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______________________________________________DELIBERATE DUSK_________289 Deliberate Dusk: Darkness and the Experience of Japanese Space VINAYAK BHARNE Woodbury University If Modern illumination could represent the bril- Traditional building materials and appliances liance of the Sun, then traditional Japanese were being replaced with glittering Western illumination could be said to abet the tranquil- inventions - gold-flecked lacquer-ware was ity of the moon. For part of the beauty of tra- being rendered garish by electric light, and ditional Japanese space lay in that soft, sub- flood-lamps had turned the Kabuki into a dued light that engulfed it in ambiguity; that “world of sham”. He poured his lamentation dim shadowy world that complimented the into an essay ‘In Praise of Shadows3’ which, textures of the ‘tatami’ and ‘shoji’1. The West had it been written later might well have flooded their spaces with light, but the Japa- blasted the glitz of Ginza along with his list of nese shrouded their spaces in dark. The West the moribund. reveled with the colors of the Sun, but Japan contemplated the monochromes of dusk. The DARKNESS West had known times without electricity, gas or petroleum, yet from candle to oil-lamp to From ancient Shinto mythology stemmed the gas-light, the quest for a brighter light never concept of ‘Yami’ (darkness), a peculiar notion ceased. But in Japan, if light was scarce, it implying a mysterious feeling of something was scarce – they simply embraced that sur- hidden in space. Darkness believed to be the real realm where darkness and light was mu- abode of the ‘kami’ (spirit) was revered as tually undistinguishable. sacred space, and thus at a Shinto shrine one progressed from light into the darkness shut- Japanese illumination before the introduction ting out all worldly distractions to enter the of kerosene oil was of the most meager ‘kami’ world. Even today at the Ise shrine, the means. The feeble light emitted from tiny ‘Shin no mihashira hoken’ ritual (during which wicks, or the dim and unsteady flame of a the heart pillars are installed in the ground vegetable-wax candle was all the more feeble under the center of the ‘shodens’) in keeping when filtered through a paper lantern. It was with the ancient Shinto concept of conceal- something of a boon then, when kerosene oil ment, is held at night, and the ‘Sengyo’, Ise’s entered Japan among the many things most solemn and dignified of all rituals during brought in by the West2. Yet amidst this cul- which the ‘kami shintai’ is carried from the old tural exchange, the incandescent bulb was shoden to the new is celebrated at night in anything but innocuous for Japan at the turn total darkness, with only a few torches light- of the twentieth century. Within decades it ing the procession4. would virulently proliferate engulfing the an- cient Japanese nexus between light, darkness In his fourteenth century essays Tsure-Zure and shadows and the various esoteric rituals Gusa, when the Zen monk Yoshida Kenko em- that formed part of their daily life. phasized “Night is the best time also to go to worship at the Shinto and Buddhist temples, When Junichiro Tanizaki confronted this in the especially on those occasions when others do 1930s he knew he was witnessing an inunda- not go”, he was affirming this ancient rever- tion of Japanese traditions by Western ideas. ence for darkness and its idea of purification 290_______ FRESH AIR ______________________________________________________ translating into a dark path to the Japanese ing, but eulogizing the genius of Japanese ar- shrine. Thus the Zen ‘Roji’ - with trees care- chitecture that layer by layer, cut down the fully planted to create the impression of walk- glare of sunlight and brought it in as a sub- ing through a dark forest, with no lanterns dued gloom. hanging from branches and stone lamps placed on the ground to reinforce a dark Nowhere was this more evident than the man- above - was not just a path to the Tea Hut but ner in which the Japanese made their living a meticulously designed realm to elicit self- places. Susanoonomikoto, the brother of the purification5. Sun Goddess Amaterasu attributed as the first person in Japanese mythology to build a tem- Space the Japanese believed emerged from ple is said to have composed the song - “Many shadows. It was experienced as much through clouds appeared; and clouds covered my darkness as light; as much through emptiness house like many fences. Having my wife sur- as matter. It was ‘transient’ defined momen- rounded by the clouds making the fences. tarily by the specific activity for particular oc- Many many fences were made.” It is implicitly casion. It was less about reading size, geome- similar to what Tanizaki noted many centuries try and form (like the Western reading of later: “In making for ourselves a place to live, space) and more about the perceptual ambi- we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow guity of minimal