On March 5, tickets went on sale for Joe Hisaishi's concert at a 1,200-seat theater in Udine, Italy — and they were sold out in less than a week. In Japan, where Hisaishi is well known as a composer for his soundtracks to films by Hayao Miyazaki, Takeshi Kitano and many others, this rush for tickets would be expected. But for a town in Italy's northeast with a population of 100,000 it's completely out of the ordinary.

Scheduled for April 23, the concert will be a splashy opener for the 17th edition of the Udine Far East Film Festival — and would have been unthinkable when the festival held its first edition in 1999 with a program of Hong Kong films. In those days, Hisaishi in particular and Asian films in general were largely terra incognita to Italy's film fans and media.

I became a program adviser for the Udine festival from its second edition in 2000, when it was held in a dilapidated theater (since torn down) and invited its first two Japanese guests, director Yojiro Takita and producer Yasuhiro Mase, to present their 1999 film "Himitsu" ("Secret"). Its story of a young woman (Ryoko Hirosue) whose mother's spirit takes over her body after a fatal traffic accident has its comic moments, such as when the father (Kaoru Kobayashi) nearly jumps out of his skin at his daughter-turned-wife's proposal of sex, but it concludes with a big emotional climax that had the Udine audience in tears.