A Samurai among the Arditi: Shimoi Harukichi (1883–1954)

Son of a Samurai from an ancient and noble family, poet, translator of the first Japanese poems into Italian, great lover of Dante and the Divine Comedy, war journalist, teacher at the Royal Oriental Institute. It is the adventurous and multifaceted life of Harukichi Shimoi, born in 1883 in Fukuoka as Harukichi Inoue (he later adopted the surname of his wife when they married in 1907). He finished his studies in Japan, and had the occasion to meet Bin Ueda, by whom he was profoundly influenced. In 1915 after having founded the Japanese Dante Society, he moved to Naples, Italy to study Dante, thanks to the interest of the Italian ambassador in the land of the Rising Sun: the marquis Alessandro Guiccioli, who got him the position of teacher at the University of Naples "L'Orientale". A very prestigious assignment for the then unknown, just 28 years old, Shimoi. The young Japanese, once arrived, began to frequent the Neapolitan cultural scene and, among these, a very famous bookseller who had a well-known stall in via Toledo: Don Gaetano Pappacena . Attracted by the futurists, he met and frequented Raffaele Uccella, sculptor of Santa Maria Capua in Vetere. Over time Shimoi improved his Italian and, above all, learned the Neapolitan dialect so well that he was nicknamed, as Bruna Gaeta Catalano recalls, “The Japanese urchin”.Shimoi tried to mediate the story of Italian fascism to an audience of young Japanese in hopes of stirring them into seeking a patriotic politics of their own. An educator with a penchant for romantic literature and, later, a nationalist activist. 

Harukichi Shimoi, the Samurai of Fiume, dressed in italian Arditi uniform during WWI

Shimoi lived in Italy for almost twenty years, witnessing World War I and the rise of fascism. He found in Italian fascism a set of social and cultural tools to realign modern mass society with the nation. Shimoi conceived fascism as a pedagogical strategy to mobilize the masses—especially youth—through patriotism and devotion to the state. It also considers Shimoi's role in the so-called byakkōtai affair, which commemorated the “white tigers” (byakkō), a group of young Aizu warriors who fought on the losing side during the Bōshin War of 1868, and how it ushered in a new phase in Japan's relation with fascism. In 1917, he enlisted as a volunteer in the Italian army during World War I, and committed himself to fighting against the Central Powers. He took courage and went to General Caviglia, the commander of the troops, and asked to be sent to the front row where all the others fought, in the trenches.The soldier amazed by those words, put in his hand the uniform, which he gave him personally, and sent him where only a son of Bushido or a madman could go , in the midst of the Arditi. Harukichi became an Ardito, teaching his fellow soldiers some karate. On November 3, 1918, he is among the first to enter Trento liberated, with the tricolor cockade on his chest, and immediately goes to visit the monument of Dante: “Midnight was past, the thin rain came. In the dark sky the monument stood black and haughty. And on the polished marble of his pedestal he knelt and bowed reverently, a little young man who came from the Far East, leaving his loved ones far away, challenging the stormy sea, guided only by the divine words of the Poet ".

Harukichi Shimoi with Benito Mussolini

Using his diplomatic passport that allowed him great freedom of movement, Shimoi acted after the war as a liaison for secret mails between Gabriele D'Annunzio, then regent of Fiume, and Benito Mussolini, at the time the head of the Italian Fasci di Combattimento and editor of Il Popolo d'Italia . Shimoi was, among other things, one of the people first entering the Fiume Endeavour of the Italian poet. It was during the Rijeka enterprise that Shimoi was nicknamed by D'Annunzio "comrade Samurai" and "the Samurai of Fiume". Shimoi was enthusiastically welcomed by the legionaries and in front of them the poet gave a welcome speech in his honor, wishing a bright future for Japan: "From Fiume d'Italia, gateway to the East, we salute the light of the Far East". For D'Annunzio, Japan was the place of dreams, the unattainable destination par excellence, so much so that, to reach it, together with Shimoi, he organized the Rome-Tokyo flight performed by the aviator Arturo Ferrarin.

Returning to Naples in 1920 after the Rijeka experience, he founded the Japanese literature magazine Sakura, that would be published until March of the following year for a total of five issues. During his numerous missions to circumvent the military blockade imposed by General Caviglia in Fiume, he befriended the future founder of Fascism. Therefore he enthusiastically joined Fascism, and in 1922, he took part in the March on Rome. Mussolini, who greatly appreciated the Japanese poet, decided in 1928 to send a column taken from the Roman Forum from Pompey's house to Japan. And he wanted a commemorative epigraph dedicated to "The spirit of Bushido" to be placed at the foot of the column. In 1934 he served as an interpreter to the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano, while he was staying in Italy. The translated interviews given by Kano were a mainspring for the development of such discipline in Italy.

Getting back to his homeland, Shimoi helped the Italian Embassy in Tokyo to stop the pro-Ethiopian activities of the Japanese rightist clubs during the war in Ethiopia. He was a tireless popularizer of Italian culture, translating numerous works from Japanese to Italian and vice versa, also promoting construction of a temple dedicated to Dante Aligheri, in Tokyo. He dedicated one of his best known poetic works to the ruins of Pompeii: "Shinto Ponpeo o tou tame ni". He was one of the best known Japanese supporters of Italian fascism, seeing some analogies between the fascist principles and the traditional values of Japanese culture, especially the Bushido. He argued that fascism was a natural ramification of the risorgimento, and that its role was to be a "spiritual movement" that would make Italians identify as being part of the new nation. He began to lecture on fascism and was one of the major supporters of the "Rome, Tokyo and Berlin" axis. 

After the second World War, Shimoi met and became friends with Indro Montanelli, who arrived in Japan to work on a series of reportages. Shimoi became his guide around the country. He died in 1954.