Donald Keene Lecture Series: Scenes from the Life of Emperor Meiji Four Lectures by Professor Donald Keene
To celebrate the completion of Donald Keene’s new biography of the Emperor Meiji (published by the Japanese monthly literary magazine Shincho 45, and serialized over the past 5 years in more than 60 installments), the Donald Keene Center will present a series of four lectures, surveying the life of the emperor who reigned over one of the most tumultuous periods of Japanese history. Ascending to the throne in 1867, as a youth of sixteen, Emperor Meiji died in 1912, having witnessed the transformation of Japan from a state of feudal disunity to a modern nation.
Prof. Donald Keene, as one of the world’s most renowned authorities on Japanese literature and intellectual history, brings unique talents and insights to the writing of the first comprehensive biography of the Emperor Meiji. His translations, anthologies, and critical studies of Japanese literature have provided the foundation for this field in the West. He has been twice decorated by the Japanese government and as received virtually every other major Japanese and western literary award. In 1985, he was the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Literary Prize for the best book of Japanese literary criticism in Japanese. Since 1986, Prof. Keene has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1990 he was elected to the Japan Academy. Prof. Keene received his BA, MA, and PhD degree from Columbia University, and has been associated with Columbia throughout his academic career. He is currently a University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature Emeritus.
Related
Related News and Initiatives You Might Find Interesting
Prize winners of Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature and the Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize
Explore how Japanese writers use the supernatural to examine human nature.
