Leza Lowitz
Encyclopedia
Leza Lowitz is an American expatriate writer residing in Tokyo
, Japan
. She has written, edited and translated over fifteen books about Japan, its relationship with the U.S.A., on the changing role of Japanese women in literature, art and society, and about the lasting effect of the Second World War and the desire for reconciliation in contemporary Japanese society.
and tanka
(waka
) of Fumi Saito, Yuko Kawano, Machi Tawara, Akitsu Ei and thirteen others. Lowitz and Aoyama later published The Collected Tanka of Akitsu Ei (AHA Poetry Press.)
A companion volume, Other Side River: Free Verse (1995) featured contemporary Japanese women free-verse poets in translation. It contains the work of three dozen Japanese women writers, including well-known poets as Shiraishi Kazuko, Ishigaki Rin and Ibaragi Noriko, who appeared alongside emerging Korean-Japanese (Zainichi
) poets Chuwol Chong, Kyong Mi Park and Ainu
poet Mieko Chikapp, among others. The two volumes, A Long Rainy Season and Other Side River, reflect a variety of literary styles and present an astonishing political and social awareness of women in a still male-centered society. Western readers are offered a new perspective on the lives of contemporary Japanese women. In 1993, she collaborated with the shakuhachi
master Christopher Yohmei Blasdel
on a series of readings and musical performances from these anthologies throughout Northern California.
In 1995, Lowitz edited Manoa: Towards a Literature of the Periphery, another anthology of translated Japanese literature, with fiction by Kyoko Murata, Hiromi Itoh, Yoshiko Shibaki, Teru Miyamoto
, and Ango Sakaguchi
. In 2001, she edited Manoa: Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War, which contained essays by Donald Richie
and Ishii Shinpei, last letters of kamikaze
pilots (first-time in translation), testimonials from Taiwanese Comfort Women
, voices of student nurses from Okinawa ordered to commit suicide, and war-related fiction and essays by Mishima Yukio, Hayashi Kyoko, Dazai Osamu, Kijima Hajime and Yoko Ogawa
. The book also contains manga
from Barefoot Gen
by Keiji Nakazawa
(translated by Frederik Schodt et al.), poetry by Tamura Ryuichi
, Ayukawa Nobuo, Ko Un
, Sagawa Aki, Ishigaki Choko, and war-related fiction by Mary Yukari Waters and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
.
In 2003, she and Hisako Ifshin translated the prison-camp haiku
of World War II internee Itaru Ina, which appeared in Modern Haiku and later in the Emmy Award
-winning documentary film From A Silk Cocoon, directed by Satsuki Ina. Lowitz, Ifshin and with Ralph McCarthy also translated the poetry of pop sculptor cum cultural icon Yayoi Kusama
(Violet Obsession) in conjunction with Kusama's solo exhibition touring the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
, the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis in 1998/99.
In 2004, Lowitz edited The Japan Journals 1947-2004 by Donald Richie. From the former curator of film at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the leading Western authority on Japanese film, The Japan Journals include post-war encounters with Yasunari Kawabata
, D.T. Suzuki, Yukio Mishima
, Toru Takemitsu
and Bando Tamasaburo
.
In 2008, Lowitz with Shogo Oketani translated America and Other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo. These are war poems by Japan's foremost modernist poet, who was the Japanese translator of T. S. Eliot
and a founding member of the Arechi or Waste Land
school of poetry, but also an unhappy soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army. This book received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
from The Donald Keene
Center of Japanese Culture at New York's Columbia University
.
Lowitz first lived in Tokyo from 1989 to 1994, when she worked as a freelance writer/editor for The Japan Times
and the Asahi Evening News and was an art critic for Art in America
. She lectured on American Literature and Writing at Rikkyo University and Tokyo University. She was a regular book reviewer for KQED Radio’s Pacific Time, covering Asia and the Pacific Rim, and also reviewed books on Asia for The Japan Times and Manoa (1991-2003).
Lowitz's own writing explores the idea of place, displacement and what "home" means to expatriate women. Her 2001 book Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By used the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
to structure her personal quest for a spiritual life. She and Reema Datta later co-authored Sacred Sanskrit
Words for Yoga, Chant, and Meditation for Stone Bridge Press
. She also writes short stories and essays. After a decade in America (1994-2004) she returned to Tokyo, where she opened a yoga studio. She is currently fiction editor for the Kyoto Journal.
Lowitz received her M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University
in 1988 and her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984, where she studied with poets Stan Rice
and Robert Hass
. She is married to the writer and translator Shogo Oketani.
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. She has written, edited and translated over fifteen books about Japan, its relationship with the U.S.A., on the changing role of Japanese women in literature, art and society, and about the lasting effect of the Second World War and the desire for reconciliation in contemporary Japanese society.
Career
During the 1990s, Lowitz helped to bring many modern Japanese poets and fiction writers into English for the first time. She was editor and co-translator with Miyuki Aoyama and Akemi Tomioka of the groundbreaking anthology: A Long Rainy Season: Contemporary Japanese Women’s Poetry (1994), which introduced Western readers to the haikuHaiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
and tanka
Tanka
Tanka may refer to:* Tanka, a form of Japanese waka * Tanka prose, a literary genre which combines tanka poems and prose* Thangka, a pictorial representation in Tibetan Buddhism...
