The Japanese are sometimes said to suffer from ‘outsider person shock’ (gaijin shokku) when travelling abroad. Recently in London we had a lodger from Hiroshima who wanted to practise his karate routines in our back garden. Concerned to see him chopping at our apple tree in full combat gear, a metropolitan police helicopter hovered in close to take a look. Afterwards Mr Kinoto admitted to me that he was lost in London amid alien signs and habits. ‘The object of my time in England is not sightseeing’, he told me ruefully, ‘but home-staying.’
I thought of the Japanese lodger while reading Italo Calvino’s wonderful essays, Collection of Sand, published in Italy in 1984, a year before Calvino died at the age of only 62. Some nine of the 38 essays are devoted to Japan, a country that entranced as much as it mystified Calvino.
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