Taichi Yamada worked at the world-renowned Shochiku film studios until he set out on a highly successful career as a freelance scriptwriter and novelist. Winner of the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for the best human-interest novel, Strangers is his English-language debut. Wayne P. Lammers grew up in Japan as the child of missionaries, and is now an independent Japanese-to-English translator working out of Portland, Oregon, focusing mainly on literary and cultural materials. Born in Ohio and raised in Japan, he has been bilingual since childhood. He is the author of two books and has published a dozen full-length translations, including work by Junzo Shono (one of Kojima's contemporaries), Taichi Yamada, Shintaro Ishihara, Mitsuya Kakuta, Aska Mochizuki, and Ooka Shohei. Lammers holds an MA and PhD in Japanese Language and Literature and is the recipient of a PEN West Literary Award for Translation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (Modern), an NEA Translation Grant, and a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship Wayne P. Lammers grew up in Japan as the child of missionaries, and is now an independent Japanese-to-English translator working out of Portland, Oregon, focusing mainly on literary and cultural materials. Born in Ohio and raised in Japan, he has been bilingual since childhood. He is the author of two books and has published a dozen full-length translations, including work by Junzo Shono (one of Kojima's contemporaries), Taichi Yamada, Shintaro Ishihara, Mitsuya Kakuta, Aska Mochizuki, and Ooka Shohei. Lammers holds an MA and PhD in Japanese Language and Literature and is the recipient of a PEN West Literary Award for Translation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (Modern), an NEA Translation Grant, and a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship