Philip Gabriel received his doctorate in Japanese literature from Cornell University after studying in Japan under a Fulbright graduate fellowship. He published his first translation of a short story by Haruki Murakami in 1988. Since then he has published many translations of Murakami's works.In addition he has published translations of novels by Kenzaburo Oe, Senji Kuroi, Masahiko Shimada and Natsuo Kirino. His translation of Kuroi's novel Gunsei (Life in the Cul-de-sac) won the 2001Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the translation of Japanese Literature, and in 2006 he was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.