Conobbi Kato Sensei (ché io lo chiamavo Maestro e così per me è rimasto) nei miei primi anni universitari a Venezia ed era un essere piccolo, tenero e curiosissimo, che faceva domande su cose che allora ti sembravano buffe davvero. Type, because the chimneys of Venice had that aspect and because there were so constructed. He was curious about everything about you, about your life, why he believed in communism. What he had read, how much and when you ask for everything. And then he thought. In front of the Giudecca Zattere, sitting at the bar where I had taken to eating the gianduiotto walking (a Gianduja gelato with whipped cream, a very good stuff that you only ate there and liked him very much, so much so that it became then a sort of appointment before the gianduiotto afternoon to discuss the destinies of the world, and they did a thousand hypotheses about possible futures), it was I who asked him why he had become a Communist (or at least that which was then thought to be communist, a company does not want to split classes, nations, ethnic groups. These days it would be the correct definition of libertarian left). Rise relax and told me that when he was young he liked a lot to go alone to the movies. He was watching a movie when he joined a band of nationalist soldiers who had grabbed a young man sitting a few rows from him, took him, carried this out while screaming abunaiabunai (aiutoaiuto) and badly beaten. The screams had stopped in a few seconds. The spectators remained in the room had shrunk on the chairs and then he, with extraordinary recklessness of youth, had got up and walked out to see if abunaiabunai was still alive. A mass of blood lay on the ground and discovered that he was a dissident writer who became his friend. At the beginning of World War II, there in front of the body sbrandellato, Sensei clearly understood that he was Japanese and lived in a nationalist-imperialist regime. He was proud of being Japanese, but could not share anything of his personal convictions with a regime of violence, racism, imperialism and the lack of freedom was a fine show. He was a convinced pacifist and fought all his life so that others, Japanese and not understand that the wars with nothing advanced, pacifist and he remained until the end. When he graduated in Medicine becoming a hematologist, he went to Hiroshima to treat a range of diseases then unknown to science, due to radiation. He was so impressed and in awe of having a painful crisis of conscience, so much that he changed jobs, so that the world must know that war and human stupidity should not move forward. In the postwar years became one of the leading Japanese scholars, close friend of great writers and poets, himself a writer and poet. He knew a number of languages \u200b\u200band all spoke very well. He had an impressive culture of the West is that of the East, a huge well of knowledge. One
when young do not know when it is touched by history (that stuff with a capital S), therefore only with time I realized how important this man and what I have been fortunate to know him and have him as a dear friend, who advised, gave tips on the authors, said things were unthinkable in the days (like: author Mishima translated and adored by crowds of "Italian", Kato Sensei I said forget it, says not so good, we say that he writes in an almost epic rhetoric distilled, but writes a mountain of crap). His History of Japanese literature is the best popular book written about Japan since time immemorial and which nippologi arrays are formed. He stayed in Venice for a year as visiting professor and teach us WELL. He was the only teacher who taught me poetry. To say. And teachers do not find them around like that. Difficult. He said that Italy (which he and his girlfriend Midori had traveled far and wide) was an ancient nation, full of history, filled with sediments human, that there was less wild and natural place in the Bel Paese and yes that was a really nice country and that we Italians so refractory to patriotism in truth we were so disconcerting ONLY nationalists on the food. One feature that he had found overwhelming and unique. I did the Italians believed that the original confidence of political animals in a nutshell. In the sense that they had written in their DNA a sense of compromise and mediation dellla. I told him that in fact we extremely stable even though a government dancer. And we discussed how Italy and Japan in some respects are similar: a sense of the clan, family, food, the precarious fate of innate fatalism, the earthquake, the sublime irony and tragedy is imminent.
The last time we saw was again in Venice in the 90s. He had aged a lot, but always had the intellectual clarity and precision, its peculiar feature, so that we ended up talking about politics. We told him and we said of the latest films and books read, what would happen after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We talked about the end of communism. But we said that the best utopias never die. Evolve into another. Then yesterday on this site here I accidentally discovered that my Sensei died.
The last time we saw was again in Venice in the 90s. He had aged a lot, but always had the intellectual clarity and precision, its peculiar feature, so that we ended up talking about politics. We told him and we said of the latest films and books read, what would happen after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We talked about the end of communism. But we said that the best utopias never die. Evolve into another. Then yesterday on this site here I accidentally discovered that my Sensei died.
weep and mourn his profound culture of the past and future-oriented intelligence, his conscience and his other highly sensitive human capacity to love and be loved, because only now I understand how difficult it is to have good teachers and walk with history. And everything he taught me and thousands of others like me certainly his passage on this earth was not in vain: that we have cherished every day and learn how deeply he is right. Thanks
Sensei you can eat one thousand gianduiotti beyond your other one thousand lives.
ps I thank Giulio which I have been editing the post jam-packed with typos
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