Talk:Donald Keene

Untitled

I question the statement: "In 1978, Keene earned a second Ph.D (Litt.D), from Cambridge." I believe this was an honorary degree and not one that Keene earned; if I am right it should be added to the list of his eight other honorary degrees. I realize this language was taken largely from the web page of Columbia's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and / or from some other Keene-related sources so the ambiguity is not Wikipedia's fault, but it still needs to be clarified.

In English-speaking countries Litt.D.'s are seldom earned and are almost always honorary; I have never heard of anyone else actually earning a Litt.D. from Cambridge in the past century, though I have heard of such degrees being awarded honoris causa. I also doubt that Keene would have had either the incentive or the time to pursue a second doctorate at a university in the U.K. when he was already a senior, tenured professor in the same field at a top American university and had already received the Order of the Rising Sun. What would a 56-year-old scholar in his position need or want with a second earned doctorate, and why would he devote so much time and energy to earning such a degree instead of pursuing his career? For that matter, how would be satisfy Cambridge's requirements while living and working in New York? --4.232.225.218 04:21, 27 September 2005‎

No, but I remember reading in one of his autobiographical textes that he studied Japanese in the UK for a while as a young man and how different (only old literature written in the now obsolete style) it was from the States.--Radh (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Formerly Donald Keene?

Collapsed irrelevant speculation. This is a WP:BLP article, so randomly guessing and misrepresenting sources is highly inappropriate. The actual facts of the case are summarized in the section below. 182.249.240.29 (talk) 10:13, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

What's the basis for the statement that he's changed his name? Kiin Donarudo sounds like a standard Japanization of a western name. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 23:58, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Please take a look at Martin Fackler's New York Times article here. See also "Donald Keene obtains Japanese citizenship; shows off 鬼怒鳴門 as his name" in Japan Today. --Ansei (talk) 14:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Neither article says he's changed his name. Both give Japanese renderings of his *English* name. Because of phonetic differences, you can't render his name in Japanese without changing the pronunciation. My first name in Japanese is アイザック (Kana) or Aizakku (Romanji), according to Google Translate. The reporter Jake Adelstein is ジェイク・エーデルスタイン or Jeiku ēderusutain when he writes for Japanese media. This is a re-rendering, not a name change. It's similar to the way my grandfather stopped spelling his last name Рабинович and started spelling it Rabinovitch when he moved from Russia to Canada.--Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The process which involved giving up American citizenship was mirrored by a process which involved the registration of 鬼怒鳴門 among the lists of Japanese citizens.

Please review the re-drafted 1st paragraph with its inline cite support. Perhaps there is no cause for dispute in the words of the current version of the article? --Ansei (talk) 21:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

While any person that naturalizes to Japan must chose one family and one given name composed of either kana (hiragana or katakana) or Japanese kanji (or a combination) for their legal domestic use, one's Japanese passport, which only has an alphabetic name in it and no official Japanese kana/kanji name, can have non-standard Japanese names/spellings in it if it does not cause confusion or, in the issuer's judgement, mis-identification. For example, if one naturalizes and chooses Kimbarī (キンバリー) as their legal Japanese name, they can still have a passport that says "KIMBERLY" in it. So it's /possible/ (no evidence) that Keene's Japanese passport might actually read "KEENE DONALD", because the passport name is for overseas use. His legal Japanese name, when literally transliterated to rōmaji, would not be spelled like this though. Eido INOUE | 井上エイド 00:27, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Keene's officially registered Japanese name is キーン ドナルド; 鬼怒鳴門 is a nickname

The Japanese sources all specify this. The kanji are his gagou.[1] He occasionally uses them as his nickname, but in the family register he is officially registered with the katakana transcription of his English name.[2] 182.249.240.29 (talk) 10:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Here's a Japanese newspaper source (Asahi Shimbin, via Web Archive) that clearly says his legal name is in katakana (キーン　ドナルド) and the ateji name is an alias (通称): http://web.archive.org/web/20120308161841/http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0308/TKY201203080224.html Eido INOUE | 井上エイド 02:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Naturalization in one year?

It takes a MINIMUM of 5 years as a resident to apply, let alone be awarded citizenship in Japan. How did he do it in less than a year???184.155.130.147 (talk) 02:41, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

There are cases where the residency time requirement is shortened to three years or even one year depending on existing connections to Japan. Numerous sources regarding his naturalization claim that Keene would spend half a year in America and half a year in Japan, and he's always maintained a home there. Normally, "continuous residence" for naturalization is defined as being outside of Japan for no more than one hundred continuous days in a year, or no more than 150 days total of a year. Perhaps in recent years he was spending more than two thirds of his time in Japan. Eido INOUE | 井上エイド 00:14, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Problem with Referencing Debito Arudou Community Opinion Column

A recent edit by Arudoudebito has added a bit of criticism that is entirely based on a lone personal opinion piece in a Community Column that he himself wrote. (The user Arudoudebito has identified himself on Wikipedia as being Dr. Debito Arudou, author of the reference in question, and Wikipedia administrators have confirmed his identity)

Arudoudebito has fought the undo-ing of his edit twice, asking to take it to Talk. So here I am.

There are at least three problems in my opinion:

1. the opinion expressed is so far out of the mainstream that no other English or Japanese newspaper or publication or broadcast has taken this view. The gist of the article relies on a stretched personal interpretation made by the author alone, which many people disagreed with (and that disagreement was published in the same paper that published the article in question).

