[1] Her father was a university professor from Tokyo; he and Kato's mother were in Sapporo for work.
[2] After graduation she worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Nature Conservation Society of Japan.
Her next story, Nogaki no ita Mura (野餓鬼のいた村), which was published in 1982, won the Shincho Prize for New Writers [ja].
She won the Geijutsu Senshō Award for Osaki Midori no Kankaku Sekai (尾崎翠の感覚世界) in 1991.
[1] Some of her works, like Yume no Kabe, take inspiration from her time in Beijing at the end of World War II.