Donald Keene

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Donald Keene




Donald Lawrence Keene (born June 6, 1922 in New York City) is a noted Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene is currently University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught for over fifty years.



Keene has 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. Keene has also published about 30 books in Japanese (some translated from English).

Keene is the president of the Donald Keene Foundation for Japanese Culture.

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An Evening with Donald Keene

By Larry Bole
Happy Haiku Forum

Wednesday evening, January 30, 2008 I attended a presentation at the Japan Society in New York City, given by Donald Keene, University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus at Columbia University.

Among his accomplishments are the publishing of approximately 25 books in English, including a four-volume history of Japanese literature; and approximately 30 books in Japanese, some original and some translated from English. "Professor Keene's 'Meiji Tenno' (Shinchosha, 2001; translated by Yukio Kakuchi) a biography of the Meiji Emperor, recently won the 56th Mainichi Shuppan Culture Prize."

"In the autumn of 2002, Professor Keene was awarded one of Japan's highest honors, the title 'Person of Cultural Merit' (Bunka Koro-sha), for his distinguished service in the promotion of Japanese literature and culture. Keene is only the third non-Japanese to be designated this honor. He is also the recipient of the Kikuchi Kan Prize of the Soceity for the Advancement of Japanese Culture (1962); the Order of the Rising Sun, Second Class (1993) and Third Class (1975); the Japan Foundation Prize (1983); the Yomiuri Shimbun Prize (1985); the Shincho Grand Literary Prize (1985); the Tokyo Metropolitan Prize (1998); the Radio and Television Culture Prize (1993); and the Asahi Prize (1998)."

Professor Keene began his talk by stating that he is 85 years old. [He maintains a head of dark, thinning hair with gray around the edges.] He related several anecdotes from his life to illustrate his contention that the path his life has taken has been more of an accident, at least near the beginning, than a purposeful plan.

In 1939, as a freshman at Columbia University, he sat next to a fellow student who was Chinese in a class taught by Mark Van Doren [Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and critic]. After a while of sitting next to each other four days a week, they became friends. Eventually Professor Keened asked his friend if the friend would teach him Chinese. So they ate a $0.25 lunch every day at an Asian restaurant on Broadway near the university; a restuarant that finally closed only about ten years ago. The Chinese friend began teaching him Chinese characters out of a contemporary Chinese novel, which Prof. Keene said later gave him a headstart in learning Japanese. However, the friend didn't teach him Chinese pronunciation. Prof. Keene said this was because his friend didn't speak Mandarin, but rather Cantonese, and was embarrassed about that.

Prof. Keene said that 1940, his sophomore year, was the worst year of his life, mostly because of the war news from Europe. But it also was the year that began to shape his interest in Japan. He found, in a bookstore in the Astor Hotel in Times Square, the remaindered two-volume Tale of Genji translated by Arthur Waley, and bought it for $0.49.

In 1941 he took a class called "Readings in Japanese Thought," taught by Professor Tsunota Yusaku. Prof. Keene was the only student in the class. He asked Prof. Tsunota if he was going to cancel the class, but Prof. Tsunota said, "One is enough." But the class abruptly ended shortly after December 7 of that year. Professor Tsunota was accused of being a spy because, according to Prof. Keene, he was known to take long walks without a dog. Therefore he was thought to be a spy. He was interred in an internment camp for the duration of the war.

Prof. Keene then volunteered for the Navy Japanese language school, and after 11 months of immersion in the Japanese language, he was stationed in Hawaii, where he translated documents and served as a translator in the interrogation of Japanese prisoners, among other things.

Following the war, Prof. Keene returned to Columbia University and completed his undergraduate degree. He then got a fellowship to Cambridge University in England. The only way he could get it was by saying he wanted to round out his Asian studies by learning Arabic
and Persian. When he got there, the teachers of Arabic and Persian asked him how long he was planning on staying. When he said a year, they said, goodbye. He ended up staying for five years anyway, teaching Japanese. The text that was being used to teach beginning Japanese at that time was the preface to the Kokinshu, because it was written in mostly simple characters and had easy grammar.

