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Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan

Donald Keene

4.17 · Rating details · 173 ratings · 33 reviews

Hailed as the 'leading expert on Japanese literature' by the New York Times Book Review, Donald Keene has devoted more than half a century to the study and appreciation of Japanese art and culture. This memoir chronicles his extraordinary life and intellectual pursuits.

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Hardcover, 1st, 196 pages

Published 2008 by Columbia University Press

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Mar 06, 2010 Jim Coughenour rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir

Any American reader of Japanese literature owes a debt to Donald Keene, an eminent translator and long-time professor at Columbia. My first encounter with his translations (over 25 years ago) was Essays in Idleness by the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, a book I still unearth from time to time.

Keene's memoir is, in most respects, a quiet tale of an uneventful life. Other than serving as an interpreter for Japanese prisoners during World War II, the highlight of Keene's life seems to have been traveling ...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Natalie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: newly-read-2009

How did I not write a review of this?! Probably because I have too much to say about it, but a lovely memoir. It often shocks me that when I'll be talking to a fellow self-professed student of Japanese and mention Donald Keene, they have no idea who he is! May they wonder no more through these handy dandy memoirs!

Still, this book is just lovely for ... so much. First, a look at Keene's amazing life. I smiled at his recollection of that cabin in the Carolinas where he first started studying ...more

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Jan 07, 2008 kkurtz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography

this is a wonderfully heartfelt & humble memoir from the pre-eminent Japanese Scholar. Keene recounts how he fell into his love for the Japanese culture & language quite by accident, but how those early events would shape the rest of his life. The reader gets a vivid picture of the often solitary life of a working scholar, as well as glimpses into Keene's friendships with leading Japanese writers of the day. Writers like Mishima, Kenzaburo Oë, & Kobo Abe. The book was originally ...more

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Apr 20, 2019 Mayumi added it

As I have enjoyed a long relationship with Japan, Prof Donald Keene's thorough and sensitive telling of his studies about Japan, time as a US Navy interrogator of Japanese prisoners, world travels, and his many, many tales of learning from, and partying with, the most esteemed of all Japanese scholars and authors (Mishima, Tanizaki, Kawabata, Oe, Abe, et al), this book touched my heart. The autobiography includes personal accounts of the background considerations leading to his most interesting ...more

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Aug 14, 2018 Arvind Radhakrishnan rated it it was amazing

This is easily one of the best memoirs I have read.Donald Keene's erudition is truly astounding.I had started exploring Japanese literature seriously after reading his essays and books. So it was a treat to read about his life and experiences as a Japanologist. Through his wise insights he has transmitted to the world the beauty of Japanese literature. Keep teaching us Keene-san!

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Apr 25, 2013 Charlie Canning rated it really liked it

For anyone studying Japanese culture, and especially Japanese literature, the name Donald Keene is a familiar one. In a career dating back to the 1950s, Keene has published more than thirty books of translation, criticism, and history. His latest offering, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (Columbia, 2008), is an autobiography that was first serialized in The Daily Yomiuri newspaper in 2006 as "Chronicles of My Life in the 20th Century."

Keene begins the narrative with his For anyone studying Japanese culture, and especially Japanese literature, the name Donald Keene is a familiar one. In a career dating back to the 1950s, Keene has published more than thirty books of translation, criticism, and history. His latest offering, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (Columbia, 2008), is an autobiography that was first serialized in The Daily Yomiuri newspaper in 2006 as "Chronicles of My Life in the 20th Century."

Keene begins the narrative with his childhood in New York City. He was a sensitive boy who cared more for music and stamp collecting than he did baseball, and except for a trip to Europe in 1931 with his father, he seemed to have had a tough time of it. The family fortunes changed dramatically in the lean years of the 1930s and this, coupled with the death of his sister and the divorce of his parents, made Keene even more studious and withdrawn. In 1938, however, at the age of sixteen, he won an extremely competitive four-year Pulitzer scholarship to Columbia University and things began to look up.

At Columbia, he studied with Mark van Doren. Professor van Doren's teaching style and his emphasis on the importance of the so-called "Great Books" of Western civilization were to have a life-long influence on Keene: "Van Doren had little use for commentaries or specialized literary criticism. Rather, the essential thing, he taught us, was to read the texts, think about them, and discover for ourselves why they ranked as classics. Insofar as I have been a success as a teacher of Japanese literature, it has been because I had a model in Mark van Doren."

