Tanikawa Shuntaro was born in Tokyo in 1931. Since the publication of his first poetry collection Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude in 1952, he has authored numerous works. His many awards include the 4th Japan Record Awards Lyrics Award in 1962 for Songs for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the 1975 Japan Translation Cultural Award for his Japanese translation of The Songs of Mother Goose; the 1982 Yomiuri Prize for Literature for Map of the Days; the 2005 Mainichi Art Award for Chagall and a Leaf and The Selected Works of Shuntaro Tanikawa, Vol. 1-3; and the inaugural Nobuo Ayukawa Award for Tromso Collage in 2010.