light playing in a void. Like on the earth, and in the pale light of the the traditional ‘Noh’ theater where darkness shadow we put together a house.8” From sim- served as the backdrop to express the actor’s ple dwellings to grand temples the first act of emotions by changing the shadows on their building was the erection of the roof sup- masks, the Japanese room was like “an ink ported on wooden columns, the most con- wash painting, the paper-paneled shoji being spicuous architectural feature being this the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the dominant sweeping ‘parasol’ made of thatch alcove where it is darkest.”6 (Image 1) or tile, with a space beneath engulfed in gloom. Sunlight, blocked by the eaves, en- tered the room only after being reflected off the surrounding ‘engawa’ (verandah) and traveling in an upward direction became less bright as it filtered through the ‘washi’ of the shoji. Even from the brightest outdoors, one could not transcend the gloom of the Japa- nese interior rendering the walls, columns and appurtenances hardly visible to the eye. As such, contrary to the significance of light for the formal comprehension of Western ar- chitectural space, Japanese space with its shadows and gloom produced the ‘in-ei’ space – “the mystical, sensual world in which litera- ture and logic were viewed in a shadowy light” - this non-formal spatial understanding brought about through emotional notions that evolved through the Japanese mind. For in- stance, one of the great themes of Heian aes- thetics was the almost untranslatable concept of ‘mono-no-aware’ implying an emotional Image 1 - Dim, gloomy and monochromatic interior sensitivity to all things animate and inani- of a typical Japanese room. (photo – Asano Noboru) mate, unifying them with a sense of imper- GLOOM manence, and thereby expanding the concept to acquire an undercurrent of profound mel- “The little sunlight from the garden that man- ancholy within the subdued gloom of the age(d) to make its way beneath the eaves and room. through the corridors…..lost its power to illu- minate seem(ing) drained of the complexion With the advent of Zen, the notion of austerity of life.” wrote Tanizaki7. He was not lament- - where one had to accept what was given and ______________________________________________DELIBERATE DUSK_________291 evoke it subjectively - was heightened when boards were used as room dividers. through two moods of expression, ‘Sabi’ and With the addition of thick opaque paper these ‘Wabi’. ‘Wabi’ implied humility and an absti- boards developed into the ‘fusuma’ panels. nence from the fashions of society, to culti- According to Atsushi Ueda with the samurai vate within the presence of something of the houses of the Kamakura and Muromachi peri- highest value, transcending time and social ods liberating architecture from the hitherto status. Architecturally, the dark forest like Chinese influences, this paper began to get approach to the Tea Hut was significant to increasingly translucent and evolved into the prepare in the visitor a sense of progressing light ‘akara shoji’ with ‘washi’ (rice paper) solitude, a Wabi state of mind. ‘Sabi’ cele- stretched across a grid of wooden pieces. Nei- brated age and patina, referring to individual ther transparent nor opaque, this unique objects and environments with a rustic unpre- membrane took the light in, enveloped it and tentiousness or an archaic imperfection even- brought it in “like a soft surface of a first tually extending to the utmost forms of mini- snowfall.11” malism. The rusticity of the Tea Hut sug- gested Wabi-Sabi through the emulation of a The epitome of such diffused lighting was the dark, rustic hermit’s hut deep in the moun- ‘Soan’ (Tea Hut) that housed the Tea Cere- tains. mony. Here window placement was calculated not only for ventilation and visual effects on Thus from the time he came to serve as tea the walls, but also to create just the right con- master to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Sen no Rikyu’s templative ambience when the ritual was per- (1522-91) distaste for garish color achieved formed. Sen no Rikyu and his school used widespread following along with his verses fusuma in the tea- room papered in a ‘shoji’- advocating ‘wabi’ austerity. Through his in- like manner called ‘Fukuro-bari’ but with white struction, the color gray enjoyed great popu- paper pasted on both sides instead of one. “A larity and this “ash-dyed neutral hue came to tea-room should neither be too bright nor too be known as ‘Rikyu gray’. In the latter part of dark inside. A room that is too bright is not the Edo period, gray was much favored by suitable for concentration, for the mind is aesthetes, their tastes ranging from silver, likely to be disturbed, but on the other hand if indigo, scarlet-tinged, dove and plain grays, it is not lit enough a sense of gloom and mel- thereby permitting subtle variations in color ancholy may be felt, which is worse.

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