The other outstanding teacher that Keene had at Columbia was Tsunoda Ryusaku who taught the history of Japanese thought. When Keene first enrolled in Professor Tsunoda's course in 1941, he was the only one registered. Thinking that the course would not be offered to only one student, Keene had thought to withdraw. But in characteristic Japanese fashion, Tsunoda had said, "One is enough."

Keene was hiking on Staten Island on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Although a pacifist by nature, Keene would later refer to the timing of the war as a form of "luck": "The outbreak of the Pacific War, just at a time when I had begun to study Japanese, determined my whole life." He was admitted to the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School and studied Japanese intensively for eleven months. Upon graduation in February 1943, he was sent to Pearl Harbor where he worked on the translation of captured Japanese documents. Other wartime assignments included trips to the Aleutians, the Philippines, and Okinawa.

Keene's first visit to Honshu was in December 1945 when he spent a week in Tokyo. The attitude of the people that he met then surprised him: "I could detect no trace of enmity of Japanese for Americans or of Americans for Japanese, and yet it had been scarcely four months since a bitter war ended. How was it possible for people's emotions to change so rapidly? I wondered. But perhaps friendship is the normal feeling between peoples, and war is only an aberration."

It was to be another eight years before Keene would return to Japan. During this period, he continued his studies at Columbia, Harvard, and Cambridge. At Cambridge, Keene met Betrand Russell, E. M. Forster, Lionel Trilling, and Arthur Waley, "the great translator who had rendered The Tale of Genji into marvelously beautiful English." According to Keene, "Waley was a genius. The word genius is sometimes used in Japan for any foreigner who can read Japanese, but Waley knew not only Japanese and Chinese but also Sanskrit, Mongol, and the principal European languages. Moreover, he knew these languages not as a linguist interested mainly in words and grammar but as a man with an unbounded interest in the literature, history, and religion of every part of the world."

In 1953, Keene returned to Japan and spent two years in Kyoto. He began publishing articles on Japanese literature in Japanese and also compiled the outstanding two-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature published by Grove Press in 1955 and 1956. This work brought him into contact with many of the great writers of the day including Mishima Yukio and Tanizaki Junichiro. Later, he would develop friendships with Abe Kobo, Oe Kenzaburo, and Kawabata Yasunari.

Keene returned to New York in 1955 to take up his position teaching Japanese literature and history at Columbia University. Although he wept in the airplane at the thought that he would never be able to return to Japan, he has "managed to spend at least a month in Japan every year since then."

In the intervening years, Keene has been enormously productive with books on fiction, poetry, theater, and history too numerous to mention. Keene's memoir, coming as it does at the end of a long and distinguished career, is yet another worthy title to read. ...more

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Aug 15, 2010 Darryl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"Chronicles of My Life" is a short autobiography and memoir written by Donald Keene, who is arguably the leading American scholar of Japanese literature, poetry and theater. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught for over 50 years, and he has written several dozen books about Japanese history, culture and literature, including "Modern Japanese Literature", "Twenty Plays of the No Theatre" and "Five Modern Japanese Novelists". His "Chronicles of My Life" is a short autobiography and memoir written by Donald Keene, who is arguably the leading American scholar of Japanese literature, poetry and theater. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught for over 50 years, and he has written several dozen books about Japanese history, culture and literature, including "Modern Japanese Literature", "Twenty Plays of the No Theatre" and "Five Modern Japanese Novelists". His latest book, "So Lovely A Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers", was published by Columbia University Press earlier this year.

Keene was born in New York City and initially attended Columbia on a scholarship, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1942. He enlisted in the Navy, where he was trained to be a Japanese translator during World War II. He made his initial trips to China and Japan during the war years, serving both as an interviewer of Japanese prisoners and civilians and a translator of sensitive documents and diaries. Upon his discharge from the Navy he attended Cambridge, then spent several years living in Japan, where he continued his study of Japanese literature while befriending many leading Japanese novelists, including Yukio Mishima, Nobelists Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe. He returned to Cambridge to teach, while spending summers in Japan, and then returned to Columbia, where he received his PhD and taught Japanese literature and culture.

Keene describes his fascinating life and experiences in New York, Cambridge and London, and Tokyo and Kyoto in this compelling and personal account, with great sensitivity and candor. His life is both enriching and most rewarding, but he also portrays himself as a sensitive, often lonely and sometimes depressed man, which endeared this reader to the man and his story. He also describes, in lesser detail, the personal lives of several tragic figures, including Mishima, who committed seppuru in 1970 after being passed over for the 1968 Nobel Prize, and Kawabata, who may have also taken his life in part due to Mishima's death.

Keene also aptly describes his experiences as a foreigner in Japan, a translator of Japanese literature and the difficulties he faced in getting American publishers to accept Japanese literature despite its popularity in the mid-20th century, and the rewards and frustrations of teaching at Columbia and Cambridge.

"Chronicles of My Life" is a wonderfully written and sensitive memoir, and is highly recommended. ...more

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Oct 05, 2015 Contando Dragones rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Nunca antes había leído una biografía, ni tampoco una autobiografía, como es el caso, pero creo que si la persona es lo suficientemente interesante y tiene suficientes cosas que contar, puede ser una lectura muy interesante.

Nada de fantasía ni relatos maravillosos (en el sentido más imaginativo de la palabra), simplemente hechos realistas que no llegan a ser del todo cotidianos. Como digo, si la persona es interesante, puede ser una gran lectura.

Esto es lo que me ha pasado con este libro. Adoro ...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Caroline rated it liked it

Donald Keene became one of the only American who has been allowed to be a Japanese citizen. He became a Japanese citizen at the age of 90. This is how and why I read about him in the NY times. He is a professor emeritus at Columbia where he taught for over 50 years. Japanese scholar, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. It all begun after he had been an intelligence officer during the WWII. The book is a little disappointment because he doesn't speak a lot about him and about ...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Masanaka Takashima rated it really liked it

I have come to like Mr Keene through this stunning memoir. Chapters where he meets my literary heros like Kenich Yoshida and Arthur Waley excited me a lot, but I enjoyed the earlier development of how he met and learned Japanese language, and joined the US Navy as a linguist officer working in war-operations against Japan. There he translated huge amount of various Japanese sources into English. Among them were killed Japanese soldiers' diaries. Japanese soldiers were encouraged to keep a diary ...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Libby rated it really liked it

This is the autobiography of Donald Keene, a famous scholar of Japanese literature. I found the first 2/3 of the book very interesting, especially the stories of how Keene ended up studying Japanese language and literature. I found the last third of the book kind of boring, though--there is a lot of discussion of whose books he translated and who he visited with. It seemed at the end as if he felt he had to mention everyone who might be still living, or whose families would want to be mentioned ...more

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Jun 24, 2013 Jason Keenan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: japan

What a wonderful journey and what a wonderful life. Donald Keene traces the chains of his long life (he's now in his 90s) that lead from sitting next to a Chinese student in his youth to a life as one of the world's preeminent experts on Japanese literature (and quite the writer on culture and history as well).

His life and his career and his friendships with modern writers like Yukio Mishima, as well as his focus on the history of Japanese literature, will have you taking copious note for your ...more

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Sep 14, 2008 Bruce rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone interested in Japan

Professor Keene's memoir is all the more powerful because of his understated style. Anyone who has lived in Japan will get a lot out of this, as will anyone who translates for a living. This is a memoir that actually has a lot to impart to its readers. It inspired me to both continue translating Japanese writers and to try to maintain even closer ties with Japan. His anecdotes about working with and becoming friends with Mishima, Abe, Tanizaki, Oe and others give us a fascinating glimpse of the ...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Karl Lion rated it really liked it

I've finished reading the book. I love many parts in it which I cannot tell you without citing almost the whole book that are still so alive and vivid in my mind. It thrills me a lot as if I've met in person with Mr. Keene. I've made a plan to read other books of his and of those he mentioned in this one. I especially love the conclusion he made for the book as well as for his life: "I hope that this chronicle, for all its deficiencies, has at least suggested how one human being spent an ...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Blake rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Received this book as part of a prize after meeting Mr Keene himself as well. It's really amazing to read about this man's life. Even though he might seem slightly reserved or retiring, it's clear that he didn't let anything hold him back all these years! The people he met, the times he experienced, they're all so fascinating. Definitely inspiring. I wonder who's going to be able to top his achievements in this field in the coming years...

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Feb 01, 2013 Tim rated it liked it

Good quick read. To fully enjoy it, some knowledge of famous Japanese figures (especially from the literary world) may be required. He also talks about opera and theater a bit more than I was expecting, but overall I was satisfied, and I particularly enjoyed the illustrations.

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Oct 31, 2008 Erin rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Love Japan. Love this book.

