What Is He Like, the “Japanese Dostoevsky”? About the XVIII Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society

Abstract

At the end of August 2023, the XVIII Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society (IDS), dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the novel Demons, was held at the Nagoya University of Foreign Studies (Japan). The symposium took place in Asia for the first time and found wide resonance in the academic world. Scholars from 17 different countries participated with papers at the forum, showing a variety of approaches to research Dostoevsky’s works and life and raising a wide range of research issues, such as: “Current questions of research in Dostoevsky’s studies,” “Demons in its time and 150 years later,” “Dostoevsky in the Arts (music, cinema, theater, painting)”. The organizers of the Symposium paid special attention to the perception of Dostoevsky in Asia and his influence on Asian culture and literature; a significant event of the Symposium was the round table “Dostoevsky and modern Japanese writers.” The article includes a review of the reports that revealed the image of a “Japanese Dostoevsky”: they were devoted to the analysis of translations of the writer’s works into Japanese, their intermedial transcriptions, new interpretations of Dostoevsky’s works by Japanese scholars representing different generations and academic schools. Attention is paid to the reports of Russian scholars, dedicated to current topics in Dostoevsky’s studies and new research methods to approach the writer’s work.

Keywords

• international dostoevsky society
• symposium
• nagoya
• japanese dostoevsky