Donald Keene

**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

## Other websites

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