Prominent U.S.-born Japanese literature scholar Donald Keene, who introduced a roster of talented writers from Japan to the world, died of cardiac arrest at a Tokyo hospital on Sunday. He was 96.
Keene obtained Japanese citizenship in 2012 after seeing the struggle faced by those hit by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami disasters that devastated coastal regions of Tohoku.
He became close friends with a number of Japanese authors and scholars, including the late novelist Yukio Mishima, Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata and writer Junichiro Tanizaki.
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