by David Peace
‘Not even his mother.’
‘No, of course not!’ I shout. ‘For he was my boy! The boy this mad woman has been seeking! Oh, can I be dreaming? What plague, what plague is this?’
‘I am sorry, so very sorry,’ I hear you say. ‘I had thought the story I just told, this tale told merely to pass the time, was about someone I myself would never know. But all the time he was your son! What a thing, a terrible thing! But your tears and my regrets are useless now. So in their place, let me take you to his tomb.’
‘My eyes shall behold him, or so I believed until this very moment. I travelled far through this Occupied City, down its streets, along its riverbanks, among its people, only to find him gone from this world. The cruelty of it! The horror of it!
‘For his own death, he left his home and in this city became but earth, earth by the side of this river. Here he lies buried, lies buried with only the grass to cover him …’
But the people whisper, ‘Come let us turn this cold earth over one last time, to show a mother her son as he looked in life. Had he lived on, he would have known gladness, but hope was vain. He would have known gladness, but hope was vain – ’
‘Yes vain; vain as living is to me now, his mother; his mother, whom for a while a lovely figure, he glimmered like all the things in this world and then, like all the things in this world, was gone, like all the things in this world, he glimmered …
‘And then was gone …’
And now the people whisper, ‘Such sorrows lurk in the blossoms’ glory, just as the moon, through its nights of birth and death, is lost from view, behind clouds of impermanence, just so this sad world’s truth is here, so plain to see. This sad world’s truth, so plain to see – ’
‘No lament of yours can help him now,’ you say. ‘Just call the Name and pray for his happy rebirth in Paradise.’
And the people whisper, ‘See how the moon is rising now, and the river breeze sighs as the night wears on, now invocations will surely be heard. So in this spirit all present, urged on by faith, now strike their bells in rhythm – ’
‘But I his mother, overcome by sorrow, unable even to call the Name, lie here prostrate, dissolved in weeping …’
‘You must chant the Invocation, too,’ I hear you urge. ‘For it is his mother’s prayers that will bring the deceased the greatest joy. You must take the chanting-bell, too.’
‘For my own dear son’s sake,’ I say, ‘I will take up the bell!’
‘Cease lamenting,’ you say. ‘And call with ringing voice.’
‘In this bright moonlit night,’ I say, ‘I will invoke the Name.’
‘Then let us both chant together,’ you say.
And so together we say, ‘Hail, in Thy Western Realm of Bliss! Thirty-six million, million worlds ring with one cry, one Name: Amida!’
And now the people also chant, ‘Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha!’
In the Occupied City, on the banks of the Sumida, the wind and the waves swell our chorus …
‘Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha!’
‘Oh, if you are true to your name,’ I call out, ‘then Miyako birds, if you are true to your name, add your voices …’
‘Hail Amida Buddha!’ they cry. ‘Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha! Hail Amida Buddha!’
‘Stop!’ I shout. ‘Stop now! Listen! Listen now! That voice, just now calling out the Name; it was my own child’s voice! It seemed to come from within the mound, from within his tomb …’
‘I heard it too,’ you say. ‘Let everyone stop calling. Let everyone be silent. Let the mother alone now chant the Name!’
‘Oh, please,’ I beg, ‘let me hear that voice again, just one other time! Hail Amida Buddha …’
And now the people whisper, ‘See here now, atop the mound, a figure stands, stands before her – ’
‘My dear child, is it you?’
‘Dear Mother, is it you?’
And the people whisper, ‘See now how the woman goes towards the figure, how the woman reaches out towards the figure, how the woman touches its shoulder, and how the figure slips away, slips back into the mound – ’
‘My child!’
And the people whisper, ‘See again how the figure appears upon the mound, and see again how she reaches towards the figure, taking hold of its hand – ’
‘Mother!’
And the people whisper, ‘But again the figure’s shape fades and is gone, her fond longing waxing as in a mirror, as again the figure slips, slips back into the mound – ’
‘My child!’
And the people whisper, ‘Remembered form and present illusion fuse, now seen, now hidden once more, as light streaks the sky and dawn breaks the day, his shape, his shape vanished for evermore, as waking breaks into dream – ’
‘My child!’
And the people whisper, ‘What once seemed a lost child now found is but wild grasses on a lonely tomb, their dull blades nodding in sign over the wastes of this river, the wastes of this city, in sorrow, nothing else remains. Only sorrow, nothing else remains – ’
‘In this city, the Occupied City,’ I hear you say. ‘Beside this river, the Sumida River, in this dawn, before this mound, I hear feet-step and tears-drop, so many feet, so many tears –
‘Shuffling, still shuffling.’
