Therefore space in traditional Japan was synonymous with the shadowy world that perpetually accompanied it. Nowhere was this more evident than in the manner in which the Japanese made their living places. The novelist Tanizaki Junichiro notes that, "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 the shadow we put together a house."⁶ This was true not only for the houses of the common people but also for the grand temples and palaces of traditional Japan--the first thing one noticed was a "parasol," a roof made of thatch or tile sweeping from high to low and beneath it a space engulfed in darkness and shadows. Even in the brightest hours of the day, one could not transcend the darkness of the space beneath those roofs that rendered the interior walls, columns, and appurtenances hardly visible to the eye. This was because the sunlight, blocked by the eaves, entered the room after being reflected off the ground and traveled in an upward direction. Thus light became less bright as it went further, which in this case meant higher. It was an interesting contrast to the spatial concepts of the Western cathedrals and palaces, where the roofs and openings were raised to soaring heights to let the sunlight express the grandeur and towering verticality of the space.

But then, it is also true that a vertical space can be completely transformed by the difference in natural light in the day and artificial lighting used at night. In the Hagia Sofia⁷ in Constantinople, for instance, during the day, light descends from openings around edges of the dome and from the windows high in the walls. The space is perceived in all its grandeur. At night, the spatial impression of the Hagia Sofia is quite different. The suspended lamp fittings from the high ceiling are brought into play, and since they hang only a few feet above the ground, they define a low space that is closed off by the darkness above. In traditional Japanese space, however, the tendency was never towards such a contrast in spatial impressions. The whole attempt was to perennially elucidate the gloomy world. Whether a space had a vertical interior, like the worship halls in temples and monasteries, or a horizontal interior, like a quintessential Japanese room, the space always promoted a low, horizontal feeling--the intricate wooden network making up the towering roof perpetually wrapped in darkness (Fig. 3, 4, 5, 6). During the day, natural light was made to diffuse through various ingenious means like washi ("rice paper") paneled shoji that were placed with the utmost sensitivity to generate the shadowy space. The soft, diffused light entering the room through the shoji could be said to be the quintessential traditional Japanese illumination characteristic, in contrast to the Western concept of glass, which admitted light directly. At night, the darkness of the room was broken by a silent beam of moonlight entering the space or other domestic lighting devices that were placed on the floor. This kind of low illumination complemented the traditional Japanese custom of sitting on the floor, and since tables and other appurtenances were also always low, lamps suited to the floor were ideal. In the Soan tea hut,⁸ window placement was calculated not only for ventilation and visual effects on the walls, but also to create just the right play of diffused light and shade when the tea ceremony⁹ was performed (Fig. 10). Some ancient tea houses had windows that could be propped open at different angles to vary the quality of seasonal light that abetted the interior mood. The Yuin tea house in Kyoto even had a hatch on its eaves to let in starlight for the same purpose. And though it may sound exaggerated, the intimate feeling elicited by this dimness was part of the narrow streets and alleys that made up the classical townscape.¹⁰ Pontocho, in the Gion Shinbashi district in Kyoto, is a good example of such a narrow traditional street, where the dim and soft light of the doorway lanterns, coupled with the narrow street dimension, gave rise to a dark and distinctively intimate urban space pervaded by shadowy gloom.