Donald Keene was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 18, 1922. He received a bachelor's degree in 1942, a master's degree in 1947, and a doctoral degree in 1951 from Columbia University. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer in the Navy and worked translating for Japanese prisoners. He taught at Columbia University for 56 years and was named the Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature in 1986 and University Professor Emeritus. Keene is considered to be a "Japanologist". He has written, translated, or edited numerous books in both Japanese and English on Japanese literature and culture including The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, Essays in Idleness, So Lovely a Country… Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, Three Plays of Kobo Abe, Twenty Plays of the No Theater, and The Breaking Jewel. His awards include the Kikuchi Kan Prize of the Society for the Advancement of Japanese Culture, the Japan Foundation Prize and the Tokyo Metropolitan Prize. Soon after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Keene retired and moved to Japan with the intention of living out the remainder of his life there. He acquired Japanese citizenship, and adopted a Japanese legal name. This required him to relinquish his American citizenship, as Japan does not permit dual citizenship.
Wm. Theodore de Bary is John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus of Columbia University and currently holds the title of Special Service Professor. He has written extensively on Confucianism in East Asia, and was general editor of the first editions of Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Indian Tradition, Sources of Japanese Tradition, and Sources of Korean Tradition.Carol Gluck is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University. She is the author of Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Periodand the coeditor of Asia in Western and World Historyand Showa: The Japan of Hirohito.Arthur E. Tiedemann is a member of the Society of Senior Scholars… at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University. He is the author of Modern Japan: A Brief Historyand Introduction to Japanese Civilization.
Wm. Theodore de Bary is John Mitchell Mason Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus of Columbia University, and currently holds the title of Special Service Professor. He has written extensively on Confucianism in East Asia, and is editor of the first editions of Sources of Chinese Traditionand Sources of Japanese Tradition(both published by Columbia).Donald Keene is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia. He is author, editor, or translator of more than thirty books of criticism and works of literature.George Tanabe is Chair of the Department of Religion at the University of Hawaii. He is editor of Religions of Japan in Practice(Princeton… Readings in Religions), co-editor of Practically Religious : Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan,and other books.Paul Varley is Professor of History at the University of Hawaii and author of Japanese Culture(Hawaii), Warriors of Japan: As Portrayed in the War Tales,and other books.