At the age of 20, Lou moved to Japan, where she soon had several highly acclaimed exhibitions, wrote illustrated columns for prominent local magazines and was featured regularly on a national television program for three years.
Her works are collected and exhibited in over eighty prestigious venues around the globe, including China's Palace Museum, and the United Nations Headquarters.
Even at this time, here style was distinctive: "Lou Zhenggang's earliest works earned praise from senior critics especially for their masculinity and grandeur, qualities seldom found in a female artist.
Indeed, observers who cannot read Chinese can see in these early works a progression from a strong, formal, masculine style to a more fluid and relaxed approach.
In Japan, she studied painting with noted nihonga artist Matazo Kayama (加山又造 1927-2004), which led to a flourishing of colorful styles and abstract themes — something she could not have produced if she remained within the pure calligraphic traditions of her youth.
She continued to expand her range, developing even more abstract works, including color paintings, silk screens, and classic black ink (sumi) artwork.
As a certified child prodigy, she received special permission to enroll years early at the Central Academy of Fine Art, where she was taught by masters of calligraphy and ink painting.
In 1991, she launched a two-year series of exhibitions held across Japan, entitled "Oriental Melody — Lou Zhenggang Calligraphy and Paintings", sponsored by the Yamaha Group.
[7] Beginning in October 2004, Lou hosted her own program, “Calligraphy of the Heart” [Kokoro no Sho, 心の書] on TV Tokyo, a nationwide television network.
A 2007 Chinese TV program provided insight into this dramatic change in her development: "Lou Zhenggang says the aura of prodigy once hovered over her life like an unspeakable burden.