Natsuko Imamura was born in Hiroshima Prefecture. She has won the Osamu Dazai Prize, the Yukio Mishima Prize and the Akutagawa Prize for her fiction, which in addition to This is Amiko includes The Woman in the Purple Skirt. She lives in Osaka with her husband and daughter. <p/>Hitomi Yoshio is Associate Professor of Global Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies at Waseda University in Japan. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2012, and has published articles on women writers and feminist literary communities in late 19th and early 20th century Japan. In addition to Natsuko Imamura, she has also translated short stories by Mieko Kawakami.