There is an old lyric that says “the brushwood we gather and tie it together, it makes a hat. Pull it apart, a field once again.” Such is a way of thinking in old Japan, one finds beauty not in the substance itself, but in the weave of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates….A noctilucent jewel which exudes its glow and color in the dark, and loses its beauty in the light of day. Were it not for shadows there would be no beauty.

Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows