Occupied City

by David Peace

  Early on the following Monday morning, I went to the Ōmori branch of the Dai-Ichi Bank in order to cash the cheque. However, the moneylender was waiting for me, having changed his mind, and so I was unable to cash the cheque. Two or three days later, though, I again tried to cash the cheque. This time I went into a jewellery shop and told the jeweller I wished to buy a gold ring and a small watch from him, totalling ¥140,000. I asked him if he would accept the cheque for ¥200,000 as payment. My plan, as foolish as ever no doubt, had been to then pawn the ring and the watch for cash and to use the money to repay the amount I had embezzled from the Society for Tempera Painters. However, the jeweller insisted on first telephoning the Ōmori branch of the Dai-Ichi Bank in order to verify the validity of the cheque. I told him I was going out to buy some cigarettes while he telephoned and, of course, I then fled as quickly as I could.

  In the course of their investigations into me in relation to the Teikoku Bank case, the police uncovered this case of forgery and fraud. However, these are the only crimes of which I am guilty. I am innocent of all the other crimes for which I was convicted, beginning with the Ebara branch of the Yasuda Bank.

  This incident occurred on 14 October 1947. However, I had nothing to do with it and I only confessed to it because I was convinced by the prosecutor that it was the right thing to do. I now regret making such a confession. Also, at that time, the time of my original confession, I had no alibi for the day in question. Now, however, I remember what I was doing on that day.

  On the 13th of that week in October 1947, I was visited by my friend Mr Yamaguchi. He asked me to paint pictures of white chrysanthemums on twenty pieces of paper as gifts for guests at a wedding party which would be held that week. I agreed to his request and began to work hard on the paintings. The next day I was still hard at work painting the flowers when I was visited by Mr Watanabe. I remember he praised one of my other paintings and I promised to give him the painting in question. During Mr Watanabe’s visit, my wife and daughter Hanako were also present. Mr Watanabe left around 4 p.m. and my other daughter, Shizuko, met him on her way home. I remember this now because Mr Watanabe’s visit had interrupted my work on the wedding gifts and so I was still painting them the next day on the 15th, when Mr Yamaguchi came to collect them. So despite my confession, I had in fact been at home all day on 14 October 1947, the day of the so-called rehearsal at the Ebara branch of the Yasuda Bank.

  Similarly, on 19 January 1948, the day of the second rehearsal at the Nakai branch of the Mitsubishi Bank, I also now realize that I had an alibi. The day before, I had had lunch at the home of Mr Yamaguchi and his family. I remember we ate udon and that we then played mah-jong until the early evening. The next morning I took a walk and I bought some yokan sweets. On returning home, I ate the yokan with my wife and I remember thinking that I should have taken the yokan as a gift the day before when I had visited Mr Yamaguchi and his family. I cannot remember anything else about that day, 19 January, except that I was working on a painting at that time.

  As I said during my trial, I do admit to having been to the Nakai branch of the Mitsubishi Bank a few times. However, this was simply because it is near to the market stall of one of my friends, Mr Kazama. That is the only reason I have been to that particular bank and I was certainly not there on the day in question.

  And then, of course, we now come to the day of the Teikoku Bank murders itself – 26 January 1948 – a day I had once forgotten but now remember and relive, over and over.

  For a long time, from the time of my initial and supposedly routine questioning by the police, to the time of my arrest and official interrogation by the prosecutor, I simply and honestly could not recall what I had done on this day. And then, under questioning, I became confused as to whether certain events happened on that day or, say, happened the week before. For example, I knew that at around that time I had bought some charcoal briquettes from my friend Mr Yamaguchi. However, I was unsure in my own mind whether this had taken place sometime the week before, on 18 January say, or on the day of the actual Teikoku Bank murders. And this, then, was the reason why I later wrote to Mr Yamaguchi asking whether he could remember on which particular day I had purchased the briquettes from him. Not because, as the police and the press have since suggested, I was attempting to concoct a false alibi.

  Similarly, I could not remember whether my visit to the exhibition of the Society of Watercolour Painters in the Mitsukoshi Department Store had been on 26 January or on some other day. Initially, I did believe it had been on that particular day. Of course, I now realize I was mistaken. But honestly, and for a while, I was sure I had visited the exhibition with my daughter on that afternoon. Hence, the chaotic and confused nature of some of my statements.