(waka
Waka (poetry)
Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...
) of Fumi Saito, Yuko Kawano, Machi Tawara, Akitsu Ei and thirteen others. Lowitz and Aoyama later published The Collected Tanka of Akitsu Ei (AHA Poetry Press.)
A companion volume, Other Side River: Free Verse (1995) featured contemporary Japanese women free-verse poets in translation. It contains the work of three dozen Japanese women writers, including well-known poets as Shiraishi Kazuko, Ishigaki Rin and Ibaragi Noriko, who appeared alongside emerging Korean-Japanese (Zainichi
Zainichi
Zainichi is a Japanese term meaning " residing in Japan," used often to point out Zainichi Koreans.*Zainichi Korean or Zainichi Chōsenjin or Zainichi Kankokujin .*Zainichi Gaikokujin , meaning "foreigner in Japan".*Zainichi Beigun...
) poets Chuwol Chong, Kyong Mi Park and Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
poet Mieko Chikapp, among others. The two volumes, A Long Rainy Season and Other Side River, reflect a variety of literary styles and present an astonishing political and social awareness of women in a still male-centered society. Western readers are offered a new perspective on the lives of contemporary Japanese women. In 1993, she collaborated with the shakuhachi
Shakuhachi
The is a Japanese end-blown flute. It is traditionally made of bamboo, but versions now exist in ABS and hardwoods. It was used by the monks of the Fuke school of Zen Buddhism in the practice of...
master Christopher Yohmei Blasdel
Christopher Yohmei Blasdel
Christopher Yohmei Blasdel is a shakuhachi performer, researcher and writer specializing in the music of Japan and Asia. In 1972, while on foreign study in Tokyo, he was introduced to the Kinko Style shakuhachi master Goro Yamaguchi, whom he studied with until Yamaguchi’s death in 1999...
on a series of readings and musical performances from these anthologies throughout Northern California.
In 1995, Lowitz edited Manoa: Towards a Literature of the Periphery, another anthology of translated Japanese literature, with fiction by Kyoko Murata, Hiromi Itoh, Yoshiko Shibaki, Teru Miyamoto
Teru Miyamoto
is a Japanese author.-Biography:Miyamoto was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan and graduated from the faculty of letters at Otemon Gakuin University after which he became a copywriter. In 1970, he began to write his first novel and quit his job...
, and Ango Sakaguchi
Ango Sakaguchi
was a Japanese novelist and essayist. His real name was Heigo Sakaguchi .-History:From Niigata, Sakaguchi was one of a group of young Japanese writers to rise to prominence in the years immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II...
. In 2001, she edited Manoa: Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War, which contained essays by Donald Richie
Donald Richie
Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17...
and Ishii Shinpei, last letters of kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
pilots (first-time in translation), testimonials from Taiwanese Comfort Women
Comfort women
The term "comfort women" was a euphemism used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese...
, voices of student nurses from Okinawa ordered to commit suicide, and war-related fiction and essays by Mishima Yukio, Hayashi Kyoko, Dazai Osamu, Kijima Hajime and Yoko Ogawa
Yoko Ogawa
is a Japanese writer.-Biography:Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya, Hyōgo, with her husband and son. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor's Beloved Equation has been...
. The book also contains manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
from Barefoot Gen
Barefoot Gen
is a Japanese manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa's own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen lives with his family...
by Keiji Nakazawa
Keiji Nakazawa
is a Japanese manga artist and writer.He was born in Hiroshima and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing...
(translated by Frederik Schodt et al.), poetry by Tamura Ryuichi
Tamura Ryuichi
was a Japanese poet, essayist and translator of English language novels and poetry who was active during the Showa period of Japan.-Biography:Tamura was born in what is now Sugamo, Tokyo, and was a graduate of the Literature Department of Meiji University, where he met a group of young poets...
, Ayukawa Nobuo, Ko Un
Ko Un
Ko Un is a South Korean poet. His works have been translated and published in more than 15 countries and he has been imprisoned many times...
, Sagawa Aki, Ishigaki Choko, and war-related fiction by Mary Yukari Waters and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is an American writer. Her writings are mostly focused on the ethnic diversity of the United States...
.
In 2003, she and Hisako Ifshin translated the prison-camp haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
of World War II internee Itaru Ina, which appeared in Modern Haiku and later in the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
-winning documentary film From A Silk Cocoon, directed by Satsuki Ina. Lowitz, Ifshin and with Ralph McCarthy also translated the poetry of pop sculptor cum cultural icon Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...
(Violet Obsession) in conjunction with Kusama's solo exhibition touring the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
, the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis in 1998/99.
In 2004, Lowitz edited The Japan Journals 1947-2004 by Donald Richie. From the former curator of film at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the leading Western authority on Japanese film, The Japan Journals include post-war encounters with Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
, D.T. Suzuki, Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
, Toru Takemitsu
Toru Takemitsu
was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre...
and Bando Tamasaburo
Bando Tamasaburo
is a stage name taken on by a series of Kabuki actors of the Bandō family. Of the five who have held this name, most were adopted into the lineage. Many members of the Bandō family were also adopted or blood members of the Morita family, who established and ran the Morita-za theatre in...
