“Book Talk by Donald Keene: So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish”. Lecture by Donald Keene (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University)

Lecture Information:
So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish zeroes in on Japan’s involvement in World War II and the Greater East Asia War, which provoked a range of reactions from its citizens. Pride, rage, sympathy, revenge—a single year of triumph and three of catastrophic losses forced the Japanese to question their country’s presumption and its ability to shape history and the world. Falling to the will of the Allied powers further complicated Japan’s postwar recovery, imprinting feelings of shame, resentment, doubt, and self-recrimination onto the national psyche.

No writers have better captured these fluctuations than a group of well-known authors who risked recording their thoughts amid the bombings and fear of invasion. Nagai Kafû, Takami Jun, Itō Sei, Hirabayashi Taiko, Yamada Fūtarō, and the scholar Watanabe Kazuo wrote absorbing narratives, passionate polemics, and crystalline poems. Donald Keene, a leading scholar of Japanese literature, samples from their texts, some of which were written by individuals he knew well. His own relationship with the writers adds a compelling layer to his work. The diary of Itō Sei, for example, with its fervent patriotism and racial claims, forms a stark contrast to the soft-spoken, kind man Keene knew. Weaving archival materials together with personal reflections and the intimate accounts themselves, Keene produces an entirely original portrait of wartime attitudes and foreign domination in Japan. Whether detailed or fragmentary, these diary entries were written for future generations, making clear the danger of false victory and true defeat.

Lecturer Information:
Donald Keene is a University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, where he began teaching in 1955. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including one of Japan’s highest honors, the title “Person of Cultural Merit” (Bunka Kōrō-sha) in 2002, for his distinguished service in the promotion of Japanese literature and culture. Other awards include the Kikuchi Kan Prize of the Society 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 (1987); the Radio and Television Culture Prize (1993); and the Asahi Prize (1998). He has received honorary degrees from St. Andrew’s College (1990), Middlebury College (1995), Columbia University (1997), Tohoku University (1997), Waseda University (1998), Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku (1999), and Keiwa University (2000).