Donald Keene


Donald Lawrence Keene was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer, and translator of Japanese literature. He was Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years. Soon after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, he retired from Columbia, moved to Japan permanently, and acquired citizenship under the name Kīn Donarudo which is essentially his birth name in the Japanese name order. This was also his poetic pen name and occasional nickname, spelled in the ateji form 鬼怒鳴門.

Early life

Donald Lawrence Keene was born in the Flatbush neighborhood of New York City's Brooklyn borough on June 18, 1922. His father was an international trade businessman while his mother stayed at home to raise Keene and his elder sister. In July 1931, amid the economic crisis of the Great Depression, a nine-year-old Keene begged his father to allow him to accompany him on a business trip to Europe, to which his father agreed. He and his father boarded a United States Lines ship sailing to Normandy, disembarking at Cherbourg before they continued on to Paris by train. Keene met a girl around his age in Paris, but the language barrier made it difficult to talk with her, so he proceeded to sing Frère Jacques to her as it was the only thing he knew in French. These experiences instilled in him a great sense of curiosity for cultures abroad, as well as learning languages. In 1933, his elder sister died of an illness and his parents divorced.

Education and military service

Keene lived with his mother and attended James Madison High School, showing great academic achievement. He then enrolled at Columbia University, where he received a bachelor's degree 1942, studying under Mark Van Doren, Moses Hadas, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun. While there, he was obsessed with Arthur Waley's English translation of The Tale of Genji, and he became increasingly interested in Japanese culture after he met Ryūsaku Tsunoda, who became a mentor and key influence on his writings. Following his graduation, Keene enlisted in the United States Navy under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. A self-described pacifist, he was not enthusiastic about joining, especially after hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
While in the Navy, Keene successfully applied to the in Boulder, Colorado, and in Berkeley, California, where he learned Japanese. He served as an intelligence officer and in the Pacific region during World War II, where he translated for Japanese prisoners, some of whom remained his friends long after the war finished; he later recalled finding poignant diaries of dead Japanese soldiers, stained with their blood, and having his attempts to deliver the diaries to the soldiers' families thwarted by the Navy. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he returned to Columbia and earned a master's degree in 1947. He studied for a year at Harvard University before transferring to Cambridge University in England on the Henry Fellowship, where he earned a second master's degree and became a Fellow of Cambridge's Corpus Christi College from 1948 to 1954, as well as a lecturer from 1949 to 1955. In the interim, he earned a PhD from Columbia in 1949 and studied at Kyoto University in 1953. While staying at Cambridge, he met his idol Waley, who had sparked his initial interest in Asian culture.

Career

Keene went on to become a Japanologist who published about 25 English-language books on Japanese topics, including studies of Japanese literature and culture and translations of classical and modern Japanese literature. He also published about 30 books in Japanese, some of which have been translated from English. He was president of the Donald Keene Foundation for Japanese Culture.

Personal life

In 2008, Emperor Akihito awarded Keene the Order of Culture, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Japanese Imperial House; as of 2025, he remains the only non-Japanese person to receive the award.
In January 2011, at the age of 87, Keene was taken to a Japanese hospital after becoming gravely ill; concerned that he was dying, he instead asked himself what he would do if he recovered, and quickly realized that he would rather live out the rest of his life in Japan than return to the U.S. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan two months later; Keene soon announced that he would retire from Columbia University, leave his home in Morningside Heights, and settle in Japan. He was already known and respected in Japan by this point, and his relocation following the earthquake was universally welcomed.
According to the Financial Times, which referred to Keene as a legendary figure in Japan, "The announcement made headline news. Japanese spoke, many with tears in their eyes, of the courage he had given them in their hour of need." He told The New York Times, "Many foreigners are leaving Japan. People have asked me why I should be choosing this moment to spend the rest of my life in Japan. I decided to move there to voluntarily and gladly join the people in time of disaster, because I have more friends there than I have here, and most of my awards have come there. I want to show my appreciation to the Japanese people, and I could think of no other way than to say I'd be with them."
Upon settling in Japan, Keene adopted the legal name and acquired Japanese citizenship, which required him to relinquish his American citizenship as Japan does not permit multiple citizenship. Having long maintained a home in a suburb of Tokyo, he made it his primary home upon relocating. He never married and had no biological children. In 2012, at the age of 89, he utilized Japan's adult adoption process to adopt professional shamisen player Seiki Uehara as his son and heir. Uehara was 63 years old at the time.

Death

Keene died of cardiac arrest in Tokyo at the age of 96 on February 24, 2019.

Selected works

In an overview of writings by and about Keene, OCLC/WorldCat lists over 600 works in over 1,400 publications in 16 languages and over 39,000 library holdings.

Works in English

Works in Japanese

Translations

Editor

Honorary degrees

Keene was awarded various honorary doctorates, from:

Decorations