Poet, dramatist, and translator (Mother Goose and Peanuts into Japanese) Tanikawa Shuntaro has received the Saida Takashi Drama Prize, and the Noma, Shogakkan, Hana-Tsubaki, Yomiuri literary prizes, and (in translation by Elliott and Kawamura) the American Book Award.

He has read his work in Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Rotterdam, London, and under the auspices of the Japan Society, the Academy of American Poets, the Library of Congress, and other places throughout the United States.