Among the countless foreign tourists that arrive in Italy every year to witness its beauties, a major part is made up of the Japanese.

Super organised, their tours manage to see in just a few days all main Italian cities: an exhausting journey which our Oriental guests try to exploit to the fullest to enjoy all the aspects of our culture, against which they often feel inadequate.

To fill this gap and introduce our culture better, the greatest exhibition about Italy ever organised abroad opened in Japan: a series of events called "2001 Italy in Japan", promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who, in co-operation with private sponsors, means to introduce Italian art, creativity, products, design and technology to the Japanese world.

In Tokyo and other main Japanese cities exhibitions, conventions, operas and concerts will be organised for over a year.

The programme, rich and of a calibre as has never been seen before, opened in the month of March with the exhibition "Renaissance In Italy", managed by the Superintendence of Fine Arts, hosted in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, rich with over one hundred masterpieces coming from the Uffizi Museum, Palazzo Pitti and other Florentine museums.

The programme will continue with the preparation of other exhibitions which will touch and involve other regions of Italy: "Pompeii and its inhabitants", "Leonardo and the Engineers of the Renaissance", "Caravaggio and his followers", "18th Century Venice".

As well as art there will be various cinema, photography, design and fashion reviews. There will also be a thick schedule of lyrical opera set up by the most important Italian opera theatres, such as the "Traviata", "Simon Boccanegra" and"Turandot", and numerous concerts which will have as protagonists Salvatore Accardo and Uto Ughi. Naturally everything "Made in Italy".