Fumiko Hayashi (author)
Japanese writer (1903–1951)

Fumiko Hayashi (林芙美子, Hayashi Fumiko; December 31, 1903 – June 28, 1951) was a Japanese writer of novels, short stories and poetry, who has repeatedly been included in the feminist literature canon. Among her best-known works are Diary of a Vagabond, Late Chrysanthemum and Floating Clouds.
Biography
Hayashi was born in Moji-ku, Kitakyūshū, Japan, and raised in abject poverty. In 1910, her mother Kiku Hayashi divorced her merchant husband Mayaro Miyata (who was not Fumiko's biological father) and married Kisaburo Sawai. The family then worked as itinerant merchants in Kyūshū.
After graduating from high school in 1922, Hayashi moved to Tokyo and lived with several men, supporting herself with a variety of jobs, before settling into marriage with painting student Rokubin Tezuka in 1926. During this time, she also helped launch the poetry magazine Futari. Her autobiographical novel Diary of a Vagabond (Hōrōki), published in 1930, became a bestseller and gained her high popularity. Many of her subsequent works also showed an autobiographical background, like The Accordion and the Fish Town or Seihin no sho. In the following years, Hayashi travelled to China and Europe.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fumiko Hayashi (author)” as japanese writer (1903–1951). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q445839. VIAF identifies the subject as 49372649. The Library of Congress control number is n82263105. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1951, 1910 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fumiko Hayashi (author)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.