Kaori Kawai is a Japanese nonfiction writer. Through subjects including the sexuality of people with disabilities, Japanese winemakers, and reproductive medicine, she examines situations in which social values collide with individual choices. Her representative work, “Erabenakatta Inochi: Shusseizen Shindan no Goshin de Umareta Ko,” centers on a lawsuit involving a prenatal misdiagnosis and draws on testimony from a bereaved mother and medical professionals to investigate the selection of life and the limits of self-determination. The book received both the 50th Oya Soichi Nonfiction Prize and the 18th Shincho Documentary Prize.
