Giorgio Amitrano


Giorgio Amitrano is an Italian Japanologist, translator and essayist, specializing in Japanese language and literature.

Life and career

Amitrano grew up in Naples, graduating from the University of Naples "L'Orientale"; his professors included, Luigi Polese Remaggi and Namkhai Norbu. He won a scholarship to Tokyo in 1984. The following year he moved to Osaka, where he stayed until 1989, also teaching at Osaka University.
He currently is full professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies at L'Orientale. He also presided the Faculty of Political Science of the same university, where he taught Language and Culture of Japan. In 2012, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nominated him head of the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo for a five-year term.
He is the translator to Italian of the works of Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami, as well as having translated some of the works of Yasunari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue. His translations earned him the Alcantara Prize in 1999, the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2001, the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2008, and the in 2012. In 2020, he was awarded membership of the Order of the Rising Sun.
Amitrano is deputy editor of the journal Poetica; since 2004, he has written in the monthly magazine on literary and figurative arts, and he also collaborates to a number of Italian newspapers and cultural publications: Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, Il manifesto, Alias, L'Indice dei libri del mese and Nuovi Argomenti.
As a main author, the Italian School of [East Asian Studies] published his volume The New Japanese Novel: Popular Culture and Literary Tradition in the Work of Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana and Feltrinelli Il mondo di Banana Yoshimoto. In 2007, he wrote the introduction to I miei cani by artist. In 2018, he published with DeA Planeta Libri il Giappone tra pop e sublime, where he analyzes present-day Japan between tradition and modernity.

Translations

Essays

The New Japanese Novel: Popular Culture and Literary Tradition in the Work of Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana, Italian School of East Asian Studies, 1996
  • Il mondo di Banana Yoshimoto, Feltrinelli, 1999
  • , Misuzu Shobō, 2007
  • il Giappone tra pop e sublime, DeA Planeta Libri, 2018

Filmography