Occupied City (2008) is the second part of a projected novel trilogy that David Peace set in the Tokyo in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing. While Tokyo Year Zero develops soon after the bombing, in 1946, this new novel is based on the notorious true-life poisoning of bank workers that took place in 1948 and whose reasons have never been cleared up. A conspiracy theory that Peace exploits in his reconstruction connects the poisoning – that goes under the name of Teigin incident – to the work of Unit 73, a Japanese covert division allegedly studying wartime chemical and biological weapons, and secretly experimenting them on war prisoners, both civilians and soldiers, basically in the Province of Manchuria, well before the Japanese surrender. What is suggested is also that the American forces were involved in covering the operations of Unit 731. While trying to recapitulate the facts that brought to the sudden awareness of the Manchurian experiments, Peace works very much on the notion of infection as both a medical process and a metaphoric representation of the Japanese reality in that particular period. The military-industrial conspiracy supported by the police cover-up is also represented highlighting also the role of the US secret service in hiding the true responsibilities of the poisoning. In terms of style, Peace tells the story paying homage to a very famous Japanese novelist and artist, Akutagawa, and borrowing from his short story “In the Grove” (then adapted as a film in Rashomon) the device of several conflicting narratives, reporting on the same facts. In a sort of literary forensic, twelve voices contribute to the portrayal, at the same time choral and intensely fragmented, of two highly different cultures facing each other.
In the Year of the Rat : from infection to poisoning in David Peace's Occupied City / N. Vallorani. - In: ALTRE MODERNITÀ. - ISSN 2035-7680. - 11(2014 May), pp. 5.54-5.68.
In the Year of the Rat : from infection to poisoning in David Peace's Occupied City
N. Vallorani
2014
Abstract
Occupied City (2008) is the second part of a projected novel trilogy that David Peace set in the Tokyo in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing. While Tokyo Year Zero develops soon after the bombing, in 1946, this new novel is based on the notorious true-life poisoning of bank workers that took place in 1948 and whose reasons have never been cleared up. A conspiracy theory that Peace exploits in his reconstruction connects the poisoning – that goes under the name of Teigin incident – to the work of Unit 73, a Japanese covert division allegedly studying wartime chemical and biological weapons, and secretly experimenting them on war prisoners, both civilians and soldiers, basically in the Province of Manchuria, well before the Japanese surrender. What is suggested is also that the American forces were involved in covering the operations of Unit 731. While trying to recapitulate the facts that brought to the sudden awareness of the Manchurian experiments, Peace works very much on the notion of infection as both a medical process and a metaphoric representation of the Japanese reality in that particular period. The military-industrial conspiracy supported by the police cover-up is also represented highlighting also the role of the US secret service in hiding the true responsibilities of the poisoning. In terms of style, Peace tells the story paying homage to a very famous Japanese novelist and artist, Akutagawa, and borrowing from his short story “In the Grove” (then adapted as a film in Rashomon) the device of several conflicting narratives, reporting on the same facts. In a sort of literary forensic, twelve voices contribute to the portrayal, at the same time choral and intensely fragmented, of two highly different cultures facing each other.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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