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Oct 03, 2013 Alexander Páez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

IMPRESCINDIBLE.

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May 13, 2019 Jaime rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Me resulta extraño explicar por qué este título me ha gustado tanto. Tal vez sea porque Keene, un intelectual poderosísimo y probablemente uno de los mejores japanólogos que vio el S.XX, sabe construir un relato absolutamente literario incluso de manera inconsciente. Puede ser su humildad, el presentar todos los logros de su vida como hechos con la relevancia justa, hechos por la pasión y el trabajo y sin ninguna ambición más que el puro conocimiento y mostrarlo a los demás para que puedan ...more

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May 24, 2019 Anson Cassel Mills rated it really liked it

First a disclaimer: I know nothing about Japanese literature, and I read Keene’s autobiography only because I am fascinated with people who are gifted at mastering other languages, especially difficult ones. (Apparently even some Japanese were surprised to discover that Keene read their language.)

Donald Keene (1922-2019) was a lucid writer who chronicled his life with grace and modesty. As is typical with academic autobiographies, the general reader will probably find Keene’s early career more ...more

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Dec 10, 2019 twilightsprincess rated it it was amazing

東京で台風第19号中、この本を読み終わった。大好きだったよ！キーンドナルドは私のヒーローだ。
I finished reading this during typhoon Hagibis in Tokyo. I really loved this book! Donald Keene is my hero!
**It was the perfect book to read as an American trying to make my way in Japanese life. I was struggling with motivation and why I was even there and this helped me to remember why I love Japan so much.

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May 01, 2018 Kira Gant rated it it was amazing

Muy recomendable.

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Oct 26, 2018 Tim rated it liked it

I’m sorry, this was a very interesting life story told in a very boring way.

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Jul 29, 2016 Justin rated it it was amazing

(My first full read on a Kindle, but that is beside the point.)

What is there to say about autobiographies? Plenty, yes. But at the same time, the author of which can present their life in whatever way they deem necessary. Sometimes that is fabrication for whatever purpose, other times it is filled with references to diaries one has kept.

Though Donald Keene has not kept a diary, so he states in this, I believe all the events in this book to be true. I do not see a reason for him to lie.

This ...more

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Jan 03, 2014 Patrick Wallace rated it really liked it

Donald Keene is one of the premier translators and scholars of Japanese literature. If you have read Mishima or Kawabata in English, likely it was in a book that he either translated or edited. He is also an important literary critic in the Japanese language, making him one of the very few westerners who is celebrated within Japan for works originally written in Japanese.

His memoirs are beautifully written, and form an important record of his life and his interaction with some of Japan's best ...more

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Oct 11, 2009 meeners rated it really liked it

Recommended to meeners by: Natalie

Shelves: borrowed, japanese-lit, memoirs

oh keene-sensei! i think it was nattie who once said to me how strange and amazing it is to study in an academic field whose own history is right there, staring you back in the face. this is keene's account of his role in that history, and it is fascinating on that count. people looking for more lurid personal details won't get it here; you won't find shocking revelations about famous japanese writers, either. instead, you get one very carefully crafted and very deliberately edited version (by ...more

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Nov 29, 2015 Bruce rated it it was amazing

As a biography of a person who has lived a fantastic life both observing, and participating as a key member of the modern Japanese literati, I consider this essential reading for anyone interested Japanese literature (modern or historic).

It's hard to overstate the impact Keene has had on making Japanese literature available not only to the non-Japanese world, but more broadly to those outside academia.

By itself that would make his biography worth reading but then there is the extraordinary ...more

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Dec 23, 2014 Mark rated it it was amazing

I rather liked this book although it has no particular purpose other than giving a quite honest account of Keene's relationship with Japan. For those who are interested (and the topic is interesting for anyone with intellectual leanings), Keene lists the Japanese cast of probably one of the most troublesome but at the same time expressive periods of Japanese cultural history. This came about because of Japan's loss of the Pacific War and submission, culturally as well as politically to foreign ...more

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Nov 02, 2014 Kazen rated it really liked it

Have you ever read an obituary of a semi-famous person and think, "Hey, this person was awesome! Why didn't I know about them?" That's the way I feel about Donald Keene, though (thankfully) he's still alive and kicking.

Keene is a translator, professor, and scholar of Japanese literature. Those who know even a little bit about post-war writers like Mishima and Kawabata will love the anecdotes Keene relates. And anyone who has ever visited Japan, especially Kyoto, will enjoy his stories about what ...more

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