Abstract

This paper applies a diatextual approach and Greimasian narrative semiotics to three authors from post-WWII Italian literature: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino and Alessandro Baricco. Three different images of Japan are illustrated through the analysis of their works related to the «Land of the Rising Sun»: "Il re dei Giapponesi" (1949), an unfinished novel by Pasolini; "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" (1979), "Palomar" (1983) and "Collection of Sand" (1984) by Calvino; "Seta" (1996), a short novel by Baricco. Japan can be used in literary fiction as a mythical scenery, as a historically vague setting, or as an autobiographical frame: each kind of narrative reveals a different level of exoticism in the representation of Japan.