"In Praise of Shadows" is a very eloquent exposition of Tanizaki's (1886-1965) perception - one of Japan's greatest writers - of beauty, specifically Japanese and Eastern aesthetics in arts and everyday life. It declares from the beginning that the essence of this beauty lies in shadows and haziness, that its birth and existence are in darkness and ambiguity, a beauty that is such because it is hidden and dim, half-seen like in a dream, unlike the object of Western beauty that must be fully polished and illuminated before being presented, in order to reveal its full glory.

The aesthetic perception of beauty in Japanese arts and everyday practices has been glorified and summarized in words-values such as sabi, which means sobriety, moderation, aesthetic aging, the patina of time, the beauty of rust. Like wabi, which is serene delicacy, restrained taste, a loneliness and a melancholy that are aesthetically pleasing. Values that go hand in hand with shadows and oppose anything that shines and shows off. Beauty is cold, dark, and discreet.

It is an ode and admiration for the semi-darkness, the smoked and hazy patina that objects acquire over time.

An essay with the Japanese concept of zuihitsu, which means mixed writings, a heterogeneous and unrestricted pen, but still a distinct literary genre, another mixed genre of prose that Japanese writers from much earlier times love so much, an essay without the theoretical rigor that the term implies in the West. Free and diverse ideas and comparisons, poetry and everyday life, paradoxes, and along with them, the greatest generalizations of the aesthetic phenomenon.

"In Praise of Shadows" was written in 1933 when Tanizaki had already completed his turn towards aesthetics and the traditional values of Japanese culture, and it is precisely an essay on this aesthetics and the abyss that separates it from that of the West.

The edition is accompanied by 12 color and black-and-white photographs.