Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019), also known as , was an American and Japanese scholar, teacher, writer, translator and Japan studies expert.

Keene's contributions to the understanding of Japanese culture were recognized by the Japanese government in 2002 and in 2008. In 2012, Keene became a Japanese citizen and he explained, 
"You cannot stop being an American after 89 years.... But I have become a Japanese in many ways. Not pretentiously, but naturally."

Early life
Keene was born in Brooklyn in New York City.  He received a Bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1942. He studied Japanese language at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School.  After World War II, he returned to Columbia where he earned a master's degree in 1947.

He earned a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1951. In this period, Ryūsaku Tsunoda became his mentor.

Career
Starting in 1955,  Keene was a professor at Columbia University for over fifty years. He retired from Columbia after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He became a Japanese citizen under the name Kīn Donarudo.

His first visit to Japan was during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Death
Keene died on February 24, 2019 in Tokyo from heart failure, aged 96.

Selected works
In an overview of writings by and about Keene, OCLC/WorldCat lists roughly 600+ works in 1,400+ publications in 16 languages and 39,000+ library holdings. 
This list is not finished; you can help Wikipedia by adding to it.
 The Battles of Coxinga: Chikamatsu's Puppet Play, Its Background and Importance, 1951
 The Japanese Discovery of Europe: Honda Toshiaki and other discoverers 1720-1952, 1952
 Japanese Literature an Introduction for Western Readers, 1955
 Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1956
 Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 1961
 Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 1961
 Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830, 1969
 Twenty Plays of the Noh Theatre, 1970
 World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867, 1976
 Some Japanese Portraits, 1979
 Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era, 1984-1988
 The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988
 Introducing Kyoto, 1989 (with Herbert E. Plutschow) 
 Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese As Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries, 1989
 Modern Japanese Novels and the West, 1989
 No and Bunraku: Two Forms of Japanese Theatre, 1990
 Appreciations of Japanese Culture, 1991
 The Colors of Poetry: Essays in Classic Japanese Verse 1991 (with Ooka Makoto)
 Travelers of a Hundred Ages, 1992
 Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century,1993
 On Familiar Terms: A Journey Across Cultures, 1994
 Modern Japanese Diaries: The Japanese at Home and Abroad As Revealed Through Their Diaries, 1995
 The Blue-Eyed Tarokaja: A Donald Keene Anthology, 1996
 On Familiar Terms: To Japan and Back, a Lifetime Across Cultures, 1996
 Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Woodblock Prints from the Meija Era, 1868-1912, 2001 (with Anne Nishimura & Frederic A. Sharf)
 Sources of Japanese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600, 2001 (with William Theodore De Bary, George Tanabe and H. Paul Varley)
 Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912, 2002
 Masterful Illusions: Japanese Prints from the Anne Van Biema Collection, 2002 (Lee Bruschke-Johnson and Ann Yonemura)
 Five Modern Japanese Novelists, 2002
 Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion: The Creation of the Soul of Japan, 2003
 Frog In The Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841, 2006
 Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan, 2008
 So Lovely A Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, 2010

Honors
Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, Third Class, 1975
 Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, Second Class, 1993
 Person of Cultural Merit, 2002 
 Order of Culture, 2008

References

Other websites
  Keene, Donald at Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
 Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture 

1922 births
2019 deaths
Deaths from heart failure
Columbia University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Japanologists
American historians