Review article
https://doi.org/10.32728/tab.16.2019.3
Croatian Japanologist Vladimir Devidé
Iva Lakić Parać
Abstract
Croatian Japanology owes much to academician and professor Vladimir Devidé. Although he was a mathematician by profession, his name in Croatia is inevitably associated to Japan and Japanese culture. Devidé was tireless in his promotion of Japan in Croatia, holding more than 200 public lectures on Japan and its culture. He also wrote some of the first books on Japanology in Croatian, such as the first and, for now, only anthology of Japanese literature (From Japanese Literature, 1985). The choice of literary works listed in his anthology reflects the mainstream in diachronic representations of the most important authors in Japanese cultural and literature history. It also reflects, however, the kind of interest in Japan which was rather popular in the “western” world of the sixties and the seventies of the past century. In this sense, Devidé is a witness of his time, he writes and describes Japan in a way similar to some of the most popular Japanologists of the aforementioned decades. My aim is to present part of Devidé’s legacy in the context of changing trends in Japanese studies in past few decades.
Keywords
Devidé; Japanology; Japanese literature; haiku; orientalism
Hrčak ID:
228765
URI
Publication date:
29.11.2019.
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