Leza Lowitz (born December 29, 1962,San Francisco) is an American expatriate writer residing inTokyo,Japan and in the American Southwest. She has written, edited and co-translated over twenty books, many about Japan, its relationship with the US, 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 contemporaryJapanese society. She is also an internationally renown yoga and mindfulness teacher recognized for her work bridging poetry and the spiritual path through disciplines like yoga and mindfulness.
Lowitz grew up in San Francisco and Berkeley, and attendedBerkeley High School, from which she graduated in 1980. She was accepted into the first year ofNYU's School of Dramatic Writing at age 18, and attendedNYU for two years before transferring toU.C. Berkeley. She received her B.A. in English literature from theUniversity of California at Berkeley in 1984 and her M.A. in creative writing fromSan Francisco State University in 1988, where she briefly taught before moving to Japan. She studied with poetsStan Rice andRobert Hass.
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 withMiyuki Aoyama and Akemi Tomioka of the groundbreaking anthology:A Long Rainy Season: Contemporary Japanese Women’s Poetry (1994), which introduced Western readers to thehaiku andtanka (waka) of Fumi Saito, Yuko Kawano, Machi Tawara, Akitsu Ei and thirteen others. Lowitz and Aoyama later publishedThe 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 andIbaragi Noriko, who appeared alongside emerging Korean-Japanese (Zainichi) poets Chuwol Chong, Kyong Mi Park andAinu poet Mieko Chikapp, among others. The two volumes,A Long Rainy Season andOther 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 theshakuhachi masterChristopher Yohmei Blasdel on a series of readings and musical performances from these anthologies throughout Northern California.
In 1995, Lowitz editedManoa: Towards a Literature of the Periphery, another anthology of translated Japanese literature, with fiction by Kyoko Murata, Hiromi Itoh,Yoshiko Shibaki,Teru Miyamoto, andAngo Sakaguchi. In 2001, she editedManoa: Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War, which contained essays byDonald Richie and Ishii Shinpei, last letters ofkamikaze pilots (first-time in translation), testimonials from Taiwanesecomfort women, voices of student nurses from Okinawa ordered to commit suicide, and war-related fiction and essays byMishima Yukio, Hayashi Kyoko,Dazai Osamu, Kijima Hajime andYōko Ogawa. The book also containsmanga fromBarefoot Gen byKeiji Nakazawa (translated byFrederik Schodt et al.), poetry byTamura Ryuichi, Ayukawa Nobuo,Ko Un, Sagawa Aki, Ishigaki Choko, and war-related fiction by Mary Yukari Waters andJeanne Wakatsuki Houston.
In 2003, she and Hisako Ifshin translated the prison-camphaiku of World War II internee Itaru Ina, which appeared inModern Haiku and later in theEmmy Award-winning documentary filmFrom A Silk Cocoon, directed by Satsuki Ina. Lowitz, Ifshin and with Ralph McCarthy also translated the poetry of pop sculptor cum cultural iconYayoi Kusama (Violet Obsession) in conjunction with Kusama's solo exhibition touring theLos Angeles County Museum of Art, theNew York Museum of Modern Art and theWalker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1998/99.
In 2004, Lowitz editedThe Japan Journals 1947-2004 byDonald Richie. From the former curator of film at theNew York Museum of Modern Art and the leading Western authority on Japanese film,The Japan Journals include post-war encounters withYasunari Kawabata,D.T. Suzuki,Yukio Mishima,Toru Takemitsu andBando Tamasaburo.
In 2008, Lowitz with Shogo Oketani translatedAmerica and Other Poems by Ayukawa Nobuo. These are war poems by Japan's foremost modernist poet, who was the Japanese translator ofT. S. Eliot and a founding member of theArechi orWaste Land school of poetry, but also an unhappy soldier in theJapanese Imperial Army. This book received theJapan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature from TheDonald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at New York'sColumbia University in 2003.[1]
Lowitz first lived in Tokyo from 1989 to 1994, when she worked as a freelance writer/editor forThe Japan Times and theAsahi Evening News and was an art critic forArt in America. She lectured on American Literature and Writing atRikkyo University andTokyo University. She was a regular book reviewer for KQED Radio'sPacific Time, covering Asia and the Pacific Rim, and also reviewed books on Asia forThe Japan Times andManoa (1991-2003).
Lowitz's own writing explores the idea of place, displacement and what "home" means to expatriate women. Her 2001 bookYoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By used theYoga Sutra ofPatanjali to structure her personal quest for a spiritual life. The book has appeared in French, Japanese andPersian editions, with individual poems having been translated into Spanish and Burmese as well. She and Reema Datta later co-authoredSacredSanskrit Words for Yoga, Chant, and Meditation forStone 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 Contributing Editor for theKyoto Journal.
Lowitz's work has appeared in hundreds of literary journals including The Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, The New York Times online, Yoga Journal, Best Buddhist Writing of 2011, Harpers, ZYZZYVA, Prairie Schooner, Wingspan (All Nippon Airways in-flight magazine) and anthologies such asLanguage for A New Century (W.W. Norton),The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, The Poem Behind the Poem: Translating Asian Poetry (Copper Canyon Press),Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories, My Postwar Life (Chicago Quarterly Review),Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad, The Broken Bridge, An Inn Near Kyoto andRUNES. Lowitz's fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio's “The Sound of Writing” and her art reviews and literary criticism have been published inArt in America, The Asahi Evening News, Sculpture, The Japan Times, The Mainichi News, The Asahi Evening News, The Yomiuri Daily News, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, among others. She is a regular contributor to the "Doubletake" column on multicultural life inWingspan, All-Nippon Airlines in-flight magazine.
For over twenty years, she has been owner of the popular yoga studio Sun and Moon Yoga in Tokyohttps://www.sunandmoon.jp, and has taught writing, yoga and mindfulness around the world at many literary and yoga festivals. She graduated from a seven-year intensive program in Vajrayana Buddhism in 2013. She is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher through the Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeleyhttps://ggsc.berkeley.edu/who_we_are. She is married to the writer and translator Shogo Oketani, author ofJ-Boys: Kazuo's World, Tokyo, 1965. Her work is archived in theUniversity of Chicago library's special collection of poetry from Japan.
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