Karen Ann Takizawa was born in Colorado, USA, in 1951. She is professor emerita of Hosei University. At the University of California, San Diego, she majored in Literature and at the graduate school at the University of Hawaii, in English as a Second Language.

For over forty years, she was involved with English education at university level in Japan. During that time, she served as a consultant on many translation projects involving English and Japanese.

Mizuhito Kanehara(born 1954 in Okayama City) is a translator. He has translated more than 660 works, including children's books, young adult novels, general fiction, and nonfiction.

His translations include The Great Blue Yonder (by Shearer; Kyuryudo), Looking for Alaska (Green; Iwanami Shoten), A Man Without a Country (Vonnegut; Chuo Koron Shinsha), The Moon and Sixpence (Maugham; Shinchosha), The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies (Berthoud & Elderkin; Film Art Sha), and Amelia Earhart: Round the World with a Flying Field Mouse (Tobin; Bronze Shinsha).

 His essay collections include I Learned Martinis from Salinger (Ushio Publishing) and Translation Goes Around (Shunyodo). He has also produced adaptations of Japanese classics such as Ugetsu Monogatari (Iwasaki Shoten) and Kanadehon Chushingura (Kaiseisha).

Website: [http://www.kanehara.jp/]