.
In 2008, Lowitz with Shogo Oketani translated America and Other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo. These are war poems by Japan's foremost modernist poet, who was the Japanese translator of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and a founding member of the Arechi or Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
school of poetry, but also an unhappy soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army. This book received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature was established in 1979 and is administered by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University...
from The Donald Keene
Donald Keene
Donald Lawrence Keene is a Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene was University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years...
Center of Japanese Culture at New York's Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
Lowitz first lived in Tokyo from 1989 to 1994, when she worked as a freelance writer/editor for The Japan Times
The Japan Times
The Japan Times is an English language newspaper published in Japan. Unlike its competitors, the Daily Yomiuri and the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, it is not affiliated with a Japanese language media organization...
and the Asahi Evening News and was an art critic for Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
. She lectured on American Literature and Writing at Rikkyo University and Tokyo University. She was a regular book reviewer for KQED Radio’s Pacific Time, covering Asia and the Pacific Rim, and also reviewed books on Asia for The Japan Times and Manoa (1991-2003).
Lowitz's own writing explores the idea of place, displacement and what "home" means to expatriate women. Her 2001 book Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By used the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
Patañjali
Patañjali is the compiler of the Yoga Sūtras, an important collection of aphorisms on Yoga practice. According to tradition, the same Patañjali was also the author of the Mahābhāṣya, a commentary on Kātyāyana's vārttikas on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī as well as an unspecified work of medicine .In...
to structure her personal quest for a spiritual life. She and Reema Datta later co-authored Sacred Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
Words for Yoga, Chant, and Meditation for Stone Bridge Press
Stone Bridge Press
Stone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
. She also writes short stories and essays. After a decade in America (1994-2004) she returned to Tokyo, where she opened a yoga studio. She is currently fiction editor for the Kyoto Journal.
Lowitz received her M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
in 1988 and her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984, where she studied with poets Stan Rice
Stan Rice
Stan Rice was an American poet and artist. He was the husband of author Anne Rice.-Biography:Stan Rice was born in Dallas, Texas 1942. He met his future wife in a high school journalism class in Richardson, Texas, and they married in Denton, Texas on October 14, 1961...
and Robert Hass
Robert Hass
Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and Materials.-Life:...
. She is married to the writer and translator Shogo Oketani.
Honors
- U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University
- International PENInternational PENPEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Best Book of Poetry - Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Association Award
- PEN Syndicated Fiction Award
- Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
- California Arts CouncilCalifornia Arts CouncilThe California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento. Its eleven council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature...
Individual Fellowship in Poetry - National Endowment for the HumanitiesNational Endowment for the HumanitiesThe National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
Independent Scholar Fellowship - Copperfield’s Dickens Fiction Award
- Barbara Deming Memorial Award in the Novel
- Japanophile Fiction Award
- Tokyo Journal Fiction Translation Award for Leipzig of Light and Color by Tawada Yoko (with Gen Watanabe)
Book Publications
- America and Other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo (co-translated by Shogo Oketani, Kaya Press)
- Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By (Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant and Meditation (Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - The Japan Journals by Donald Richie 1947-2004 (Editor, Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - Designing with Kanji: Japanese Character Motifs for Surface, Skin & Spirit (Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - Violet Obsession by Yayoi Kusama (Co-translator, Wandering Mind Books)
- A Long Rainy Season: Contemporary Japanese Women's Poetry (Volume I, Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - Other Side River: Contemporary Japanese Women's Poetry (Volume II, Stone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
) - Manoa Journal: Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War (Editor, Univ. of Hawaii Press)
- Manoa Journal: Towards A Literature of the Periphery (Editor, University of Hawaii Press)
- Japan: Spirit and Form by Shuichi Kato (Charles E. Tuttle, co-translator with Junko Abe)
- Beautiful Japan: A Souvenir (Charles E. Tuttle)
- Green Tea to Go: Short Stories from Tokyo (Printed Matter Press)
- 100 Aspects of the Moon: Poems (Printed Matter Press)
- Old Ways to Fold New Paper (Wandering Mind Books)
- Yoga Heart' ' (Stone Bridge Press)
External links
- Leza Lowitz
- Redroom--Where the Writers Are
- Interview with Leza Lowitz
- Review of Green Tea to Go in the Japan Times
- http://www.stonebridge.comStone Bridge PressStone Bridge PressStone Bridge Press, Inc. is a publishing company distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution and founded in 1989. Authors published include Donald Richie and Frederik L. Schodt...
] - Delightfully Displaced, Time Magazine review of "Donald Richie: Japan Journals 1947-2004", edited by Leza Lowitz
- 'The Japan Journals, 1947-2004': Tokyo Days and Nights, The New York Times review of "Donald Richie: Japan Journals 1947-2004" edited by Leza Lowitz
- http://www.kyotojournal.org Kyoto Journal