He organised several pioneering archaeological digs throughout Asia, such as in Swat in Pakistan, Ghazni in Afghanistan, Persepolis in Iran and in the Himalayas. He was also the promoter of the National Museum of Oriental Art. In 1978 he received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, in 1979 the Balzan Prize for History (ex aequo with Ernest Labrousse). During the course of his life, he wrote over 360 books and articles. Politics Tucci was a supporter of Italian Fascism and Benito Mussolini. His collaboration began in his student days at the University of Rome, where he first met Giovanni Gentile (at the time, Professor of the History of Philosophy and already a close friend and collaborator of Mussolini), and continued right up to Gentile's assassination in 1944, which led to the forced closure of IsMEO for over two years until 1947. In November 1936 - January 1937 he was the representative of Mussolini in Japan, where he was sent to improve the diplomatic relations between Italy and Japan and to make Fascist propaganda. On 27 April 1937 he gave a speech on the radio in Japanese on Mussolini's behalf. In this country his action paved the way to the inclusion of Italy to the Anti-Comintern Pact (6 November 1937). Tucci was a member of the editorial board of an Italian propaganda magazine, Yamato, which was started in 1941 to improve the political alliance of Italy and Japan. He wrote popular articles for the Italian state that decried the rationalism of industrialized 1930s-1940s Europe and expressed a yearning for a more authentic existence in touch with nature, which he claimed could be found in Asia. According to the Tibetologist Donald S. Lopez, "For Tucci, Tibet was an ecological paradise and timeless utopia into which industrialized Europe figuratively could escape and find peace, a cure for western ills, and from which Europe could find its own pristine past to which to return." Hugh Richardson and David Snellgrove in the dedication of their 1968 book of A Cultural History of Tibet wrote, "To Giuseppe Tucci who has revealed so many hidden treasures of Tibet life, art and learning." A fictional Tucci, played by Marcel Iureș, appears as a character in Francis Ford Coppola's 2007 film Youth Without Youth. Death Tucci died in San Polo dei Cavalieri, near Rome, in 1984. Biography The only biography on Tucci is by Enrica Garzilli, L'esploratore del