Occupied City was published by Faber and Faber in 2009. It is based on the Teigin incident of January 1948: a man entered a branch of the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo, identified himself as a health official, and persuaded sixteen employees to drink what he said was a dysentery preventative. It was poison. Twelve people died. A painter named Hirasawa Sadamichi was convicted and sentenced to death, though he maintained his innocence for decades (he died in prison in 1987 without being executed).
Peace tells the story through twelve voices — some living, some dead — each providing a different perspective on the event and its aftermath. The structure reflects Peace’s fascination with the impossibility of establishing truth in a corrupted society: the American occupation authorities, Japanese police, journalists, and victims’ families each construct competing narratives. The convicted man may be innocent; the real killer may be a former Unit 731 biological weapons researcher protected by the Americans.
The novel is Peace’s most formally experimental: the voices of the dead speak alongside the living, temporal boundaries dissolve, and the prose becomes increasingly incantatory and ritualistic — as though the text itself were a ceremony for the murdered.
Collecting Occupied City
First edition (Faber and Faber, London, 2009): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- Very good: $10–$25