La ‘Divina Commedia’ in Giappone. Esempi di intertestualità dantesca nella letteratura moderna e contemporanea

Dante’s Divine Comedy was introduced in Japan in the second
half of the 19th century by the novelist Mori Ōgai (1862-1922) who coined the word Shinkyoku to designate the poem. After that, many Japanese intellectuals, English scholars in particular, began to read the poem through its English translations. The first complete translation of
the poem into Japanese was published in the second decade of the 20th century thanks to Yamakawa Heizaburō (1876-1947). Since then, the interest in the poem, especially in Inferno, has grown to such an extent that we find numerous examples of Dante’s intertextuality in modern and contemporary Japanese literature.