On 7 August, the Serbian Embassy in Tokyo hosted a launch event for "Bread and Wild Strawberries", a book by Belgrade University of Philology academic Ms. Kayoko Yamasaki, released in Japanese by Keiso Shobo publisher.

Ambassador Nenad Glisic said that the Embassy had a long-standing cooperation with Ms. Yamasaki and that this was another of her books that would bring Serbia closer to the Japanese audiences.

The author read a piece from her book and discussed it with fellow poets Hinako Abe and Kyong-Mi Park. As a special surprise, senior year student of ethnology and anthropology at the Belgrade University Faculty of Philosophy Taro Kadooka closed the event accompanying himself on bagpipes as he sang "Oj, Moravo" and a couple of other traditional tunes from Vojvodina.

"Bread and Wild Strawberries" is a collection of interviews with persons who had survived World War II as children as well as with refugees from the territory of the former SFRY and displaced persons from Kosovo and Metohija, sharing their memories of the food available to them and thoughts they had as they experienced war and exile. The book also gives several recipes of how to make goulash, stuffed cabbage rolls, stuffed sweet peppers, the Serbian salad, vanilice (vanilla sandwich biscuits), bean soup, etc. To mark the publication of the book earlier this year, publisher Keiso Shobo on its website and Twitter account also shared recipes of some Serbian dishes such as Chilandari beans, Easter eggs, cabbage salad, beef cabbage stew, beetroot salad.





Professor Kayoko Yamasaki, an award-winning poet and translator, has lived with her family in Belgrade since 1981. In addition to her own poems and essays, she has translated works of Serbian poets to Japanese, including Desanka Maksimovic, Stevan Raickovic, Milos Crnjanski and others. She also translated "Early Sorrows", "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" and "Garden, Ashes" by Danilo Kis. In 2014, "A Diary from Belgrade", her collection of essays written in Japanese won the coveted Yomiuri Prize for Literature in essays category.