And now the people whisper, ‘This burial mound, though covered in wild grasses, is not made of earth. This burial mound is made of masks, a pile of clay masks. See now how the woman picks up the masks. See now how she tries on mask after mask – ’
‘I am a mother,’ I say, ‘and I am a sister. And I am a lover. And I am a wife. And I am a daughter …
‘I am a sister and I am searching for my brother. My brother who was taken from me in this city …
‘I am a lover and I am searching for my man. My man who was taken from me in this city …
‘I am a wife and I am searching for my husband. My husband who was taken from me in this city …
‘I am a daughter and I am searching for my father. My father who was taken from me in this city …
‘Through earthquake and through war, we have walked these streets, the banks of this river, and we have survived. Survived …
‘Now you say – he says, they say, all men say – the city has changed, the world has changed. But my city, my world has not changed. The shade of your skin, maybe, the style of your uniform, perhaps. But your collars are still dirty, your fingers still stained.
‘Post-war, après-guerre you say – he says, they say, all men say – but it’s always been post-war, already après-guerre.
‘Conquered from birth, colonized for life, I have always, already been defeated. Always, already been occupied –
‘Occupied by you –
‘Born of me, the death of me. Blood of you, the death of me. Come in me, the death of me. Rob my name, the death of me. Born of you, the death of me –
‘In the snow. In the mud. Beneath the branches. Before the shrine. In the genkan. In the bank. On a street in China. In a wardrobe in Tokyo. With your poison. With your pen.
‘It is you. And only you.’
The Black Gate is gone, its upper chamber is gone, the occult circle and all of its candles now, now you are in darkness –
The candles out and the medium gone,
the story-telling game is over.
Come and they came, stand and they stood, sit and they sat, strip and they stripped, take this medicine and they did,
though it’s poison, still they did,
die and they died, for you,
and only you, in agony,
in fear, in silence –
In white paper, their bodies prone, their faces contorted. In black ink, their heads shaved, their mouths stitched, they are yours,
and only yours, in their costumes
and in their masks, all your actors and all your characters, for you are the writer,
you are their wound, you are their plague,
wrapped in paper, wrapped in ink, they are raised, frozen and petrified by the sorrow you brought them,
the suffering you left them –
IN THE OCCUPIED CITY, this city is a coffin. This city is a notebook. This city is a purgatory. This city is a plague. This city is a curse. This city is a story. This city is a market. This city is a wilderness. This city is a wound. This city is a prison. This city is a mirror. This city is a river. And this city is a woman –
‘In sorrow,’ she whispers. ‘Nothing else remains. Only sorrow. Nothing else remains. Only sorrow …’
In tears and in truth, pouring down upon you now, this heavy rain, this water-fall, flooding down upon you now,
drowning you in water and in salt,
in her tears and in her truth,
her tears, her truth –
‘Remains …’
And she has tied you to a chair, tied you to a desk, a pen nailed to your palms, bound to your fingers,
life leaking, death dripping,
but not in ink, in tears,
in tears and in truth,
at last, at last,
no more costumes and no more masks, no more actors and no more characters, no more stories and no more lies,
the book always, already written,
written and abandoned,
in-caesura.
Author’s Note
Hirasawa Sadamichi was convicted of the Teikoku Bank murders,
attempted murders and robbery on 24 July 1950,
and sentenced to death.
Despite the dedication and efforts of the Society to Save Hirasawa,
Hirasawa died in Hachiōji Prison on 10 May 1987.
Hirasawa was ninety-five years old.
The appeals and the campaign to clear Hirasawa’s name,
posthumously, continue to this day.
At the time of writing, the nineteenth request for a retrial,
which was filed on 10 May 1989,
is still being examined by the Tokyo High Court.
David Peace, Tokyo, 2008
The Year of the Rat
Sources
The structure of this book was suggested by Rashōmon and In a Grove, two short stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), both of which have been translated into English many times, most recently by Jay Rubin in Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (Penguin Classics, 2006). Kurosawa Akira’s 1950 film Rashōmon was also influential, as was the Rutgers University Press book Rashōmon (1987), edited by Donald Richie.
The murders at the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo in January 1948 have been written about in English in Flowering of the Bamboo by William Triplett (Woodbine House, 1985) and in Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan by Mark Schreiber (Yenbooks, 1996). In fiction, the case was also the subject of Averse d’automne by Romain Slocombe (Gallimard, 2003).
