Japan Literary Scholar Donald Keene Dies at 96

If you’ve read Japanese literature in translation, you might have encountered the works of Donald Keene, a professor of Japanese literature who’s been a major source of energy in the spread of Japanese literature to the West over his life. He died in a hospital in Tokyo of cardiac arrest at age 96.

After visiting a used book store in New York and finding a translated copy of The Tale of Genji, the story of the many lovers of a fictional Japanese emperor, he began a lifelong love affair with Japan and its literature. He served as an intelligence officer during WWII, interrogating prisoners and translating diaries, and after the war he attended Kyoto University to study Japanese literature. Afterwards he taught Japanse literature as a professor at Columbia University, and was also active as a translator, bringing the works of classic and modern literature to the English-speaking world. He translated major novels by the likes of Dazai Osamu, Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio, and in the process, became good friends with all the literary greats of the era.

After the tragic 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, he decided to retire from teaching at Columbia University and become a Japanese citizen, desiring to live the rest of his life in Japan. He was beloved in Japan as one of those special people who increased Japan’s stature in the eyes of the world, and will be missed.

A picture unrelated to Professor Keene, but one of my favorite old-timey photos of Japan. The man in the foreground is Mishima Yukio, the right-wing writer who famously committed suicide by seppuku after a failed military coup attempt at overturning Japan’s pacifist Constitution. Behind him is Ishihara Shintaro, then a writer of sexy novels, though he’d go on to politics, eventually becoming the Tokyo governor who would be detested by anime fans for trying to ban sexual expression in anime and manga.

If you’re interested in Japanese literature, you might want to check out Bungou Stray Dogs, a fun manga and anime that remixes all the famous names in the pantheon of literary greats into bishounen with supernatural powers. Because why not?