Kenji Suzuki (鈴木健次, Suzuki Kenji; 16 January 1950 – 9 February 2024), known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), was a Japanese musician best known as the vocalist for the German Krautrock group Can between 1970 and 1973. Born in 1950 in Kobe, Japan, he moved to Europe in 1967 where he was spotted busking in Munich, West Germany, by Can bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Can had just split with their vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and asked Suzuki to sing over tracks from their 1970 compilation album Soundtracks. Afterwards, he became their full time singer, appearing on the three influential albums Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyası (1972) and Future Days (1973).

After leaving Can in 1973, he abandoned music and became a Jehovah's Witness. Having left that organisation, he returned to music in the mid-1980s and began to tour widely. Over the following decades, Suzuki recorded a large number of albums under different aliases, which he later grouped as "Damo Suzuki's Network".

Kenji Suzuki was born in Kobe, Japan on 16 January 1950. Suzuki was growing up playing several musical instruments, getting a new instrument from his sister every other birthday, since his eighth or ninth birthday when he got a flute. Suzuki additionally played a clarinet, saxophone, guitar, and organ. In his teens, Damo "gradually became dissatisfied with aspects of Japanese society and felt some kinship with the country's various protest movements," including the 1960 Anti-American protests, which sparked his political identity.

By 1967, Suzuki lived in Atsugi, Kanagawa, still feeling discontented with the Japanese culture, while "lighted on Sweden [culturally] because he was attracted by its functioning social democracy and generous welfare state". On 29 November 1967, Suzuki wrote a listing in the "penpals wanted" section of the Swedish newspaper Expressen, under the headline "Wants to study Swedish traditions". Twenty-one people from all over Sweden replied, and Suzuki chose from among them the Andersson family from Gräsmark, a tiny rural hamlet in south-western Sweden about thirty kilometres from the border with Norway. Suzuki boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway bearing his guitar, clarinet, and sax, and arrived in Gräsmark in February 1968, where he was soon joined by his friend Shuji Kawamukai. The two Japanese teenagers attracted attention of the local newspaper, Värmlands Folkblad, publishing a coverage on the Gräsmark cultural exchange in March 1968—Suzuki and Kawamukai taught the family how to prepare Japanese culinary delicacies and entertaining people of Gräsmark with musical harmony. They communicated through head and arm gestures, with a little English.

After a one-month stay in Gräsmark, Suzuki and Kawamukai moved to the Swedish town of Karlstad, hoping to extend their stay in Sweden by looking for sources of income either as judo instructors or chefs. However, Suzuki changed the plans soon after and set off on his journey across Europe spending about six months across "Germany, France, Switzerland, and Finland". By August 1969, he lived in Wexford, Ireland, for another six months, then in Seven Sisters, London. Suzuki earned money by busking and painting, and in London he sold enough paintings to afford a ticket to Munich, West Germany, where he was hired to play guitar in the local production of Hair musical, staged in early 1970. At one point, Suzuki stayed at Munich's squat occupied by the Amon Düül collective.

In late May 1970, Damo Suzuki was busking outside Blow Up club in Munich when he was approached by the members of Can, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, who invited him to join their performance that evening. Suzuki performed with the band at the Blow Up club that evening, and subsequently became a full member of the group. Suzuki later remembered the months before the encounter as "very frustrating because he was doing the same thing every day. He can't really remember what I was doing when he met Can, but every day he would do a kind of street performance or just scream because he was frustrated. But they saw me and asked me to be their singer not because they liked my voice but because they wanted somebody who looked like an alien. Japanese or Chinese people in the early seventies were seen seldom, totally different to now … They wanted me for this, they didn't know how I sang."

Suzuki didn't have time to prepare for Can's performance at Blow Up club, but the "chemistry flared up from the very start". As Holger recalled, "he started very, very calm but then he developed into a samurai fighter", and the audience "got so angry that they left the venue. There was only about thirty people left in a venue that holds fifteen hundred." Irmin Schmidt, the band's keyboardist, remembered that at first Damo had "real difficulties to see himself in this group … he had doubts that he did the right thing. That's bloody understandable! We were very disciplined workers. And he had never done discipline in his life! We sometimes felt it, but we didn't care; we just thought he is good and it's nice to have him, but if he can't make it, he can't make it—basta."

Suzuki's first recording with Can was "Don't Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone" featured on Soundtracks (1970). Suzuki was a full-time member of Can from 1970 to 1973. His first album with the band was the highly influential double album Tago Mago (1971), widely considered as foundational in the development of Krautrock and a major influence on bands ranging from the Sex Pistols to Happy Mondays. Suzuki's vocals became more confident and defining with Can's 1972 album Ege Bamyası, as evidenced in the songs "Vitamin C" and "Spoon". The band developed a more atmospheric sound for Future Days (1973), their final album with Suzuki. Following the album's release, Suzuki quit the band and joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, taking a break from music for the following decade.