Kakehashi Kumiko

Nonfiction writer. Born in 1961 in Kumamoto Prefecture. Graduated from Hokkaidō University. Worked as an editor before becoming a freelance writer. In 2006, she received the Ōya Sōichi Nonfiction Award for Chiru zo kanashiki: Iō-tō sōshikikan Kuribayashi Tadamichi (So Sad to Fall in Battle: An Account of War Based on General Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s Letters from Iwo Jima), subsequently translated into eight different languages. Her 2016 biography Kuruu hito—”Shi no toge” no tsuma Shimao Miho (Losing It: Miho Shimao, the Wife in “The Sting of Death”), won multiple honors, including the Kōdansha Nonfiction Award and the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Her most recent work is Hara Tamiki—Shi to ai to kodoku no shōzō (Hara Tamaki: Portrait of Death, Love, and Isolation).