Silvio Vita leads an enviable life. He says perhaps he is lucky. That may be true, but it is not the whole story. He is also hardworking, and his work has done more than luck to bring him recognition and reward. He is a Roman, born in Romulus' fabulous city, which, built over seven hills by the Tiber River, became a great cultural center of the Western world. He divides his time, enviably, between Kyoto, city of temples and shrines and antiquities, and Naples, city of palaces, castles and churches set on a scenic bay. When, eventually, Vita goes back to his university position in Naples, he said, "I will always return to Japan."
He has the gift of friendliness. His early environment conditioned him with desire to learn, and to pass on learning. Both his parents were high school teachers of Italian literature and classical languages. Vita said: "When I was in high school I was interested in different cultures. The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome were very different from ours today. From that realization I became interested in China and Japan. Their different cultures were the most important driving force behind my decision to specialize in East Asian studies."
Vita took his first degree in classical literature at his university in Naples. In that same year, 1978, he secured a Ministry of Education scholarship to study at Kyoto University. He stayed on beyond the period of his scholarship, supporting himself by teaching Italian. He had a compelling reason for wanting to stay: romantically, on a beach on the Kii Peninsula, he had met the Japanese girl he was going to marry.