A review by meeners
Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan by Donald Keene

4.0

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 his own admission) of a truly extraordinary life. fill in the blanks and you get maybe a more messy picture, issues of complicity and political expediency left unengaged, but i don't know if we can begrudge him that. i say "we" because even though i'm from a different generation and follow a different kind of scholarship, i am still in the same field, and that field is still indebted to and marked by its remarkable beginnings.