Joan Itoh Burk was born in New York City and became totally immersed into Japanese society when she married the first son of a large land-owning family in Japan. For the thirteen years of that marriage, she lived in an enormous Meiji era house on the rice plains in Niigata. During the 1970s, Joan Itoh wrote a weekly column for The Japan Times called "Rice Paddy Gourmet." A collection of her half-diary, half-recipe essays evolved into the popular Rice Paddy Gourmet book. Of this book, James Cavell wrote to her: "It's a lovely book and you're a lovely writer."

One Chrysanthemum is Burk's first novel, inspired by her love of Japan and the Japanese culture. For the last twenty-five years, she has been living with her Canadian husband in southwestern Ontario.