Christoph Langemann was born in 1961 in Basel, Switzerland. In 1980, he started studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. He visited Japan in 1981 and 1984. For many years he had an interest in Japanese calligraphy. In 1988 he graduated in Japanese studies with a master thesis on kambun literature. Until 1991 he was employed at the University of Zürich. After that he has only sporadically worked in the field of East Asian studies. Among others, he has translated Sanshiro and Kusamakura by Soseki Natsume as well as Ochikubo Monogatari (a traditional novel, in cooperation with Verena Werner) into German.