Hayashi was born in Dalian, China, in 1946, but his family then quickly moved to Japan, first to Beppu (Ōita) and then to Kyoto.
After graduating, Hayashi worked for two years as an assistant of Hajime Sawatari, and then started to freelance for fashion magazines.
Hayashi works in black and white, often depicting a Tokyo rendered off-kilter by speculative and showy development.
[2] Hayashi has participated in group exhibitions including “Empathy”, which went to Rochester (NY) and elsewhere in 1987.
Hayashi's only book to date is Zoo, a collection of photographs in zoos that managed to show the animals in (and sometimes dwarfed by) their man-made environs while barely showing any people; it has been praised for the purity (achieved with the help of retouching) and composition of its images.