HAYASHI FUMIKO

(1903–1951)

Hayashi Fumiko was born an illegitimate child in Kyushu and moved around the island with her mother. After graduating high school, Hayashi went to Tokyo with her lover, did odd jobs, and helped launch the poetry magazine Futari (Two). She then lived with several different men before marrying Tezuka Rokubin (1902–89) in 1926. She published the serialized I-Novel Horoki (1928; tr. Diary of a Vagabond, 1951) in a women’s magazine, and it became a bestseller for which she wrote two sequels. During World War II, Hayashi joined a journalist group called Jugun sakka (Campaigning Writers) and served in the military in China and French Indochina. After the war, she wrote many novels and essays, including Bangiku (1948; tr. Late Chrysanthemum, 1956), which was awarded the Women’s Literature Prize and was later made into a film. A prolific writer, translated into many foreign languages, Hayashi died in 1951 of a heart attack.