The major works by Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz were translated into Japanese in the 1960s, mainly by Yukio Kudö. I was enchanted by those Japanese texts to such an extent that I decided to abandon French literature and switch to Polish contemporary literature. In 1974, I came to Poland on a post-graduate fellowship of the Polish government, and I began studies in literature and the Polish language at the Jagiellonian University. During that two-year stay in Krakow, my view of Polish literature changed several times. The phase well established in the Japanese translations I had known ended quickly. Then I began to "hunt" for promising Polish authors not yet present in world literature. I thus discovered the prolific, esoteric and difficult Teodor Parnicki (1908-1988). This essay is my description of my "penetrating" the world of the Polish language at that time.