Alfred Birnbaum was born in the U.S. in 1955 and raised in Japan from age five. He studied at Waseda University and has been a freelance literary and cultural translator since 1980. Birnbaum's translation works include Haruki Murakami's Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance and other works, Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth, and Natsuki Ikezawa's A Burden of Flowers.