During her thirty-plus years in Japan, award-winning translator JULIET CARPENTER, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has rendered into English a wide array of modern fiction, essays, and poetry by authors such as Kobo Abe, Fumiko Enchi, Machi Tawara, and Ryotaro Shiba. Her most recent translations include Shadow Family, a contemporary mystery by Miyuki Miyabe, and The Sail of My Soul, modern haiku by Seishi Yamaguchi. A devotee of traditional Japanese music, Carpenter is a licensed instructor of the koto and shamisen. She teaches at Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto and resides in Ikoma, Nara Prefecture.
SEN SOSHITSU XVI was born in 1956, the first son of Sen Soshitsu XV. He graduated from Doshisha University in Kyoto and was ordained as a buddhist clergyman at the age of twenty-six. In 2002, he succeeded his father as the grand master of the Urasenke tea school.
