It is not long into Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, his seminal essay on the nature of Japanese aesthetics, that the Western toilet rears its ugly head. Tanizaki’s issue with the toilet starts with its porcelain brightness, which intends to confer cleanliness but instead draws attention to the imperfections of human corporeality. “What need is there to remind us so forcefully of our own bodies?” he asks in despair. Japan’s architects by contrast made the bathroom into a space of contemplation and engagement with nature, utilising finely-grained woods to create a pleasantly dim effect. The example illuminates Tanizaki’s essential argument, and the point of the book: it is in shadows, not brightness, that true beauty is expressed. The elegance of lacquerware bowls, beige papyrus shoji screens, the earthy cloudiness of yōkan candy – restraint transforms the potentially garish into something worthy of poetry.

This argument – that in the post-Meiji Restoration rush to modernise Japanese society, the aesthetic possibilities of living in relation with nature have been usurped by a cold, mechanical pragmatism – forms the crux of In Praise of Shadows, recently reprinted with a foreword by the architect Kengo Kuma. In his practice, Kuma has built upon the nearly-century-old ideas laid out in Tanizaki’s essay, guided by the integration of buildings with their surroundings. As he told TANK, “Architecture has been discussed as something detached from nature, probably because architecture was small and few in relation to nature up to a point. Now the situation is completely the opposite. Nature was pushed aside and exists only in the gaps between artificially created architecture and built environments, while objecthood has come to dominate nature. It has to be changed. Architecture should not be created to confront or intimidate nature – it should be a bridge between humans and nature.”

A recurring frustration of Tanizaki’s essay is the very difficulty, of marrying modern technological standards with the idioms of Japanese architecture. In his attempt to create a house according to both modern and traditional methods, Tanizaki reinforces a delicate paper shoji door with a glass frontage, his nod to a contemporary fashion for security and solidity. But the move proves both expensive and ruinous to the intended naturalistic effect. This missing synthesis is something Kuma seeks to achieve in his own buildings. “The act of combining is an integral part of my architecture,” he says. “The idea is to create a building from small components, just like a bird building up a nest. The concept of assembling is important because it is a metaphor in that it allows me to ‘show’ the possibility of creating a large structure that can be disassembled and returned to nature at any time, rather than using a block of concrete that cannot be controlled by a single person.”

In Praise of Shadows is not a nationalist tract on the supremacy of Japanese culture, nor is Tanizaki necessarily opposed to technological intervention. The essay is closer to an elegy, mourning the destruction of delicacy brought about by the forces of modernity. The titular “praise of shadows” describes the promise of darkness as a place of safety and possibility, yet under the glare of the LED bulb, its radius has drawn ever closer in our lives. Yet in Kuma’s Suntory Museum of Art, or his Japan National Stadium, one witnesses a fusion of Japanese mono no aware philosophy, the understanding of life’s essential transience, with Western priorities of objecthood. A sense of place is recovered through air, light, ambiguity and transparency, and modern convenience makes pleasant company with Japanese refinement. In the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, whose impact was dramatically worsened by short-sighted building practices, Kuma’s practice suggests would do well to work alongside the natural world. “The 3/11 disaster made us realise that human beings are weak, tiny, and only vulnerable in the face of nature, whoever you are.” Kuma says. “I believe that architects have the power to unite nature and artefacts in harmony. I believe in this possibility.” .