Kaori Ashizu studied at Kyoto University, and is now an associate professor at Otani University, Kyoto, Japan. She spent a year at the Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham) in 1991-2, and was a research associate at the University of Oxford in 1999-2000. She publishes on Shakespeare and the Japanese reception of Shakespeare. Publications in English include "'Pardon Me?'---Judging Barnardine's Judge", English Studies, Vol.78, No. 5 (1997), "Kurosawa's Hamlet?", Shakespeare Studies in Japan, Vol.33 (1998), and "Shiga Naoya's Claudius' Diary", Shakespeare Jahrbuch Vol. 140 (2004).