This volume brings together the papers presented at the international symposium Rethinking Nature in Contemporary Japan: Facing the Crisis held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in March 2015, as the last of a three-years research project on post-Fukushima Japan funded by the Japan Foundation. The book focuses on Religion and Thought, Fine Arts, Music, Cinema, Animation and Performing Arts (Theatre and Dance), from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This paper traces the history of Japanese Studies in Ca’ Foscari University from the foundation of the Course in Oriental Studies in 1965. Furthermore, the paper outlines the state of the research in Japanese Studies describing profiles, the scientific production, methods and lines of research of the professors, researchers and scholars in Ca’ Foscari University. The range of Japanese studies is based on a long standing tradition and includes Japanese Language, Literature, Philology and Linguistic, History and Institutions, Economics, Society, Politic and International Relations, Religion, Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology, Figurative and Performing Arts, Fine Arts, Theatre, Film and Visual Culture, etc.

This volume follows the International Festival Japan Contemporary Arts in Venice The Aesthetics of Emptiness, organised between 21 and 24 February 2022 by Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory in Venice, the Department of Asian and North African Studies of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Venice Academy of Fine Arts (institutions united in the Study in Venice project). During the Festival, musical performances, concerts, workshops, meetings with Japanese artists, and conferences led participants to immerse themselves in Japanese arts and culture. The structure of the volume is designed to allow the reader to relive these experiences, also through multimedia content, and to explore some of the themes that emerged. The first section is dedicated to the events curated by Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory and Venice Academy of Fine Arts, while the second brings together some of the contributions presented during the conference organised by the Department of Asian and North African Studies. The various essays revolve around the themes of sound, silence, emptiness, fullness, presence, and absence, and are dedicated to the memory of Bonaventura Ruperti.

In 1995, on the thirtieth anniversary of Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s death, Adriana Boscaro organized an international conference in Venice that had an unusally lasting effect on the study of this major Japanese novelist. Thanks to Boscaro’s energetic commitment, Venice became a center for Tanizaki studies that produced two volumes of conference proceedings now considered foundational for all scholarly works on Tanizaki. In the years before and after the Venice Conference, Boscaro and her students published an abundance of works on Tanizaki and translations of his writings, contributing to his literary success in Italy and internationally. The Grand Old Man and the Great Tradition honors Boscaro’s work by collecting nine essays on Tanizaki’s position in relation to the “great tradition” of Japanese classical literature. To open the collection, Edward Seidensticker contributes a provocative essay on literary styles and the task of translating Genji into a modern language. Gaye Rowley and Ibuki Kazuko also consider Tanizaki’s Genji translations, from a completely different point of view, documenting the author’s three separate translation efforts. Aileen Gatten turns to the influence of Heian narrative methods on Tanizaki’s fiction, arguing that his classicism, far from being superficial, “reflects a deep sensitivity to Heian narrative.” Tzevetana Kristeva holds a different perspective on Tanizaki’s classicism, singling out specific aspects of Tanizaki’s eroticism as the basis of comparison. The next two essays emphasize Tanizaki’s experimental engagement with the classical literary genres—Amy V. Heinrich treats the understudied poetry, and Bonaventura Ruperti considers a 1933 essay on performance arts. Taking up cinema, Roberta Novelli focuses on the novel Manji, exploring how it was recast for the screen by Masumura Yasuzo. The volume concludes with two contributions interpreting Tanizaki’s works in the light of Western and Meiji literary traditions: Paul McCarthy considers Nabokovas a point of comparison, and Jacqueline Pigeot conducts a groundbreaking comparison with a novel by Natsume Soseki.

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