She attended primary school in Japan, graduating from Tsuda College in Tokyo in 1951.
[1] While teaching in Hawaii, she was a specialist of Japan, of psychological anthropology and of culture and social organization.
[3] She has won multiple awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Council for International Exchange, a Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, a Japan Foundation Research Fellowship.
[5] An obituary sums up her career as follows: “Takie Lebra will be remembered for her feistiness that combined probing intellect with humor.
For her many students and colleagues, she demonstrated that the life of the mind should never forget the body, that we are driven as whole creatures that embrace emotions, relationships, institutions, and ideas.