Prof. Keene then went on to discuss his lifelong interest in Japanese literature and culture. He said that as a scholar, he doesn't "plunge deeply" into one particular area, but "goes from flower to flower." He feels that this character trait of his has served him well, although he acknowledges it does open him to the charge of being superficial.


Prof. Keene said that one change from his first visit to Japan in the late 1950s to now, is that there seems to be a break with tradition among the young Japanese people. On his first visit, he said that Japanese literature was being extensively taught at the university level; today, there is hardly any teaching of it. He said that Japanese young people today have more in common with young people around the world than with their own cultural heritage.


Among other points he made:

In order to feel an active part of Japanese culture, he first thought to study a Japanese musical instrument, but his lack of musical aptitude quickly dissuaded him from doing that. So on what sounds like a whim, he studied Kyoogen acting, which is farcical in nature. It tried his patience, since his teacher would make him repeat a single phrase over and over until the teacher was satisfied with how he said it, and the teacher would tell him, when he was supposed to pick something up, he was only to use TWO fingers, etc. But Prof. Keene said he enjoyed the experience.

In answer to a question, Prof. Keene said that the translation of his that he is most satisfied with is his translation of Kenko's Essays in Idleness. Unlike other translations, where he feels that he could have made improvments, he feels he achieved "the right voice" with Essays in Idleness. He translated it while living in Japan during the rainy season, and he said that as a result, there wasn't much else to do.


In answer to another question, he said he feels that literal translations, have, on the whole, failed. He says that he most enjoys reading translations in English that sound beautiful in English, and stand as independent works in English.
He went on to say that even though Arthur Waley, in his translation of The Tale of Genji, left things out and even added things in that aren't in the original, he finds it to be a beautifully written work in English, and hopes it doesn't disappear as a work of English literature.

One questioner who is Japanese (speaking English with an accent) said that she is disturbed by how poorly students in Japan speak and write Japanese these days. She mentioned she was involved in translating tanka and haiku written by Japanese prisoners of war during WWII, and although many of them were common foot soldiers, with farming backgrounds, etc., and often had no more than a fourth or sixth grade education, they nevertheless wrote beautiful tanka and haiku. She said the Japanese they wrote back then, with limited education, was better than many, more educated, students write today.

Prof. Keene replied that he understood her point, but he said you can't stop a language from changing, and that there will probably end up being a compromise between traditional Japanese language and the Japanese currently being used by young Japanese people, resulting in a new version of Japanese. He implied this prospect didn't trouble him.

At one point, in answering a question about the Japanese author Kobo Abe, Prof. Keene said that although Abe's reputation is in decline at the moment, he expects that it will rise again. Prof. Keene said he developed a genuine friendship with Kobo Abe, and he thinks Abe was an extraordinary human being.

Prof. Keene's current project is a book about the changes in Japanese society that took place during WWII and afterward. He is consulting diaries, some written by people he met and knew after the war.

Thus ended an enjoyable talk.


At the reception afterward, there was a table set up with a couple of not-yet-proofed copies of a book by Prof. Keene, soon to be published: Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan; to be published by Columbia University Press. The flyer announcing the publication, and containing an order form, includes the following quote from Prof. Keene:


"I sometimes think that if, as the result of an accident, I were to lose my knowledge of Japanese, there would not be much left for me. Japanese, which at first had no connection with my ancestors, my literary tastes, or my awareness of myself as a person, has become the central element of my life."


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The Narrow Road to Oku (Illustrated Japanese Classics)
By Matsuo Basho, Tr. Donald Keene;
Publisher: Kodansha International
Release Date: 04 August, 1997

"While a translation can always be disputed, it is the illustrations that make this book worth the having."



In my library:

Donald Keene about his Life in Japan
The Japan Times: Dec. 27, 2005


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