Bunji Sunakawa (1990–) is a Japanese novelist and former member of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. Drawing on his military experience, his fiction explores the tensions between individuals and institutions, often examining contemporary Japanese society through themes of work, duty, and identity. In 2022, he won the 166th Akutagawa Prize for "Black Box." The novel follows a bicycle courier navigating post-Olympic Tokyo, offering a compelling portrait of precarious work and the pressures of life in modern Japan.
