Ken Gelder

He wrote about characters who were perverse or deranged in some way.

usually sexually perverse and so on.

So he wrote gothic Japanese stories of one kind or another.

But the book I read on the weekend is a non-fiction book by Tanizaki called In Praise of Shadows, first published in 1933, and not translated into English until 1977.

And this is a wonderful, a wonderful book.

It's about the Japanese house and

If we're thinking about self-isolating, this is a beautiful book to read because it is all about how to live in your house.

He became kind of anti-Western.

And one of his points is that the West lights up everything.

There are electric lights everywhere.

So everything is so bright and dazzling in the West.

But the Japanese house should be a place of shadows.

And you should be able to see shadows everywhere.

playing with each other and different kinds of shadows producing different kinds of forms.

And I was just thinking actually about, you know, talking about this book, but of course, you know, the, the, all of the panic buying in Australia where people are by, and of course around the world where people are buying toilet rolls and stocking up their toilets.

Tanizaki has a beautiful passage on the, on the Japanese toilet, which is the Japanese toilet for him in a Japanese house and,

in a dimly lit Japanese house is the most accommodating room in the house.

It should be the quietest room and the cleanest room.

The obligation to keep it clean is stronger than in any other room.

And you should be able to go into your toilet and sit there for hours on end and meditate and muse and be in touch really with the quietness of the world.