In Praise of Shadow

In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of shadow we put together a house. There are of course roofs on Western house too, but they are less to keep off the sun than to keep off the wind and the dew; even from without it is apparent that they are built to create as few shadows as possible. If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visitor as possible so allow the sunlight to penetrate directly beneath the eaves. There are no doubts all sorts of reasons-climate, building materials-for the deep Japanese eaves. The fact that we did not use
glass, concrete, and bricks, for instance, made a low roof necessary to keep off the driving wind and rain. The quality that we call beauty,however, must always grow form the realities of life, and our ancestor,forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.