Kenji Nakagami (中上健次, Nakagami Kenji, August 2, 1946 – August 12, 1992) was a Japanese novelist and essayist. He is well known as the first, and so far the only, post-war Japanese writer to identify himself publicly as a Burakumin, a member of one of Japan’s long-suffering outcaste groups. His works depict the intense life-experiences of men and women struggling to survive in a Burakumin community in western Japan. His most celebrated novels include Misaki (The Cape), which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, and Karekinada (The Sea of Withered Trees), which won both the Mainichi and Geijutsu Literary Prizes in 1977.