We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Professor Silvio Vita, a specialist in the religious, cultural and intellectual history of Japan, who died suddenly in Kyoto on the 18th of June at the age of 68, following a long illness that he faced with lucidity and courage, never giving up hope. After studying in Rome at the classical grammar school, where he acquired a taste for the Greco-Latin humanities, in which he had obtained his first degree at the University of Naples, Silvio Vita undertook a course in Chinese and Japanese at the Istituto Universitario Orientale of the same university, extended by periods of study at Kyōto University and Princeton University.
He was director of the Italian School of East Asian Studies from 2001 to 2005, then from 2008 to 2012, and finally its scientific coordinator. In this capacity, he has worked closely and effectively for over twenty years with the Centre of the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Kyoto, in particular in the organisation of conferences - including the monthly cycle of "Kyoto Lectures" which he initiated - and colloquia. Since 2001 he has also been a member of the editorial committee, and then of the scientific committee, of the Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie published in Kyoto by the EFEO, and has sat on the board of trustees, and then on the scientific council, of our institution. A man whose prodigious culture was akin to that of a classical humanist, his generous knowledge and urbanity enabled him to bring concrete proposals to fruition without ever losing the perspective provided by irony and humour. His teaching, his ability to listen and his friendly approach have left their mark on several generations of researchers and students. Silvio Vita's interests were particularly broad, ranging from Chinese and Japanese Buddhism to Shintō and the history of Japanese religions in the broadest sense. In particular, he edited a work on the Buddhist apocrypha found at the Nanatsudera monastery in Nagoya in 1990 (Ochiai Toshinori, ed. by Silvio Vita, The Manuscripts of Nanatsudera: A Recently Discovered Treasure-House in Downtown Nagoya, Kyoto, ISEAS, 1991) and the publication of the proceedings of two major symposia on Buddhist studies held at L'Orientale University in Naples in 2001 and 2004 (Buddhist Asia 1, Buddhist Asia 2, ISEAS). Following the discovery in 2011, in the Vatican Library, of a large collection of archives relating to Catholicism from the Edo period, Silvio Vita became interested in a number of missionary figures, including Mario Marega (1902-1978), a Salesian missionary, firstly as a translator of the Kojiki into Italian, and then in his work in the history of modern Japanese Catholicism. This collection gave rise to a major Italian-Japanese programme, the Marega Project, in which Silvio Vita played a key role. He was one of the co-editors of a palaeography manual based on these archives (Reading Japanese Documents from the Marega Collection: An Introductory Manual with Selected Texts, Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2021). His funeral was held on the 20th of June in Kyoto in the presence of many friends and colleagues. His ashes will be divided between Kyōto - the city he loved and where he had lived and studied since the late 1970s - and Rome. The EFEO loses an eminent colleague and a dear friend, with an endearing personality, whose involvement was constant in animating the collaboration between our two research centres, which have been housed in the same building in Kyoto since 2018. We send our most sincere condolences to his wife and two children. Christophe Marquet, Martin Nogueira Ramos, François Lachaud |
