Dead Letter Room

'Dead Letter Room' is a transhistorical correspondence with the late Japanese poet Hara Tamiki (1905–1951). Known for his slender output of prose during the pre-WWII and immediate postwar periods, Hara is most popularly admired 'Summer Flowers', a short story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which he survived. Hara becomes both a historical figure and a collaborator, as the work explores how violence, memory, and loss are shaped through historical archives. Presented as a collection of thirteen imagined letters written between Allie Tsubota (US) and Hara, the correspondence elaborates on the legacy of atomic disaster, while weaving a pliable, potentially fictive narrative that crosses historical time. Including images from the United States military archive of Occupied Japan in 1945, which Tsubota treats as a political instrument, and photographs taken by Tsubota in Hiroshima and Tokyo.