ドナルド・キーン（Donald Keene、1922–2019）は、ニューヨーク出身の日本文学・日本文化研究者、翻訳者。コロンビア大学在学中にアーサー・ウェイリー訳『源氏物語』と出会い、第二次世界大戦中に海軍日本語学校で日本語を学んだ。戦後はコロンビア大学や京都大学で研究を深め、古典から近現代までの日本文学を英語圏に紹介するとともに、五十年以上にわたりコロンビア大学で教えた。2002年に文化功労者、2008年に文化勲章を受章。東日本大震災後の2011年に日本への永住を表明し、翌年、日本国籍を取得した。代表作『百代の過客 日記にみる日本人』（原題 “Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese as Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries”）は、平安時代から江戸時代までの日記文学約八十編を読み解き、日本人が日記に旅、恋愛、信仰、老い、日常生活をどのように書き残してきたかを明らかにした。
Donald Keene (1922–2019) was a New York-born scholar and translator of Japanese literature and culture. His interest in Japan began when he encountered Arthur Waley’s translation of “The Tale of Genji” as a student at Columbia University, and he later studied Japanese at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School during World War II. After the war, he pursued further research at Columbia and Kyoto universities, introduced Japanese literature from the classical to the modern period to English-language readers, and taught at Columbia for more than fifty years. He was named a Person of Cultural Merit in 2002 and received Japan’s Order of Culture in 2008. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, he announced his decision to settle permanently in Japan and became a Japanese citizen in 2012. His representative work, “Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese as Revealed Through 1,000 Years of Diaries,” examines approximately eighty diaries written from the Heian through the Edo period, tracing how Japanese people recorded travel, love, religious belief, aging, and everyday life.
