Keene, Donald Lawrence
Donald Lawrence Keene, 1922–, American scholar and translator, b. New York City, grad. Columbia (B.A. 1942, Ph.D. 1951). During World War II, he worked as a Navy interpreter and intelligence officer, specializing in Japanese, and after the war, he returned to Columbia, earned his doctorate, and taught there for five decades (1955–2011). Keene has written more than 30 books on aspects of Japan's culture. He revealed the breadth of Japanese literature to an English-speaking audience in his Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1955) and Modern Japanese Literature (1956), and he similarly introduced No drama, Bunraku, and other facets of Japanese cultural life. Among his other books are a multivolume history of Japanese literature, works on Japanese history and biography, and translations of modern Japanese writers. Keene became a Japanese citizen in 2012.
See his autobiography (1996) and his memoir, Chronicles of My Life (2008).