Prominent literature scholar and Japan expert Donald Keene has been granted Japanese citizenship, according to the government gazette issued Thursday.
Keene, 89, professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York, was awarded the Japanese Order of Culture in 2008.
Since Keene was already spending half of each year in Japan, he decided around January 2011 to live in Japan full time, partly because travel had become physically demanding. But sources reportedly indicated the March 11 calamity distressed him and intensified his desire to make Japan home. He arrived in September.