Negotiating Identity

Nakagami Kenji is today regarded as one of the most important and influential Japanese post-war writers. Born in 1946 in the burakumin ghetto of the small coastal town of Shingu in southern Wakayama prefecture, Nakagami sailed up as a rising star on the literary skies in the mid-seventies when he became the first writer born after the Second World War to win the prestigious Akutagawa prize. He was...