Araki Seishi

In late 1944, Araki was pressed into service digging underground air raid shelters on the island of Ōyano-jima. In 1945, he was involved as a laborer in construction at the Kumamoto Military Airfield. On August 17, 1945, Araki and a number of friends gathered at the Fujisaki Hachimangū shrine and formed the Loyalist Militia (尊皇義勇軍, Sonnō giyūgun), also called the "Shōwa Shinpūren" (昭和神風連), a resistance movement with the stated objective of defending Kumamoto to the death from the Allied occupation army.^[1] However, they quickly surrendered to the Americans and the militia was disarmed without any fighting.

In 1946, Araki opened a bookstore and resumed writing. He was later involved in the memorialization of Kumamoto landmarks, including the former residence of Lafcadio Hearn, as well as local archival and historiographical research and preservation. Araki was an authority on the history of the Shinpūren rebellion.^[2] In the 1960s, he collaborated with Yukio Mishima's preparatory research for The Sea of Fertility.

Araki died of an intracranial hemorrhage at the Kumamoto University Hospital in 1981.