Dostoevsky in Nagoya: the XVIII Symposium of the international Dostoevsky society

For five days, the Japanese city of Nagoya became the world’s Dostoevsky capital. The XVIII Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society (IDS) was held here on August 24-28, 2023 For the first time since the establishment of the IDS in 1971, it took place in Asia. This happened despite the pandemic and the aggravation of international problems and thanks to the great efforts of the organizers from Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, who carefully thought out the program of the event, as well as of the Symposium participants from all over the world, who represented several research generations and scientific schools and demonstrated a variety of approaches to the study of scientific biography and creative work of the classic of Russian and world literature. The XVIII Symposium was dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the novel “Demons,” the most political and religious work of the great Russian writer, published in 1871-1872. Therefore, the main focus of the Symposium was “"Demons" in their time and 150 years later.” The participants of the scientific forum paid considerable attention to the topic “Dostoevsky in art (music, cinema, theater, painting).” Among other topical issues of modern Dostoevsky studies, the following were considered at the Symposium: new methods of studying the writer’s work, including those related to the development of Digital Dostoevsky, problems of poetics and textual criticism of his legacy, new biographical studies and archival materials, Dostoevsky in the works of M. M. Bakhtin and, of course, Dostoevsky’s reception in Asia and the influence of his ideas and images on Asian culture and literature. The final event of the Sympo-sium was the round table “Dostoevsky and modern Japanese writers,” at which popular prose writers Fuminori Nakamura, Risa Wataya and Keiichiro Hirano spoke. Each of them spoke about the influence of the Russian writer’s work on his texts and discussed the incredible popularity of Dostoevsky’s ideas in today’s world. This article provides an overview of the reports, cultural events and the main results of the XVIII Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society in Nagoya.