Seishi Araki

was an eccentric Japanese historian, novelist, and publisher.

Early life Araki Seishi was born the eldest son of , principal of the Chōyō Elementary School in Kumamoto Prefecture.

In 1935, while teaching at his mother in law's school in Kikuchi, Araki published the novel , but it was banned immediately after its first publishing on the grounds that it promoted liberalism and corrupted public morals.

Wartime activity 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 , also called the , a resistance movement with the stated objective of defending Kumamoto to the death from the Allied occupation army. 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.