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 “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” –Voltaire 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…
by Leanne Ogasawara “The people who came to kill us–they are fanatics & assassins–but above all, they are people who lack a sense of humor.”–Renald Luzier, Charlie Hebdo staffer I never really understood the expression, “drank the Kool-Aid” –until I went to Jerusalem. It happened at the Western Wall, where I found myself standing in…
by Leanne Ogasawara “Every night God takes his glitteringmerchandise out of his showcase–holy chariots, tables of law, fancy beads,crosses and bells–and puts them back into dark boxesinside and pulls down the shutters: “Again,not one prophet has come to buy.”–Yehuda Amichai Jerusalem: utterly obssessed by the place, I even love finding copies of the holy city–…
by Leanne Ogasawara “…..all the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen…
by Leanne Ogasawara His boss was known for his mad pranks. Yes, in the good old days, people valued playfulness, remember? Kings and dukes were known to play around, and this means that an artist working for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy say, might be asked to lend a hand in the fun once…
Lauren Davis extemporizes about how astronauts became known as gods: The stories told of ancient beings so powerful that they could fling themselves into space and explore the points of light in the heavens. When Lady Adelaide moved into one of their unused crafts, many called it blasphemy. She called it research. ** by Leanne…
by Leanne Ogasawara Fitzcarraldo: “As true as I am standing here, one day I shall bring grand opera to Iquitos.” The incredible Sisyphean story of a man who wants to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in the late 19th century is only to be outdone by the crazy outlandishness…
by Leanne Ogasawara One of my favorite 3QD associates recently wrote a wonderful blog post, Old Man Bush: The Last Motherfucker. Reminiscing about the good ol' days, he asks the inevitable question, what happened to today's youth? It's true, George HW Bush was old school. Despite being accepted at Yale, he postpones college to fight…
by Leanne Ogasawara Time in space The race was on: for whoever discovered a way to accurately measure longitude aboard a ship would be able to control the seas –and thereby control the riches of the world! The search for longitude at sea was one of the great quests starting in the late Renaissance. And,…
by Leanne Ogasawara For whatever reason, all of our conversations ultimately ended with him explaining why some aspect of Japanese culture was somehow extraordinary. And this time was no different. After thanking me for the pictures I had sent of our son, he said (apropos of nothing whatsoever): 日本文化の根底に、草木国土悉皆成仏があります。人間だけでなくすべてに心があるということ。これが大切やね。(At the root of Japanese culture is…
by Leanne Ogasawara A city of heavenly gates, Jerusalem is also a city of ill-fated walls. There are the multiple lives of the glorious city walls, finally re-built by the Sultan of Magnificence in the 16th century; and there is the wailing wall (in my opinion the most beautiful wall on earth) where the Jews…
by Leanne Ogasawara “”If you want to to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and…
by Leanne Ogasawara Ending her dance naked at his feet, the king tells her she can have anything her heart desires. Salome doesn't even need to think about it–for she already knows what she wants. King Herod, mad with love for her, asks if she wouldn't prefer jewels and half his kingdom instead. But Salome…
by Leanne Ogasawara For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. Vincent Van Gogh It is my second favorite essay of all time: C.S Lewis' Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages. First delivered as a lecture in 1956, the piece was later published posthumuously…
by Leanne Ogasawara The ancients told us that it was the heart that mattered. Thinking too much, they warned, will only give you a headache. And this fact was backed up by the finest research of Medieval physicians and theologians. Aristotelian philosophy had imparted to the Medievals that the heart was hot and dry– often…
by Leanne Ogasawara The other day, my beloved and I were wandering around Best Buy looking for refill cartridges for his scanner pen. Walking in vain up and down the aisles, I thought how we are indeed living in an age when consumerism has replaced citizenship. It was somehow really disheartening seeing all the “stuff.”…
by Leanne Ogasawara Not unlike the stories surrounding my favorite Carpaccio painting, my beloved bronze is surrounded in mystery and romance. Utterly compelling, whenever I used to come home to LA, one of the first things I would long to do was to pay him a visit. He is so breath-takingly handsome –that truly a…
by Leanne Ogasawara Premise #1: Not since the Beijing Olympics has a media -generated spectacle so thoroughly taken hold of and twisted the liberal imagination as what we are seeing now concerning Syria. ++ I almost hate to bring it up but does anyone recall the media spectacle when China hosted the olympic games in…
by Leanne Ogasawara According to my Japanese almanacs, of the four seasons, it is autumn alone which is heard before it is seen. This can happen after a windless, blisteringly hot Japanese summer, when autumn arrives around the end of August. Ever so slight, it makes itself known by the sound of the stirring of…
by Leanne Ogasawara From Xia to Shang And from Shang to Zhou…. You know the story: Nine bronze tripods– cast back in the mists of great antiquity– were treasured by ancient Chinese Kings as a symbol of their right to rule. Passed down from dynasty to dynasty– for nearly 2,000 years (or so the story…