Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

It was a pretty famous...

I think it's from this author named Tanizaki.

I forgot to write down what time period it was.

But it was a pretty popular story at the time.

It's a thin book.

And it's written by Junichiro Tanizaki, who was a preeminent Japanese novelist.

In Praise of Shadows is not a novel.

What do you call it? Nonfiction.

So really, the question is, for your own spirituality, how do you behave knowing that this is the final moment.

It's gonna happen to us all sooner or later, right? So what do we do with our lives while we wait for that inevitability? I'm reading a novel by Tanizaki, who's an incredible Japanese writer.

I've fallen in love with his work.

And the last book he wrote is called Diary of a Mad Old Man.

So then it became an opener of, like, those beautiful books by, you know, like, uh, in the praise of, of course, uh, literature In the Praise of Shadows-

Yeah, by Tanizaki

... by Tanizaki.

Yeah.

But also, you know, Victor Stoichita, The History of Shadows, or Gombrich has written books about shadows, so I can continue on that.

Well, speaking since you spoke of books, I was at the library yesterday and I saw this book which had an interesting cover.

So I grabbed it by Junichiro Tanizaki called Devils in the Daylight.

I started reading it.

It was pretty interesting.

He's a Hong Kong-born American director, and he's at the Toronto International Film Festival with a film he shot in Japan with Lily Franke.

This year? Yep.

And it's based on a Junichiro Tanizaki short story.

I see.