＜ドナルド・キーンが描いた日本――生誕100年に＞/18 研究者としての挫折 そして日本へ
My life in Cambridge was in most ways ideal for a scholar. My teaching load was light, and the vacations totaled more than six months each year. The collection of Japanese books in the University Library, at first restricted to the rare editions of the Tokugawa period given to the library by Aston and other pioneers in the domain of Japanese studies, had now been much augmented by purchases of modern books, and it was certainly adequate for my needs.
（中略）
My first book, The Battles of Coxinga, was published in 1951. I was in Istanbul, attending the Congress of Orientalists, at the time of publication, and looked forward to my return to England, imagining I would see copies of my book in the windows of the bookshops in Cambridge. Alas, the book never made a window anywhere, and I can hardly recall ever having seen a copy on sale. It was reviewed in a few specialist periodicals and then left to disappear into the great void of unread books.
Many young scholars have had the same experience, but nothing can prepare one or console one for the shock of having (with immense effort and expenditure of time) produced a book that no one wants to read. I marvel now that this experience did not make me decide never to publish another book, but perhaps (I have forgotten now) a spirit of never-say-die impelled me to write a book that would really be read and respected.
My second book, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, was a study of the interest that Japanese of the eighteenth century manifested in Europe.
（中略）
The Japanese Discovery of Europe had been somewhat more favorably received, but I never met anyone in the university who had actually read it. (I did not realize at the time that this was normal in academic communities.)
[On Familiar Terms]
第一作を出したものの、欧州で日本の文学や歴史への関心など、ほとんどなかった時代のことで、キーンさんは若い研究者なら誰もが出くわす苦い経験を味わうことになる。本の売れ行きもだが、それ以上に深刻だったのは講義への関心の薄さだった。
In the spring of 1952 I offered a series of lectures on Japanese literature at Cambridge University. The frustration I had begun to feel over the fewness of my students and the general lack of interest in my work had made me try to think of some way of arousing interest in my subject and satisfying my vaguely sensed desire to be a real teacher. It occurred to me that a series of lectures, open not only to everyone in the university but to the town as well, might be the best solution to my problem.
I prepared five lectures, trying to make them as interesting and intelligible as possible. Apart from the introductory lecture, in which I presented my impressions of the characteristics of Japanese literature as a whole, I gave one lecture each on poetry, theater, fiction, and, finally, what I called “Japanese literature under Western influence.\