Kenji Nakagami

Kenji Nakagami (1946-1992) was a Japanese novelist who rose to prominence depicting the lives of the burakumin outcaste community from his hometown in Shingū, Wakayama. His breakthrough novel Misaki (The Cape, 1976) won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, the first for a post-WWII-born and burakumin writer, followed by the influential Akiyuki trilogy including Karekinada (Withered Tree Straits) and Chi no hate shijō no toki (The Ends of the Earth, the Supreme Time). Nakagami's raw, rhythmic prose challenged mainstream Japanese literature, earning him recognition as a major post-war voice until his death from kidney cancer at age 46. Encyclopædia