Harukichi Shimoi: the samurai between Dante, D’Annunzio and Mussolini

Between November 1951 and March 1952, Indro Montanelli stayed in Japan to talk about the post-war period. During the harsh winter he met a ancient Japanese poet Who would be his guide, a short, stocky and ugly man with a single line of thick eyebrows made thicker by his thick, far-sighted glasses. He didn’t speak Italian, only the Neapolitan dialect, and as he found himself in front of a plate of spaghetti and a bottle of Chianti, “while his fork rolled the strands of pasta with Neapolitan patience», he confessed to Montanelli that:

“Because I don’t have it anymore the ChiantiI became a teetotaler for Not Contaminate memoriesthe actual concept of wine”.

Harukichi Shimoi was born near Fukuoka in 1883, fourth son of the samurai Kikuzo Inoue. The surname Shimoi comes from his adoptive father, the architect, lumber merchant and future father-in-law Kisuke Shimoi. The latter adopted the 24-year-old Harukichi in 1907 after a severe economic crisis that had left his family bankrupt, a fairly common occurrence among samurai families who had not enthusiastically welcomed the changes of the Meiji era.

The article Harukichi Shimoi: the samurai between Dante, D’Annunzio and Mussolini comes from Rivista Contrasti.