I’m listening to a piece of modern music as I write this: Symphony No. 1 “Hiroshima,” by the Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi.

I suppose the word to describe it is “workmanlike.” The opening is impressive, a powerful attack by percussion and horns presaged by an ominous rumble of timpani, which, given the title of the piece, suggests a kind of detonation.

Overall, the piece is energetic, and, at times, inventive, but it doesn’t exactly command my attention. “Movie music” might be a good way to describe it — moody, atmospheric, but somewhat choppy, as if the composer were trying to underscore the scenes of an edited film.

The overall length of the piece, a hair shy of 27 minutes, speaks to the short attention spans of modern symphony-goers.

It’s not bad; then again, it’s not terribly good.

But “Hiroshima” has proven to be very popular in Japan, where it has been performed regularly since its debut in 2003. Its composer, Mr. Samuragochi, who affects the long hair and dark sunglasses of a pop star, has become something of a cultural icon. His “personal story” has been an important part of the mystique. The child of two victims of the Hiroshima bombing, Mr. Samuragochi is, like his musical idol Beethoven, completely deaf.

Except, apparently, he isn’t. Another thing Mr. Samuraguchi isn’t, according to a story that broke last week, is the composer of Symphony No. 1 “Hiroshima,” or any of the other pieces he claims to have written since the late 1990s, including the soundtracks for hugely popular video games like Resident Evil and Onimusha.

The man Mr. Samuraguchi hired to write all of his music over the years has finally stepped out of the shadows, driven by an Olympic shame — as in, related to the Sochi Olympics. One of the Japanese figure skaters was planning to perform a routine to a piece by Samuraguchi; the ghostwriter, a part-time lecturer at a well respected music college in Tokyo, was horrified by the thought of including this brilliant young athlete in his deception.

Of course, another explanation might be that the ghostwriter saw the opportunity to expose his work — and, at long last, his own name — to a global audience, and decided to leap into a whirlwind of free publicity.

The unmasking of the phony composer has caused convulsions in Japan. The bombing of Hiroshima is considered a sacred trauma in Japanese culture, somewhat similar to the way the Shoah has become a pillar of modern Jewish identity, and the Japanese people feel hurt and betrayed. All the admiration they heaped on Mr. Samuraguchi as a symbol of post-war recovery and national pride has turned to scorn.

And rightly so. Mr. Samuraguchi is a fraud who earned his success the old-fashioned way: by figuring out what people wanted, and giving it to them, no matter the means. The only problem was that, in this case, the people wanted a national treasure, someone who represented the deepest values of the culture, such as overcoming adversity (writing music despite his deafness); respecting tradition (while making gestures towards non-conformity, like the long hair and sunglasses); and dedicating a life to the perfection of a craft.

The Japanese were willing to forgive the persona of celebrity, so at odds with their prevailing culture of modesty, as long as it was linked to evidence that Mr. Samuraguchi was home-grown genius who could go toe-to-toe with the giants of the Western musical tradition. The outing of Mr. Samuraguchi as a phony seems to have cut to the quick.

There’s been plenty of bad news in Japan lately. The explosions and meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were a great blow to the country’s pride and its ambitions of self-sufficiency. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial recent visit to the Yasukuni War Shrine, which has been interpreted as an expression of imperialistic pride, taken together with his talk of revisiting the country’s pacifistic constitution, suggests that the government is looking to the past for a way forward. One has the sense that Japan is casting about for answers to the economic malaise that has dominated national life for the past two decades.

All the more reason to elevate “artistic geniuses” like Mr. Samuraguchi to the heavens; all the more reason for the explosion of anger when they fall.