Otto Putz studied Japanese literature at the University of Munich, and modern Japanese literature at Hokkaido University. Since 1993 he has worked as a freelance translator, writer and part-time university instructor. His major translations include Soseki Natsume's I Am a Cat and Kenzaburo Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - the two works for which he won the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1999,Yasutaka Tsutsui's Hell and My Blood is Someone Else's, and Takehiko Fukunaga's Flowers of Grass.