Shinchosha Publishing Co. said Thursday it plans to publish by early 2016 a newly discovered manuscript for a short novel by U.S.-born Japanese literature specialist Donald Keene.
The manuscript of the only novel by the renowned 92-year-old critic was discovered in mid-2011 at Keene's then-home in New York by his son-in-law Seiki, 64.
The 80-page untitled story was written in English in the summer of 1957, when Keene was an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Columbia University in New York. The work was not published because the author, who has since acquired Japanese citizenship, was not confident of its quality.
The love story between a woman from the United States and a Japanese man was inspired by modern Japanese novels as Keene was working on translations of works by Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai when he wrote it.