Born in Sapporo in 1966, Takuya Asakura graduated from the University of Tokyo. He won the first "This Mystery Is Amazing!" Grand Prize in 2002 for Yokkakan no Kiseki (The Miracle of Four Days), which sold over 1.3 million copies and was made into a film. Takuya is also the author of The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop. He is a translator and translated Matt Haig's The Midnight Library from English into Japanese.