The first Aoyama work one encounters is "Idle Evening, " a poem by the Chinese Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi, first exhibited in 1938 by the prestigious Taito Shodoin calligraphic association when the artist was in his 20s.
But by the time he read "Howl" over at the Six Gallery, he had already revised it and given it a lot more juice, and everybody who showed up somehow knew that evening that that was an outstanding poem that was going to change things.