@inproceedings{oai:kokubunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002687,
 author = {Hirata, Hosea and HIRATA, Hosea},
 book = {国際日本文学研究集会会議録, PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE},
 issue = {27},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {pdf, In the mid 1990s, some startling works by the newly discovered Japanese poet, Araki Yasusada, an atomic-bomb survivor from Hiroshima, began to appear in English translation in several American journals. They gained immediate attention due to the poet’s hibakusha status as well as to his poetic style that easily appealed to the taste of contemporary American poetry readers. One of the most prestigious poetry journals in the States, The American Poetry Review published a special supplement of Yasusada poems in June, 1996. But already a rurnor had begun to circulate on the Internet suggesting that Yasusada was a hoax. The editor of the APR denounced the hoax in the next issue, and even called the deception "a criminal act" in his interview with a writer for Lingua franca. Soon after, many of the future publications of Yasusada were canceled by the chagrined editors of poetry magazines.
The true identity of Yasusada is not yet clear. We know that all the traces lead to an American poet named Kent Johnson. But according to him, the creator of the Yasusada persona is his friend, Tosa Motokiyu(pseudonym), who recently died in London and asked Johnson not to reveal his true identity. This incident raises several important issues. With the rise of poststructuralist theory, we have become familiar with such topics as "the deconstruction of the subject," or "the death of the author." Within such a critical milieu, one may argue that it is absurdly outdated to be so obsessed with the notion of the real author. The poem should stand on its own merit apart from who the author is, irrespective of the author’s race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, or pseudonymity. Or, do we have to make an exception for atomic-bomb literature? That is, does the authorship of the hibakusha writer belong to some inviolable, sacred realm, which should not be copied or mimicked? Also, within the context of this particular conference, we need to deal with the question of whether we could call the author-less, origin-less, "translated” poems of Yasusada “Japanese literature” at all.},
 pages = {155--168},
 publisher = {国文学研究資料館},
 title = {研究発表　創られた被爆者詩人アラキ・ヤスサダ　―詩に真実は必要か―},
 year = {2004},
 yomi = {ヒラタ, ホセア}
}