps no one writes more profoundly in praise of shadows than Junichirō Tanizaki. He understands that the power and the beauty of the object - its allure - is tied precisely to that aspect of it which is forever concealed in darkness and which withdraws from sight (that is to say, its occult aspect).

Take, for example, the fairest and most seductive of all objects - woman - who is arguably never so lovely as she is when at her most spectral, like a phosphorescent jewel glowing softly in the night that loses its magic in the full light of day. In the erotic imagination of the Japanese male, woman is inseparable from darkness; cosmetically enhanced and concealed in the folds of her robe or gown; her raven black hair framing (and often hiding) her white face.       

This is not, typically, a Western aesthetic. For Westerners, beauty is that which shines forth, which radiates, which loves, like truth, to go naked and which can be perceived by the eye. There is, thus, something obscene about our theory of beauty in that it ultimately rests on indecent exposure (not least of sun-kissed female flesh).

And we really rather despise shadowy existence: our quest for enlightenment never ceases and we spare no effort to eradicate even the faintest trace of darkness. Indeed, as Jean Baudrillard pointed out, we would, if we could, leap over our own shadows into a world of pure lucidity and transparency in which to accomplish perfect self-actualization.

Thankfully, however, a being devoid of their shadow, of their mystery, of their object-allure, is no more than a mad fantasy. No matter how bright we make the lights, no matter how much we bare our flesh and reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings, we'll never transcend the night or escape the shadows.

Happy Halloween ...


See: Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, (Vintage, 2001).