Italo Calvino (1923-85) travelled to Japan in the autumn of 1976. Thereafter, his work shows an increasing fascination with Japanese literature and Zen Buddhism, even as he adds Japanese works to the bookshelves of his library in Rome. This is the first study to restore to the author's writing the dynamics of East-West dialogues, addressing Japanese gardens and temples, but also literary and artistic expressions, as the spaces through which Calvino developed a landmark feature of his distinctive cultural ecology: a renewed awareness of the interdependency between human and other-than-human forms of life and communication.
Claudia Dellacasa is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Glasgow.