Araki Yasusada

Araki Yasusada

Araki Yasusada was a non-existent Japanese poet, presumably the creation of US literature professor Kent Johnson. The publication of Yasusada's poetry by major literary journals such as the "American Poetry Review", "Grand Street" and "Conjunctions" during the early 1990s created an embarrassing scandal for these publications, who had to defend themselves against charges that they only published the poetry because of political correctness.

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.

Kent Johnson

The real writer of the poems is widely believed to be Kent Johnson, professor of Highland Community College in Freeport, Illinois, though he has never claimed authorship. Beliefs about Johnson's role as author stem in no small part from obversations that Johnson edited the Yasusada texts for the Wesleyan University Press and Johnson's mention of Yasusada in his doctoral dissertation.

The texts that had been published in the poetry journals also were sent to various academics. They had been sent from a variety of locations and presented Yasusada as an invented persona that was used by one or more people who intended the keep the origin of the texts secret.

Rumors began to spread. Johnson admitted to some critics that Yasusada was nothing than an invented pseudonym "somebody" used to conceal the writer's origin. Some editors who asked who the real writer was claim to have received different answers. One of them was that the real writer was "Tosa Motokiyu," one of the three "Japanese translators"- or at least 95% were his, the rest being Johnson's older work, which Motokiyu had requested to include in his Yasusada fiction. He continued to lecture on Yasusada and denied the hoax in interviews. At one stage he claimed that Motokiyu asked him to take credit before his death and that Motokiyu's name was yet another pseudonym.

There were a number of rumors about other supposed co-authors, including the leading avant-garde Mexican composer, Javier Alvarez, who appears as co-editor of the work with Johnson. Publishers demanded their money back and criticized the hoax. Wesleyan cancelled the publication of the poetry collection. Some critics noticed that Johnson had published similar poetry in 1986 under the name of Ogiwara Miyamori, in Ironwood magazine.

Criticism

After the 'hoax' was discovered, several journals rejected previously accepted poems. The hoax has been called "a criminal act" by Arthur Vogelsang, editor of "American Poetry Review", which had previously published a special supplement of Yasusada poems, including an alleged portrait of the author. But numerous critics were supportive, praising both the conceptual nature of the fiction and the quality of the writing.

External links

* [http://www.rhizomes.net/issue1/misha.html Hyper-Authorship: The Case of Araki Yasusada]
* [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/japanese-hoax.html The Hiroshima Poetry Hoax]
* [http://jacketmagazine.com/17/herron.html "Ruthven’s "Faking Literature", Forging Literature and Faking Forged Literature"]
* [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.3/Vogelsang.html Arthur Vogelsang's Letter to editors of the "Boston Review"]
* [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.3/Weinberger.html "Three Footnotes: Eliot Weinberger"] Eliot Weinberger on the Yasusada affair


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Гиперавторство — (hyperauthorship, греч. hyper над, сверх, чрезмерно)    умножение виртуальных авторских личностей и позиций за пределами индивидуального и реального авторства. Термин возник по аналогии с гипер текстом , то есть таким распылением текста по… …   Проективный философский словарь

  • List of fictitious people — This article lists the fictitious people, i.e., , which, unlike fictional people, are those somebody has claimed to actually exist. Usually this is done for purposes of practical joke or hoax, but sometimes for purposes of committing fraud or as… …   Wikipedia

  • Liste De Canulars Célèbres — Liste de canulars Cet article liste un certain nombre de canulars célèbres dans divers domaines. Sommaire 1 Livres et articles 2 Domaine audiovisuel 3 Personnages fictifs 4 Animaux fictifs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Liste de canulars — Cet article liste un certain nombre de canulars célèbres dans divers domaines. Sommaire 1 Domaine audiovisuel 2 Personnages fictifs 3 Animaux fictifs 4 Part …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Liste de canulars celebres — Liste de canulars Cet article liste un certain nombre de canulars célèbres dans divers domaines. Sommaire 1 Livres et articles 2 Domaine audiovisuel 3 Personnages fictifs 4 Animaux fictifs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Liste de canulars célèbres — Liste de canulars Cet article liste un certain nombre de canulars célèbres dans divers domaines. Sommaire 1 Livres et articles 2 Domaine audiovisuel 3 Personnages fictifs 4 Animaux fictifs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Liste de canulars célébres — Liste de canulars Cet article liste un certain nombre de canulars célèbres dans divers domaines. Sommaire 1 Livres et articles 2 Domaine audiovisuel 3 Personnages fictifs 4 Animaux fictifs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu — Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū (天真正伝香取神道流, Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū?) est l une des plus anciennes écoles d arts martiaux japonais ou Koryū (古流) Bujutsu (武術). Elle fut fondée par le duc Iizasa Ienao en… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu — Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū (天真正伝香取神道流, Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū?) est l une des plus anciennes écoles d arts martiaux japonais ou Koryū (古流) Bujutsu (武術). Elle fut fondée par le duc Iizasa Ienao en… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Tenshin Shoden Katori Shintō Ryu — Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū (天真正伝香取神道流, Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō ryū?) est l une des plus anciennes écoles d arts martiaux japonais ou Koryū (古流) Bujutsu (武術). Elle fut fondée par le duc Iizasa Ienao en… …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”