Lucille Nixon
Encyclopedia
Lucille M. Nixon was a poet and school supervisor from Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

. In 1957 she became the first foreigner selected to participate in Utakai Hajime, the Imperial New Year’s Poetry Reading of 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...

. Nixon performed a 31 syllable waka
Waka (poetry)
Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...

 about the Hōryū-ji
Hōryū-ji
is a Buddhist temple in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Its full name is Hōryū Gakumonji , or Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law, the complex serving as seminary and monastery both....

, a Buddhist temple she had visited on a trip two years earlier. After her reading, she won the praises of Emperor Hirohito
Hirohito
, posthumously in Japan officially called Emperor Shōwa or , was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order, reigning from December 25, 1926, until his death in 1989. Although better known outside of Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan he is now referred to...

, who encouraged her to continue writing Japanese poetry so she could become a "bridge" between Japan and the United States.

Nixon died in 1963. She authored a number of books. Among them are:
  • The Choice is Always Ours: The Classic Anthology on the Spiritual Way, Dorothy B. Phillips (Editor), Lucille M. Nixon (Editor), Elizabeth B. Howes (Editor)
  • Sounds from the unknown; a collection of Japanese-American tanka, Lucille M. Nixon (Editor), Tomoe Tana
  • Young ranchers at Oak Valley
  • Living in Japan


An elementary school in Palo Alto currently bears her name.
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