Hiroshi Kamata

Hiroshi Kamata, born in 1938, is a Japanese nonfiction writer and journalist who has long conducted on-site interviews on labor, pollution, and issues concerning society's lower strata, documenting ordinary people's circumstances through solid first-hand investigation. His work Back from the Execution Platform focuses on individual fates at the edge of life and death and on the justice system, while Bullying Suicides: Testimonies of the Parents of Twelve Children presents the tragedies caused by school bullying through the accounts of multiple parents, reflecting his approach of valuing the testimonies of those involved and giving voice to the silenced. Two of his works are included here, commonly classified under social culture and social science. Public information on his early life and full career is limited, yet the available works show him consistently engaging with social problems through a journalist's sense of scene and documentary method, offering Chinese readers concrete and restrained texts for understanding Japan's lower strata and related issues.