Matías Ariel Chiappe Ippolito
translated by Andrea Rosenberg

日々旅にして旅を栖とす。
（松尾芭蕉）

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
–Matsuo Bashō, tr. Sam Hamill

I’d been told I should get in touch with Hideki, whom everybody calls “the sensei.” I thought I was prepared for my visit to the city of Nikkō—I’d asked a number of people and looked at a bunch of websites; I’d even acquired a tourism pamphlet about Tochigi Prefecture that I hadn’t gotten a chance to read yet. I knew about the surrounding area: Kegon Falls, the Shinkyo Bridge, Mount Nantai. I knew that the main attraction was the Rinnoji Temple and the shrines of Futarasan and Toshogu, the latter of which houses the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun of the Edo period. I knew I was about to … Read More »

Mat Chiappe
translated by Anna Hardin

Mario Bellatin once said to me: “I don’t want to go to Japan.” I don’t know if we went on talking about something else or what happened, but I never got a better explanation. And so, when I was presented with the opportunity to interview him specifically about the relationship between lo japonés and his literature, I decided the most important thing for me was a response to that statement. I prepared a long list of other questions (as you’ll see, all useless), dressed as seriously as I could, stowed my computer in my backpack, and took the metro to his house. I rang the doorbell and waited until, from the other end of a long hallway, the author, filmmaker, lecturer, and translator appeared.

“Hello, Mat,” he said, holding back his dogs, “come … Read More »