He became interested in German while still a teenager, and entered the University of Tokyo in 1951.
He first majored in aesthetics but switched to German literature, graduating in 1957 and for a short time thereafter working in Kōbunsha in editing the women's magazine Josei Jishin.
In 1968 he obtained a tenured post at Tokyo Metropolitan University, but he resigned in 1971 and went to Europe, where he spent much time until 1978, when he took another tenured post at Kokugakuin University, where he would teach until December 2002.
Tanemura was a prolific translator from German, writer and anthologizer of others' writings, with a certain tendency toward subjects like vampires and Sacher-Masoch.
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