The following were also used:
731 by Aoki Fukiko (Shinchosha, 2005)
731-Butai Saikin-sen Shiryō Shusei CD-ROM edited by Kondō Shōji (Kashiwa Shobō, 2003)
Akuma no Hōshoku by Morimura Seiichi (Kadokawa Shoten, 1983)
Asahi Shimbun newspaper for 1947-8
Civilization & Monsters by Gerald Figal (Duke University Press, 1999)
Curlew River by Benjamin Britten, to a libretto by William Plomer; particularly Olivier Py’s production at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2005
The Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol (1835)
Discourses of the Vanishing by Marilyn Ivy (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
Factories of Death by Sheldon H. Harris (Routledge, 1994)
Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural edited by Stephen Addiss (George Braziller, 1985)
Keiji Ichidai: Hiratsuka Hachibei no Shōwa Jiken-shi by Sasaki Yoshinobu (Sankei Shimbunsha; Nisshin-Hōdō Shuppanbu, 1980)
Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army (Foreign Languages Publishing House (Moscow), 1950)
Nippon no Kuroi Kiri by Matsumoto Seicho (Bungei Shunju Shinsha, 1960)
Nippon no Seishin Kantei edited by Fukushima Akira, Nakata Osamu, Ogi Sadataka, Uchimura Yushi and Yoshimasu Shufu (Misuzu Shobo, 1973)
Nippon Times and Mainichi newspapers for 1948
A Plague Upon Humanity by Daniel Barenblatt (HarperCollins, 2005)
Shōsetsu Teigin Jiken by Matsumoto Seicho (Bungei Shunju Shinsha, 1959)
Sumida-gawa by Motomasa Jūrō (c. 1400-32), translated by Royall Tyler in Japanese NO Dramas (Penguin Classics, 1992)
Teigin Jiken by Morikawa Tetsurō (Sanichi Shobō, 1980)
The films and diaries of Andrei Tarkovsky
The plays and texts of Heiner Müller; particularly Elio De Capitani’s production of Waterfront Wasteland Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts at the Teatro dell’Elfo, Milan, in 2006
The poems and prose of Paul Celan
Unit 731 by Peter Williams and David Wallace (The Free Press, 1989)
Unit 731 Testimony by Hal Gold (Yenbooks, 1996)
A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, in Collected Fictions (Penguin, 1999)
Ware, Shisu-tomo Meimoku-sezu: Hirasawa Sadamichi Gokuchu-ki edited by Hirasawa Takehiko (Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1988)
Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, translated by John Mackendrick, in The Complete Plays edited by Michael Patterson (Methuen, 1987)
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for all their help:
Nagashima Shunichiro, who once again provided and translated important documents from the Japanese; Mark Schreiber and Romain Slocombe, who both discussed the case with me and generously shared their own research; Stephen Page, Angus Cargill, Anna Pallai, Anne Owen, Sarah Savitt, Tanya Andrews, Trevor Horwood and all the staff of Faber and Faber in London; Sonny Mehta, Diana Coglianese, Sarah Robinson and Zach Wagman in New York. Once again, Sawa Junzo, Hamish Macaskill, Peter Thompson and all the staff of the English Agency Japan. Also in Tokyo, Simon Bartz, Steve Finbow, Mike and Mayu Handford, Kaetsu Kazuko, Cathy Layne, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and Steve Taylor. In England, my parents, Andrew Eaton, Tony Grisoni and Jon Riley. I would also like to particularly thank Lee Brackstone for both his patience and his belief in this book. Finally, and most of all, to William Miller, my agent, without whom this book would have been abandoned a lot, lot sooner.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Peace is the author of The Red Riding Quartet, GB84, The Damned Utd, and Tokyo Year Zero. He was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2003, and has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the German Crime Fiction Award, and the French Grand Prix de Roman Noir for Best Foreign Novel.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by David Peace
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd., London, in 2009.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peace, David.
Occupied city / by David Peace. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
First published: London : Faber and Faber, 2009.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59319-1
1. Hirasawa, Sadamichi, 1982– —Fiction. 2. Criminals—Japan—
Tokyo—Fiction. 3. Serial murders—Japan—Tokyo—Fiction.
4. Bank robberies—Fiction. 5. Tokyo (Japan)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6066.E116O25 2010
823′.914—dc22 2009043254
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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