Born and raised in Los Angeles, Leanne Ogasawara studied philosophy with the great Hubert Dreyfus at U.C Berkeley and Japanese Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Where has the time gone? She spent most of the past twenty years in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan where she worked as a freelance Japanese translator and sometimes writer and student of Tea. Now, back in LA, she still loves traveling –though mostly in her imagination via books, art and music. Her creative writing has appeared in the Millions, Michigan Quarterly Review, Kyoto Journal, River Teeth/Beautiful Things, Hedgehog Review, Entropy, the Dublin Review of Books, aPleiades Magazine and Gulf Coast Journal. Her short “Bare Bones” was the winner of the 2020 Calvino Prize, judged by Joyce Carol Oates. > Email: leanneogasawara [at] icloud.edu
Website: http://www.leanneogasawara.com
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. What are the chances that one of the greatest painters alive– a genius of portraiture, no less– would arrive at the court of the most infamous king in British history at the precise moment when the king began sending his royal wives to the chopping block? Henry VIII. Even today, we…
by Leanne Ogasawara I went walking in a garden of poems. It was a perfect autumn day. And the garden, located within the confines of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, is said to be the finest classical garden outside of China. It is called the Garden of Flowing Fragrance 流芳園. What is the flowing fragrance…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. And You May Find Yourself Living in an Age of Mass Extinction…. So begins Timothy Morton’s latest book, All Art is Ecological. Published as part of Penguin’s new Green Ideas Series, this slim paperback sits alongside nineteen other works of environmental writing. From farmers and biologists to artists and philosophers, spanning…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. El Santuario de Chimayó We arrived in Chimayó in the lull after Easter. Nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the small hamlet lies about forty-five minutes north of Santa Fe. If I hadn’t seen videos of the great crowds that throng the sanctuary during Holy Week, I…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. Like clockwork, every year around the spring equinox, the ducks and egrets would return to the river in Tochigi. And sprigs of green grass would start sprouting in our lawn. This was when people started taking to the hills to pick mountain vegetables, herbs, and other wild foods. My son loved…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. The sound of thousands of clattering stainless steel plates and bowls ripple across the water, as hundreds line up to enter the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Built atop a platform in the middle of a pool of water, this is the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Pilgrims arrive at the…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. The year is 2025. Frank, who is an American aid worker living in northern India, is alarmed to wake up one morning to an outside temperature of 103° F with 35% humidity. Things go from bad to worse, when the power grid goes down, and there is no air conditioning. As…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. Imagine finding out that intelligent life has been discovered on the far side of the galaxy. To learn that across the endless expanse of intergalactic space there exists a planet filled with new forms of life –and riches unimagined– if only we can find them. It won’t be as easy. Even…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. Of all the places I’ve never been, Borneo is my favorite. I have several times been within spitting distance: to the Philippines—as far south as Panay; to the court cities of central Java and to the highlands of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. I’ve spent many happy days on Peninsular Malaysia. Have lived…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. I had been in Orvieto about a week, when a young American woman came up to me in the painted chapel and said, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” Not waiting for my answer she continued, “Do you have any idea what these paintings mean?” Looking at her astonished face, I…
by Leanne Ogasawara Arriving in Vienna, we immediately set out for District 14, in the western suburbs of the city. Exhausted after the long journey from Los Angeles, all we wanted to do was get something to eat and crash out in our room. Unfortunately, Viennese architect Otto Wagner’s legendary church was only opened to…
by Leanne Ogasawara Earthquake 1. It was around midnight, Los Angeles time. And my mobile pinged with an incoming message. “Sorry to text so late, but you should turn on the TV.” It was from an old friend. He didn’t text me often, so I knew something was wrong. I grabbed my laptop. There was…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. It was at the height of Obama’s massive acceleration of George W’s drone program, when city planner Asher J Kohn began imagining his drone-proof “Shura City.” He did this, he said, “Out of the realization that the law had no response to drone warfare.” And so he came up with his…
by Leanne Ogasawara Imagine finding out that intelligent life had been discovered in our galaxy. To learn that across the endless ocean of intergalactic space there exists a planet filled with new forms of life –and riches unimagined: this was how it must have felt for the people of the Renaissance, when Christopher Columbus discovered…
by Leanne Ogasawara Photographs by Tracey Parmley Nuki 1. Back from three weeks on the road, I immediately consult my Japanese almanac. To my delight, I see we are now in the Time of White Dew (白露): Falling just prior to the Autumnal Equinox, the sun is said to have passed the 165th solar degree…
by Leanne Ogasawara One God, One Farinelli… Stepping onto the stage, the singer draws in a long breath as he gazes out across the audience. For a moment, he is blinded by the light of innumerable candles. So lavishly lit, it is a miracle that the theater didn’t burn down more than it did over…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. The year was 1683. And the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Kara Mustafa Pasha, was leading one of the most organized war machines the world had ever seen, westward– toward Vienna. We know that his campaign would end in failure. The Pasha himself held ultimately responsible, he would be made to suffer the…
by Leanne Ogasawara Anyone who has ever found themselves caught in a staring contest with an octopus –those soulful cat-eyes returning your gaze through the thick glass of an aquarium tank– can attest to the uncanny power these creatures exert over our human imagination. They certainly look alien. With three hearts pumping blue, copper-infused blood,…
by Leanne Ogasawara 1. The philosopher and the translator It was probably the most interesting translation job I ever had. Hired directly by the philosopher himself, my task was to translate into English a series of talks and papers he would be delivering in the US and Europe in the coming year. Philosophy being what…
by Leanne Ogasawara I’d been living in Tokyo about ten years, when a friend’s father decided to perform a little experiment on me. Arriving one cool autumn evening at their home in suburban Mejirodai, he waved my friend away, telling her: “I want to have a little chat with Leanne.” Sitting down on the sofa…