MontenegroNikola Kasalica
Ouroboros

Montenegro, once part of the former Yugoslavia, is a country roughly the size of Fukushima Prefecture on the Adriatic Sea. Ouroboros is a young publishing house founded there in 2019. It has released some thirty books of prose and poetry to date, all by Montenegrin authors; it has yet to release any translations of work from Japan or any other foreign countries. “I never thought I’d visit Japan, to be honest,” says Ouroboros editor and translator Nikola Kasalica. “The combination of culture, distance, and cost makes the very idea of traveling from Montenegro to Japan almost interplanetary.”

For Kasalica, venturing to Japan on the program (Central and Eastern European Editors’ Visit) was thus an unmissable opportunity with serious potential. “I hoped it would be the start of exchanges that would benefit literary culture at large,” he says. “I also hoped to talk to people from central and eastern Europe who have actual experience in publishing Japanese books. I felt their advice would be most welcome.”

When he received the official program invitation, he knew that the voyage would be more than just a “study tour”—it was his chance to represent Montenegro in a faraway country. “I saw an ambassadorial aspect to it, both to help people at Japanese publishers get an understanding of the political and linguistic context in Montenegro, and to make a good impression for Montenegro on other participants from Europe, especially nearby countries,” he explains. But that sense of mission also created pressure for Kasalica, who says that he spent the days leading up to his Japan trip stressing about not knowing exactly what Japanese publishers would expect from Ouroboros as an independent publishing house from a small, distant country.

Fortunately, these worries proved unfounded. “The most positive thing was that I didn’t feel out of place,” says Kasalica. “I took great pleasure in walking the streets of Tokyo alone, and Kyoto really felt like home.”

Among a busy itinerary Kasalica was particularly impressed by the lectures given by University of Tokyo associate professor Abe Ken’ichi and Waseda University professor David Karashima, who “reintroduced us to twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japanese literature.” The visits to Kodansha and Bungei Shunju also provided insights into the everyday operations and preoccupations of large publishing companies, Kasalica recalls, while visiting Tankosha in Kyoto and experiencing the Japanese tea ceremony “highlighted the importance of taking care of culture and history within the publishing context.”

The program’s exploration of Japanese publishing connected Kasalica to the industry on a personal level, too. “Mr. Higuchi Seiichi was kind enough to give us a picture of the current Japanese publishing market,” Kasalica says, “while the people at Ogaki Shoten in Kyoto explained to us the philosophy behind their bookstores’ business. All in all, I was thrilled with the experience.”