“We find beauty not in the thing itself, but in the patterns of shadows, light, and darkness that one thing creates against another… If it weren’t for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Tanizaki claims in his essay "In Praise of Shadows." This book is a true poetic hymn to Japanese aesthetics. Tanizaki teaches us to see beauty in small things: in dulled metal, unglazed ceramics—reminding us that too much brightness and color can hide what’s most important from us.