This conference is made possible through the generous support of The Toshiba International Foundation. The event is part of the celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and Italy.

The Conference will deal with the transmission of Japanese culture (literature, pop culture, art, architecture, design, music, food) in Italy since the Japan boom of the 1980s through a comparative, multidisciplinary and inter sectorial approach. It will be focussed on the idea that, rather than producing a secondary or subservient version of the original source, translation is a process which involves the creation of a series of new originalities. Indeed, while translation connotes a movement from one context to another, the Conference aims at rethinking the transmission of Japanese culture in Italy as a transcultural process, where translational transfer takes place between cultures that are already ‘contaminated’ in themselves; releases itself from the concept of equivalence; domesticates foreign texts, images and cultural forms; and results in the formation of new cultural orientations, practises, ideas and identities.