Skip to main content
Saturday, November 14, 2026Nov 14
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Scholar of Japan, Keene finds his life intertwined with it

In this Monday, Dec. 28, 2015 photo, Donald Keene speaks during an interview at his home in Tokyo. Keene persevered, arriving in the ancient Japanese imperial capital of Kyoto in 1953 to do research. From those beginnings he counts about 25 books in English and 30 in Japanese and more than six decades of teaching. He’s considered a giant in the field he helped build, translation and Japanese literature. His life has become so intertwined with Japan that he has decided to spend his remaining years here, becoming a Japanese citizen in 2012. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this Monday, Dec. 28, 2015 photo, Donald Keene speaks during an interview at his home in Tokyo. Keene persevered, arriving in the ancient Japanese imperial capital of Kyoto in 1953 to do research. From those beginnings he counts about 25 books in English and 30 in Japanese and more than six decades of teaching. He’s considered a giant in the field he helped build, translation and Japanese literature. His life has become so intertwined with Japan that he has decided to spend his remaining years here, becoming a Japanese citizen in 2012. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

By Associated Press 4 min read

TOKYO (AP) – So few teaching opportunities existed for a young Japan scholar in late 1940s America that a professor suggested he teach Greek instead.

Donald Keene persevered, arriving in the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto in 1953 to do research.

“I was extremely lucky, because the time that I was there was a golden age of Japanese literature,” he says. “People didn’t speak of it at the time, they all said there’s nothing much to read and that sort of thing, but in retrospect we can say this was one of the great periods of Japanese literature. All the famous writers, not only people known because of their previous work, were writing.”

Lucky too, he says, because it was a time when few foreigners spoke Japanese, so he easily gained entree to well-known people. Writer Yukio Mishima was a friend.

From those beginnings he counts about 25 books in English and 30 in Japanese and more than six decades of teaching. He’s considered a giant in the field he helped build, translation and Japanese literature.