To include this much personal opinion of one author about a person with such an illustrious career would give the impression to a reader that this opinion and criticism of Keene is shared by even a small minority or Japanese/non-Japanese. It is not.

2. This is self-promotion by the Wikipedia contributor, Arudoudebito . The user has been attempting to pad his own wikipedia BLP with numerous self-written material. The motive here is not to provide information helpful to understand Donald Keene, but to promote his website and books. Additionally, as a newly minted academic, he is under pressure to demonstrate as many references to his writings as possible, which increases his standing within the academic community. His column, which this latest edit references, contains both an ad for his self-published fiction book AND a link to twitter account and his personal blog, which contains more ads for his books, t-shirts, videos, etc.

That's some sort of COI, in my opinion.

3. There may be a potential libel problem: Debito Arudou has attempted to publicly "out" the subject on multiple times regarding his sexuality. Donald Keene has NEVER publicly expressed his sexual orientation. "Outing", even within the LBGT community, is extremely controversial. For a straight person to do this, however, is taboo, even if cloaked in the guise of being relevant for "same-sex partner" political issues. I believe one of the poster's motivations for adding this addition is for to get readers to read more detail on his website (remember, the article he references contains a direct link to it; no web search necessary). And the only place with that detail is the site which contains problematic language.

http://www.debito.org/?p=8824 http://www.debito.org/?p=10017 http://www.debito.org/?p=10721 http://www.debito.org/?p=10081 http://www.debito.org/?p=11898

Eido INOUE | 井上エイド 01:47, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

One important fact of this case left out of the discussion above is that the article was published in The Japan Times. That article, for the record, is on the Japan Times site here. Please read it and consider whether if it fits Wikipedia guidelines for inclusion.

All other allegations being made by Eido.inoue (COI: see Section 2.2) about my motives are incorrect and absurd. Dr. ARUDOU, Debito (Talk) 02:10, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Mr Aldwinckle charmingly described me as a "newbie editor" because I didn't bother logging in to make the edit. Of course, making judgements about a person by first glance (IP editor == newbie, therefore I can buffalo them!) is something that Mr Aldwinckle is passionately against when the target is himself and the epithet is "gaijin" rather than "newbie".
Mr Aldwinckle clearly has a bone to pick against Prof. Keene, as outlined by Inoue-san above, and his attempt to describe his own opinion piece in a low-five-figure-circulation foreign language newspaper as the weaselly "some people have said..." is outrageous at best and a violation of Wikipedia policies against conflicts of interest at worst. I suggest that Mr Aldwinckle refrain from editing this article in the interests of neutrality. 123.220.132.246 (talk) 02:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Forget community opinion columns, Debito himself is an unreliable source even when he writes a Japan Times article. No reference to anything Debito or his disciples say has any place in this article, one way or the other. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:21, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The source is an opinion piece in Debito's regular JT column. It does not state where he got his information. It is a reliable source for Debito's opinion and only Debito's opinion. Therefore, we can in theory cite it for Debito's opinion, but when he is the only published source who has attacked Keene in this manner we can't mention his opinion of the man in this article per WP:UNDUE and WP:BLP. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:37, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, if we're going to cite Dr. Arudou's personal opinions (regardless of whether they appeared in an opinion column in a newspaper or on his personal/official website), should we then refer to Keene and his fellow naturalized citizen Lafcadio Hearn as "NJ" (non-Japanese) ·as Dr. Arudou has done? If so, should we extrapolate that when Dr. Arudou uses the word "NJ" he includes foreign-born naturalized citizens like himself? Or was it an accident (I haven't checked the dates -- the entry might predate Keene's naturalization) to refer to Keene as non-Japanese, and Hearn reverted to "NJ" status upon his death or at some point thereafter? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

IPod out of battery, browser on my phone my only entertainment on the walk home, I checked the dates: Keene applied for (and probably attained -- can't double check just yet) Japanese citizenship in April 2011, and Arudou referred to him as a "non-Japanese" in October 2013.[3][4] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:17, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I should correct Eido Inoue on one point, though: probably a sizeable portion of Arudou's ... somewhat disturbingly large fanbase had probably never heard of Keene before Arudou started attacking him. (This despite the majority being English-speakers residing in Japan, and Keene having for about a half-century having been the preeminent scholar of Japanese literature writing in English.) This means that it is probably (tragically) a fair assumption to make that a significant minority of English-speaking residents of Japan share Arudou's extreme fringe opinion of Keene. Thankfully, though, this is my original extrapolation, and it of course could not be used to justify citing Arudou's non-notable opinion of Keene in the article proper. If Dr. Arudou likes, we might be able to cite his opinions of Keene in a more relevant article, but for balance's sake we'd also have to include the reader responses the Japan Times also chose to publish that (if memory serves) called his comments "ageist". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:37, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Memory did serve. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:45, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Lee?

In the first part of this article, it mentions a Chinese restaurant where Donald Keene and "Lee" ate every day. Seeing as this is the first mention of this person in the article, I think the person should be properly introduced at or before that point.

Yep, spotted the same thing here. It could likely be his wife, but that's just my guess and the name does appear out of nowhere. Needs to be clarified.

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Format of works lists

I'm going through the "Works in English" and "Works in Japanese" sections in my user sandbox to format them as bulleted lists that will match the "Translations" and "Editor" sections, rather than as wikitables - I think this will be much more compact and easier to read. I'm also adding romanizations of titles in Japanese, and romanizing the translators' and publishers' names - please let me know if you think any of this should be done differently. --Opus 113 (talk) 04:36, 25 February 2019 (UTC)