Yoko Tawada’s father was a bookseller in Tokyo. She wrote her first novel at the age of 12 and self-published it with photocopies. She studied literature – focusing on Russian literature – for a trip to Russia at the age of 19, and took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Hamburg. In 1982, she returned to the Hanseatic city to live and study modern German literature. She completed her doctorate on Spielzeug und Sprachmagie in der europäischen Literatur with doctoral advisor Sigrid Weigel in Zurich and began to write in German. Her first literary work Japan-Lesebuch was published by Tuebingen Konkursbuchverlag, which was her first book published in Germany in 1987, and then in Japan in 1992. Tawada writes primarily about the phenomenon of being foreign.