Giuliana Stramigioli

Giuliana Stramigioli
Giuliana Stramigioli in the 1980s.
Born	Rome, Italy
Citizenship	Italian

Giuliana Stramigioli (Italian: [dʒuˈlja:na stramiˈdʒjɔ:li]; Rome, 8 August 1914 – Rome, 25 July 1988) was an Italian business woman, university professor and Japanologist.

Biography

After graduating at the University of Rome in 1936 under the guidance of Giuseppe Tucci, Stramigioli arrived in Japan as an exchange student specialising at Kyoto University in the Japanese Language and History of the Art of Buddhism.

Having returned to her homeland after two years, she started teaching at the University of Naples, but went again to Japan to take up a scholarship offered by the Kokusai bunka shinkōkai (today Japan Foundation).

Between 1936 and 1940, she worked as a free-lance journalist, collaborating with Italian newspapers such as Gazzetta del Popolo and il Giornale d'Italia while writing an account of her travels to Korea, and a reportage about North Japan and the Ainu people. During World War II Stramigioli served at the Italian Embassy in Japan and then at the Italian Institute of Culture.

At the end of the conflict, she started teaching Italian at Tokyo University of Foreign Languages. In 1948 she founded her firm, Italifilm, devoted to the importation of Italian movies into Japan. Through her activities, movie fans there came to know Italian Neorealism with works like Rome, open city, Bicycle Thieves, Paisan, and others.^[1]

Moreover, it is Stramiglioli who recommended Kurosawa Akira's ‘Rashomon’ (1951) to the Venice Film Festival, where the movie was awarded with the Golden Lion prize. In his autobiography, Kurosawa wrote:

I arrived home depressed, with barely enough strength to slide open the door to the entry. Suddenly my wife came bounding out. “Congratulations!” I was unwittingly indignant: “For what?” “Rashomon has the Grand Prix.” Rashomon had won the Grand Prix at the Venice International Film Festival, and I was spared from having to eat cold rice. Once again an angel had appeared out of nowhere. I did not even know that Rashomon had been submitted to the Venice Film Festival. The Japan representative to Italiafilm, Giuliana Stramigioli, had seen it and recommended it to Venice. It was like pouring water into the sleeping ears of the Japanese film industry. Later Rashomon won the American Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

^[2]

Stramigioli returned home permanently in 1965, where she kept the Professorship of Japanese Language and Literature at "La Sapienza" University of Rome until 1985.

She was, with Fosco Maraini among others, a founding member of the AISTUGIA - the Italian Association for the Japanese Studies.^[3]

During her first stay in Japan,(possibly Kyōto) 1937

Honours

• 1982 Kunsantō hōkanshō, The Order of the Precious Crown, Butterfly (Japan)
• 1988 Prize Okano (Japan)

Selected works

• Scuole mistiche e misteriosofiche in India, Asiatica, n. 1, 1936, pp. 16–21.
• Lo spirito dell'arte orientale, Asiatica, n. 2, 1936, pp. 70–80.
• Il paesaggio e la natura nell'arte dell'Estremo Orente, Asiatica, n. 3, 1936, pp. 111–117.
• L'arte sino-siberiana, Asiatica, n. 3, 1936, pp. 140–144.
• Spirito e forme del giardino orientale, Asiatica, n. 4, 1936, pp. 181–188.
• Cenno storico sulla pittura cinese, Asiatica, n. 5-6, 1936, pp. 252–258.
• La vita dell'antico Giappone nei diari di alcune dame di corte, Asiatica, n. 3, 1937, pp. 139–146.
• Sciotoku, l'educatore dell'anima giapponese, Nuova Antologia, a. 72, fasc. 1576, 1937, pp. 180–187.
• Giappone, Milano, Garzanti, 1940
• Hideyoshi's Expansionist Policy on the Asiatic Mainland, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 3ª serie, vol. III, Tokyo, 1954, pp. 74–116.
• Hōgen monogatari, traduzione, I parte, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. XLI, fasc. III, Roma, 1966, pp. 207–271.

II parte, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. XLII, fasc. II, Roma, 1967, pp. 121–183. III parte, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. XLII, fasc. IV, Roma, 1967, pp. 407–453.

• A Few Remarks on the Masakadoki, Chronicle of Taira no Masakado, Studies on Japanese Culture, vol. I, Tokyo, P.E.N. Club, 1973, pp. 129–133.
• Preliminary Notes on Masakadoki and the Taira no Masakado Story, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. XXVIII, n. 3, Tokyo, 1973, pp. 261–293. JSTOR 2383784
• Masakadoki to Taira no Masakado no jojutsu ni tsuite no kenkyū josetsu, Koten isan, n. 26, 5, 1975, pp. 1–30.
• Heiji monogatari, I parte, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. XLIX, fasc. III-IV, Roma, 1975, pp. 287–338.

II e III parte, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. XI, fasc. II, Roma, 1977, pp. 205–279.

• Masakadoki ni kansuru ni san no mondai teiki", Bungaku, vol. 47-1, Tokyo, 1979, pp. 77–84.http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40003385158/
• Masakadoki (Traduzione), Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. LIII, fasc. III-IV, Roma, 1979, pp. 1–69.
• items: Giappone (letteratura), pp. 65–67, Giappone (archeologia), pp. 67–68 Kawabata, pp. 282–285, Mishima, pp. 483–484, Tange Kenzo, p. 576, Tanizaki, p. 576 in Enciclopedia Italiana, IV appendice, anni 1961-1978, Roma, Treccani, 1978-1981
• items: Shōmonki, Taira no Masakado, in Encyclopedia of Japan, Tokyo, Kodansha, 1983 vol. 7, pp. 165 and 301.

References