A long career

Donald Keene retires from Columbia at 88 and moves to Japan: it is an unusual and amazing story.

(I often think, for myself, that really I will need to take the next interesting and suitable job that is offered to me, should there be one, just because I fear that I will stagnate or be psychologically and professionally deformed (!) if I spend my entire teaching career at a single university; I started teaching at Columbia in 2000, that's already eleven years in one institution, it seems like quite a long time. I like it here very much, the students are unbeatable and Manhattan is the place I would choose to live above all others, and yet at some point I may need to tear myself away...)