Novelist Kenji Nakagami was born on August 2, 1946, in Shingu City, Wakayama Prefecture. He passed away on August 12, 1992. He hails from a discriminated-against buraku community known locally as "Roji." He grew up in a complicated family environment, where his father divorced and left home when he was young. His half-brother committed suicide by hanging when he was in elementary school, and these experiences had a profound influence on Nakagami's later work. He spent his high school years as an avid reader and moved to Tokyo in 1965 to prepare for university entrance exams. While living in Tokyo as a cram school student, he submitted his work to publications such as Bungei Shudo and Shigaku. After marrying Kasumi Yamaguchi in 1970, Nakagami began working in manual labor to support his family. It was during this time that Nakagami wrote "Map of a Nineteen-Year-Old," published in 1973 and nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. He eventually devoted himself to writing, becoming the first postwar-born author to win the Akutagawa Prize for his 1976 novel "Cape." The story is set in his hometown of Shingu, Wakayama Prefecture, and it's said that Nakagami saw himself in the protagonist, Akiyuki. The following year, he won the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award and the Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists for his sequel, "Karenkinada." He continued to publish works such as "Hallflower" and "A Thousand Years of Pleasure," but passed away in 1992 at the young age of 46 due to worsening kidney cancer. His work was heavily influenced by Colombian literary master Garcia Marquez. The Kumano Saga, which follows "Cape," and includes "Karenkinada" and "The Supreme Time at the End of the Earth," incorporates the magical realism techniques used in Marquez's masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Furthermore, "A Thousand Years of Pleasure" suggests that it was written with ten times the enthusiasm of the original.