Donald Keene

Keene was born in 1922 in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York City and attended James Madison High School.[5] He received a Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1942[6] and studied under Mark Van Doren, Moses Hadas, Lionel Trilling, and Jacques Barzun.[6] He then studied the Japanese language at the United States Navy Japanese Language School in Boulder, Colorado and in Berkeley, California,[7] and served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific region during World War II.[3] Upon his discharge from the US Navy, he returned to Columbia where he earned a master's degree in 1947.

Keene studied for a year at Harvard University before transferring to Cambridge University as a Henry Fellow, where he earned a second master's and became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1948 to 1954, and a University Lecturer from 1949 to 1955.[8] In the interim, in 1953,[9] he also studied at Kyoto University, and earned a PhD from Columbia in 1949. Keene credits Ryūsaku Tsunoda as a mentor during this period.[10]

While studying in the East Asian library at Columbia in 1941, a man whom Keene did not know invited him to dinner at the Chinese restaurant where Keene and Lee, a Chinese-American Columbia graduate student, ate every day.[11] The man's name was Jack Kerr, and he had lived in Japan for several years and taught English in Taiwan. Kerr invited Keene to study Japanese in the summer from a student he taught in Taiwan, for Kerr to have competition when learning Japanese. Their tutor was Inomata Tadashi, and they were taught elementary spoken Japanese and kanji.

While staying at Cambridge, Keene went to meet Arthur Waley who was best known for his translation work in classical Chinese and Japanese literature. For Keene, Waley's translation of Chinese and Japanese literature was inspiring, even arousing in Keene the thought of becoming a second Waley.[12]

Keene was a Japanologist who published about 25 books in English on Japanese topics, including both studies of Japanese literature and culture and translations of Japanese classical and modern literature, including a four-volume history of Japanese literature which has become a standard work.[13] Keene 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.

Keene was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 2008, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Imperial Family in the country, becoming the first non-Japanese to receive the award.[14] Soon after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Keene retired from Columbia and moved to Japan with the intention of living out the remainder of his life there. He acquired Japanese citizenship, adopting the legal name Kīn Donarudo (キーン ドナルド). This required him to relinquish his American citizenship, as Japan does not permit dual citizenship.[3]

Keene was well known and respected in Japan[15] and his relocation there following the earthquake was widely lauded.[13]

In 2013 Keene adopted shamisen player Seiki Uehara as a son.[16] Keene was not married.

Keene died of cardiac arrest in Tokyo on February 24, 2019, aged 96.[17]

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.[18]

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Keene was awarded various honorary doctorates, from:

• University of Cambridge (1978)
• St. Andrews Presbyterian College (North Carolina, 1990)
• Middlebury College (Vermont, 1995)
• Columbia University (New York, 1997)
• Tohoku University (Sendai, 1997)
• Waseda University (Tokyo, 1998)
• Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Tokyo, 1999)
• Keiwa College (Niigata, 2000)
• Kyoto Sangyo University (Kyoto, 2002)
• Kyorin University (Tokyo, 2007)
• Toyo University (Tokyo, 2011)
• Japan Women's University (Tokyo, 2012)
• Nishogakusha University (Kyoto, 2012)
• Doshisha University (Kyoto, 2013)

• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1961
• Kikuchi Kan Prize (Kikuchi Kan Shō Society for the Advancement of Japanese Culture), 1962.[19]
• Van Ameringen Distinguished Book Award, 1967
• Kokusai Shuppan Bunka Shō Taishō, 1969
• Kokusai Shuppan Bunka Shō, 1971
• Yamagata Banto Prize (Yamagata Bantō Shō), 1983
• The Japan Foundation Award (Kokusai Kōryū Kikin Shō), 1983
• Yomiuri Literary Prize (Yomiuri Bungaku Shō), 1985 (Keene was the first non-Japanese to receive this prize, for a book of literary criticism (Travellers of a Hundred Ages) in Japanese)
• Award for Excellence (Graduate Faculties Alumni of Columbia University), 1985
• Nihon Bungaku Taishō, 1985
• Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University named in Keene's honour, 1986
• Tōkyō-to Bunka Shō, 1987
• NBCC (The National Book Critics Circle) Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing, 1990
• The Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (Fukuoka Ajia Bunka Shō), 1991
• Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) Hōsō Bunka Shō, 1993
• Inoue Yasushi Bunka Shō (Inoue Yasushi Kinen Bunka Zaidan), 1995
• The Distinguished Achievement Award (from The Tokyo American Club) (for the lifetime achievements and unique contribution to international relations), 1995
• Award of Honor (from The Japan Society of Northern California), 1996
• Asahi Prize, 1997
• Mainichi Shuppan Bunka Shō (The Mainichi Newspapers), 2002
• The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, 2003
• Ango Award (from Niigata, Niigata), 2010

• Media related to Donald Keene at Wikimedia Commons
• Works by or about Donald Keene at Wikisource
• Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture