Donald Keene

In this thorough and fascinating volume, Donald Keene introduces his readers to the sweep of Japanese literature in all its great variety and unusual beauty, from earliest times to the mid-nineteenth century. Although Keene is careful to point out that Japanese Literature is "neither a systematic outline nor a work of reference, but a highly personal appreciation of certain aspects...

For more than thirty years, the acclaimed novelist Shirley Hazzard and the renowned scholar of Japanese literature Donald Keene maintained a remarkable epistolary friendship. Brought together by the death of a mutual friend in the late 1970s, they discovered a profound connection built on mutual affinities for literature and culture and common values of humanism and cosmopolitanism. Expatriates of No...

Donald Keene combines informative works on two forms of classical Japanese theatre into a single volume. The Nō text looks at all aspects of this traditional theatre form, including its history, its stage and props, the use of music and dance in its performances, the plays as literature, and the aesthetics of Nō. Also discussed are Kyōgen, the comic farces...

Perhaps no one is more qualified to write about Japanese culture than Donald Keene, considered the leading interpreter of that nation's literature to the Western world. The author, editor, or translator of nearly three dozen books of criticism and works of literature, Keene now offers an enjoyable and beautifully written introduction to traditional Japanese culture for the general reader. The...