Luca CAPPONCELLI
Luca Capponcelli is Associate Professor of Japanese Language and Literature at the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania. He received his Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and holds the JLPT N1 certification. His research focuses on modern and contemporary Japanese literature, with particular attention to modern poetry, transformations of subjectivity, and representations of the body, identity, and war trauma. He has published monographs, scholarly articles, book chapters, and translations of modern and contemporary Japanese authors. His main research interests include Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku, Hagiwara Sakutarō, Kajii Motojirō, Satō Haruo, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, and Abe Kōbō.
Luca Capponcelli teaches Japanese language and literature at the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania. His research lies in the field of modern and contemporary Japanese literature, with particular attention to the historical and cultural dynamics that accompanied the transformation of poetic genres between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
His publications include contributions to edited volumes, scholarly articles, and translations. His work addresses themes such as the construction of Japanese literary modernity, the relationship between poetic language and cultural identity, and the evolution of aesthetic canons. In the field of modern poetry, he has devoted studies to individual authors and literary currents, focusing on the evolution of the poetic imagination through transformations in language and subjectivity: from the tension between tradition and innovation in Yosano Akiko’s tanka, to Ishikawa Takuboku’s expressive crisis, and finally to the radical reformulation of poetic language in Hagiwara Sakutarō. Among his most significant works are the translation of Midaregami (2017), the publication, together with Maria Chiara Migliore, of Takuboku’s Diario in caratteri latini (2020), and the Japanese-language monograph Nihon kindaishi no hatten katei (A Study of the Development of Modern Japanese Poetry, 2018).
He has also translated short stories by modernist authors such as Kajii Motojirō and Satō Haruo, with particular attention to themes of the body, perception, and sensory alteration, and has published studies on war trauma. More recently, his work has also extended to contemporary fiction: he translated two volumes by the writer Uehashi Nahoko, Kokun, a fantasy story with a strong environmentalist message. The first volume was published in 2024, while the second is scheduled for May 2026.
The central thread running through his research is the analysis of Japanese modernity as a process that simultaneously affects poetic language, the body, and identity, bringing aesthetic transformations into dialogue with historical and cultural tensions.
Research projects
• a.y. 2024-25-present: Piaceri Diris research project. Disobbedienti, ribelli sovversive nelle letterature tra Oriente e Occidente dalla fine dell’Ottocento a oggi, P.I. Stefania Arcara.
• PRIN 2022. 1920-2020: Fantasmagorie di guerra nell'esperienza letteraria contemporanea. Member of the University of Catania Research Unit: Alterazioni del trauma bellico nella contemporaneità occidentale e orientale.
• a.y. 2021-2022: Piaceri Atlas research project. “Ripensare immaginari orientali-occidentali. Linguaggio, corpo, mente.”, P.I. Francesca Vigo, member of Hub 2.
• a.y. 2021-2022, 2022-2023: PIACERI line 3, Starting Grant project: “Rappresentazioni del corpo nell’immaginario giapponese: doppelgänger e identità cibernetiche”.
• From a.y. 2014-2015 to 2017-2018: member of the FIR research group, research funding of the University of Catania, project Corpi plurali, storie di genere, P.I. Anita Fabiani. Research on the relationship between biopolitics, gender identities and modern Japanese literature, with particular reference to the literary and essayistic production of Yosano Akiko.
• a.y. 2012-2013: Head of the research project for the allocation of the Researchers Fund at the SDS of Foreign Languages and Literatures of Ragusa, University of Catania. Rectoral decree of 4 October 2012, from 01/11/2012 to 31/10/2013 - 12 months. Project title: Yosano Akiko. Tradizione e innovazione dei canoni estetici nella poesia giapponese moderna.
• From 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011: admission as Special Research Student (tokubetsu kenyūsei) to the seminars Jōdai Nihon bungaku I, II, chaired by Prof. Tatsumi Masaaki, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, Faculty of Letters, Department of Japanese Literature.