Nakayama was born in Nagoya in 1960 and graduated from the Faculty of Education at Waseda University's Department of English. Between graduation and the publication of her first novel, she directed a theatrical troupe, including acting, writing, and directing. For five years, to get through the void after quitting acting, she worked in her thirties as an office worker while beginning to write her first novel.
In 1993, after winning a short story prize from Tokyo FM, Magazine House published her debut novel, The Stoop-Shouldered Prince. Her 1995 novel, Angel Bones (天使の骨, Tenshi no Hone) won the Asahi New Writers' Literary Award, and her 2001 novel, To the Depths of a White Rose (白い薔薇の淵まで, Shiroi Bara no Fuchi Made) was awarded the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize.[6][7]
Nakayama's works, such as her 2000 novel Sentimental Education (感情教育, sharing a title with Gustav Flaubert's novel), are known for their frequent motifs of heartrending lesbian love and relationships.[8] To the Depths of a White Rose and Sentimental Education were both published at the end of what has been described as Japan's 'gay boom', spanning the late 1980s and 1990s, where novels such as To the Depths of a White Rose and Chiya Fujino's A Promise for Summer, both won major Japanese literary awards.[9] The title of her novel Love-Suicide in Marrakesh (マラケシュ心中, Marakeshu shinju) referenced the trope of love-suicide seen in 17th century Japanese literature, while the content more evoked the contemporary expressions and representations of same-sex female love and relationships seen in manga and anime.[10]
In the early period of her career, her body of work was known for its radical portrayal of sex and gender, together with full and nuanced expressions of lesbianism. With the 2006 publication of Kehheru (ケッヘル), Nakayama's work expanded into depictions of love and relationships between gay men as well as heterosexuals, parents, and children. Despite this, she strongly disliked being called a 'lesbian writer' by the public, striving to continue publishing fleshed-out novels that keenly examined the foundational nature of human existence.[11]
