Kyoko Hayashi is a celebrated Japanese author born in Nagasaki in 1930. She spent most of her childhood in Shanghai, returning to Nagasaki in 1945. That same year she and her classmates were mobilized to work in a munitions factory while attending high school. After living through the atomic blast that destroyed the city on August 9, she eventually began to write, chronicling the stories of hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors). Hayashi first gained wide recognition in 1975 when her story “The Site of Rituals” (Matsuri no ba) won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Since that time she has continued to write about the experiences of hibakusha in her semi-autobiographical short stories and novels, receiving numerous awards. In 2005 the eight-volume Kyoko Hayashi Complete Works (Hayashi Kyoko Zenshu) was published in Japan, marking the 60th anniversary of the nuclear attacks.