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 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…
by Leanne Ogasawara It was mid-summer 2011 when the news broke that a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting had been found. Apparently, a New York City art dealer noticed the picture at an estate sale in Louisiana and purchased it for around $10,000. This occurred back in 2005, and the following six years were spent…
by Leanne Ogasawara In heaven, there will be no more sea journeys, says Virgil. For much of human history, to journey by ship across open waters was thought of almost as an act of transgression. It was something requiring great temerity and audacity. It was therefore something not to be taken lightly. Crossing boundaries, such…
by Leanne Ogasawara I once lived in a town famous for plum blossoms. To get there, you have to board an express train out of the busiest train station in the world. The view out the window won’t impress you all that much either; as Tokyo sprawls endlessly gray outward from the center. After about…
by Leanne Ogasawara In the great reality show that is American Politics, this election did not disappoint. It had hope, followed by heartbreak (Beto, Gillum). And there was fear –in the form of an “invading caravan,” with whispers of Russian hackers. It had titanic drama, whipped up to a torrid frenzy by the media, in love with the…
by Leanne Ogasawara Not all that long ago, I was at a dinner party with a group of astrophysicists, when the topic of time travel came up. Sitting up excitedly in my chair, I thought that things were taking a decidedly interesting turn. Actually, the evening had already taken an interesting turn; for our host–here…
by Leanne Ogasawara “Someday, I’d like to visit Salzburg when the Summer Festival’s not going on. That way, I can see if the place is real; for I just can’t help wondering if Salzburg is not some kind of enchanted fairy world, which only comes into being when the music is playing…” “Nonsense” said our…
by Leanne Ogasawara We should first count our blessings that Dan Brown has never written about the painting. Though I suspect such a seemingly matter-of-fact picture as Velázquez’s Las Meninas would not serve as an easy target. With no hint of the occult –nor even a whiff of the Templars– it probably wouldn’t capture his attention. And…
by Leanne Ogasawara Why would she do it? Maybe she wanted to give the middle finger to her husband? Maybe she wanted to send a sign to his base voters? Why didn’t someone stop her from wearing a jacket that said, “I really don’t care.” It was all another day of Trump TV. Another day…
by Leanne Ogasawara On May 11th, to mark the 100th anniversary of Richard Feynman’s birth, Caltech put on a truly dazzling evening of public talks. I heard that tickets sold-out online in four minutes; and this event was so popular that attendees started queueing up to enter the auditorium an hour before the program began.…
by Leanne Ogasawara I've been dreaming of al-Andalus my entire life. I'm not even sure where I first heard the name–and indeed, the name is like a one-word poem. A magical incantation; for it is enough just to say it–or better, to whisper it. Al-Andalus. I might have learned about the glories of Muslim-ruled Spain…
by Leanne Ogasawara When I was a young, I don't remember why, but I scribbled a poem by Osip Mandelstam on a piece of thick, mauve-color Nepalese mulberry paper. And as I wrote it, I thought to myself, "This is a poem to cross a desert with." Depriving me of sea, of a space to…