Araki's Fictional Biography
Araki Yasusada was supposedly a survivor of the Hiroshima atom bomb. He was born in 1907, attended Hiroshima University (before it was even founded, in 1949), worked in the postal service and was conscripted into Japanese army during World War II. He died of cancer in 1972. His son discovered his poems and notebooks and in 1991 they began to appear in print in the United States.
The 'notebooks' included editorial comments, smudged ink and illegible text, and other elaborate attempts to give the appearance of authenticity. They also included hints to their own unravelling, however, such as references to poets who probably would not be known to Japanese poets of the period and anachronistic references to things like scuba divers.
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