"In Praise of Shadows" is a very eloquent essay on Tanizaki's (1886-1965) perception—one of Japan's greatest writers—of beauty, that of Japanese and by extension Eastern aesthetics in the arts and primarily in everyday life. He states from the outset that the nature of this beauty is that of shadows and mistiness, that its condition of birth and existence is darkness and ambiguity, a beauty that is such because it is hidden, faint, half-seen as if in a dream, contrary to the object of Western beauty which must be polished and fully illuminated before being presented to view because only then will it be revealed in all its glory.

The aesthetic perception of beauty in Japanese arts and daily practices has been glorified and summarized in value-words such as sabi, which means serenity, moderation, aesthetic aging, the patina of time, the beauty of rust. Like wabi, which is serene subtlety, restrained taste, an elegant loneliness and sadness. Values that go hand in hand with shadow and are hostile to anything that shines and is ostentatious. Beauty is cold, dark, and discreet.

Praise and admiration of the twilight, the smoky and hazy patina that objects acquire over time.

An essay in the Japanese sense of the term zuihitsu, meaning mixed writings, a heterogeneous pen without a priori restrictions of the genre, but which constitutes a distinct literary genre, another mixed genre of prose that Japanese writers have loved since much earlier times, an essay without the theoretical rigor that the term implies in the West. Free and heterogeneous ideas and comparisons, poetry and everyday life, paradoxes along with the greatest rationalizations of the aesthetic phenomenon.

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

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