Obituaries: a drummer with The Cure, a master of bluegrass and a giant in Japanese literature

Anderson was born Clifford Leon Anderson in West Ham, east London.

He joined The Cure in 1983, appearing on the albums Japanese Whispers, The Top, and Concert, as well as the singles The Love Cats and The Caterpillar.

Lol Tolhurst, who played keyboards in the band, described Anderson as a true gentleman and a great musician with a wicked sense of humour which he kept until the end. He added: "It is a small measure of solace to learn that he went peacefully at his home."

Anderson played on The Cure's famous track, The Love Cats, which bucked the Robert Smith-fronted group's reputation for doom-laden sonics in favour of a jaunty beat.

A post on Anderson's Facebook page from earlier this month said there was no way of returning back from his cancer diagnosis. It said the disease was totally covering the inside of my body but urged fans to be cool, adding that Anderson was totally fine with the situation.

The message read: "Chemotherapy and radiotherapy will be discussed over the next few days, hopefully I'll be able to get back to get to you in the next few days about the outcome, and please, No Boo, Hooing, here, just be positive.

"For me it's just another life Experience and Hurdle, that one has to make yet another Choice in life, be cool, I most definitely am and positive about the situation."

THE bluegrass and country vocalist Mac Wiseman, who has died aged 93, was known for his high tenor and songs like The Ballad of Davy Crockett and Jimmy Brown the Newsboy.

Born in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Wiseman worked as a sideman for bluegrass pioneers like Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe. He recorded for Dot Records in the 1950s, eventually working as a label producer. He was a founding member and the first secretary for the Country Music Association.

He also worked as an announcer at a radio station which he said helped with his singing. “The radio experience gave me a great command of the diction of songs, where you can understand my lyrics and the words as I was saying them,” he said. “If people have to try to figure out what you’re saying or singing, you’ve lost their attention.”

THE Columbia University professor Donald Keene, who has died aged 96, was a giant in the field of Japanese literature and translation. A grandfather-like figure to generations of students, Keene fostered the growth of Japanese studies, a field that barely existed when he started as a Columbia undergraduate in the 1940s.

The prolific scholar, who worked well into his 90s, published about 25 books in English, including translations of both classical and modern writers, and some 30 in Japanese. His landmark first anthology of Japanese literature was published in 1955.

He came to feel at home in Japan, where he received many honours for his work, and settled permanently in 2011.

“I gradually thought of Japan as a place where I would like to live, and also where I would like to die,” the native New Yorker said in 2015.

Keene was the first foreigner to receive the Order of Culture from the Japanese government in 2008 for persons who have contributed greatly to Japanese art, literature or culture. He also was the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Literary Prize for literary criticism in 1985.

His introduction to Japanese literature came in 1940 when he came across a two-volume translation of The Tale of Genji, an 11th century classic, selling for 49 cents at a Times Square bookstore. He went on to learn Japanese at a U.S. Navy language school during the Second World War. He translated captured Japanese documents in Pearl Harbor and later interrogated prisoners in Okinawa, Japan.

Keene earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1949, and taught at Cambridge University for five years. He returned to Columbia in 1955 and taught for more than five decades, delivering his last lecture as an emeritus professor in 2011.

Keene became a Japanese citizen in 2012 and adopted a Japanese man, Seiki Keene, as his son in 2013.