  However, I now know that on the afternoon of that day – Monday 26 January 1948 – I went to Mr Yamaguchi’s office in Marunouchi. Then, at around 3:30 p.m. – the time of the actual crime – I called at Mr Yamaguchi’s house and I returned home at about 5:00 p.m. with the fifty or sixty pieces of charcoal I had bought. I remember that my wife and my daughter were at home when I arrived back with this heavy bag. Also, an American soldier who was friendly with my daughter was also there and we played cards and spoke English well into the evening. That is what I did that day.

  The next day, which was 27 January, I do remember reading about the Teikoku case in the newspaper, or maybe hearing about it on the radio, and I also remember discussing it with my wife and my daughters. I distinctly recall asking them, ‘What kind of man could do such a cruel and inhuman thing?’

  That day, the day after the Teikoku murders, was also my younger sister’s birthday and so I remember travelling out to Ichikawa to visit her. And I think it was then that I decided, on the urging of my sister, to go to Hokkaido to see my younger brother. He had been seriously ill for some time with pulmonary tuberculosis and I had been meaning to visit him. And thanks to the money I had recently received from two of my patrons, I now had the cash to visit Hokkaido. So upon leaving my sister’s home in Ichikawa, I think I went to a travel agent in Marunouchi to arrange passage from Yokohama to Hokkaido on the Hikawa Maru. Or perhaps that was the day after. Anyway, it all occurred around this time.

  I am most aware, though, that the initial confused, even contradictory nature of my original statements to the police led them to be suspicious of me and to further investigate me.

  However, the original reason that they spoke with me in regard to the Teikoku Bank murders was because of the name-card that I had been given by Dr Matsui.

  Of course, when I was questioned, I immediately admitted to meeting Dr Matsui on the ferry from Hokkaido and exchanging name-cards with him the summer before. However, when asked by the police, I was unable to produce his name-card and so they believed that the card Dr Matsui had given me on the ferry was the one which must have been used at the Ebara branch of the Yasuda Bank by the criminal. This might be so, but it would not be because I was the criminal. It would be because Dr Matsui’s name-card was in my wallet when it was stolen from me at Mikawashima Station in September 1947.

  I had kept the card Dr Matsui had given me, along with a dozen or so other business cards, in my wallet, which, incidentally, was a leather one and of the type that fold in half. And I kept this wallet in the inside pocket of my jacket. That day there was also ¥11,000 in cash inside my wallet. It is embarrassing to say, but I was on my way to visit the parents of a woman I knew in order to repay them ¥10,000 which she had lent me. The train, however, was very crowded and I remember that my bag got caught and that I could not easily get off the train at Mikawashima Station because of all the people and I had to pull the bag hard in order to get off.

  It was only when I arrived at the house of the young lady’s parents and I reached for my wallet in order to repay them the money that I then realized I had been pickpocketed. And curiously, in the place where my wallet had been, there was now a lady’s fan. Of course, I immediately rushed back to the station and reported t
he crime to the local kōban. I also gave the police as evidence the lady’s fan which had been placed in my pocket. I believe this was a unique trait of that particular pickpocket, his trademark. The officers at the Mikawashima kōban kept the lady’s fan. Unfortunately, at that time, I said nothing of this incident to my wife because it would have meant admitting that I had been forced to borrow money from a female acquaintance, which would not only have been embarrassing for me but hurtful for my wife. And so I thought it best to say nothing.

  Of course, I now realize that my various deceptions and my many lies to my wife and to my children, not to mention the complicated nature of my finances and many of my relationships, both business and personal, only served to further arouse the suspicions of the police as they continued to investigate and later interrogate me. Now it is a source of intense regret and deep shame to me that I told so many lies, that I created so many deceptions.

  In particular, I realize that my financial dealings seemed somewhat irregular and suspicious. In fact, I freely admit now that my financial arrangements were often of a dubious and illegal nature. And I realize now that I should have confessed my financial wrongdoings to the police at the outset.

  But as I have already said, this was partly because I had embezzled a sum of money from the Society of Tempera Painters. It was also partly because it involved money I had either borrowed or loaned to my mistress. Finally, there was also cash from some famous and important people who would not want their names mentioning to the police, least of all in connection to such a high-profile case as the Teikoku Bank murders.

  To this end, I have kept money in various places. For example, in the sack along with my painting tools. Or in cloth bundles. Even in banks under assumed names such as Hayashi and so on. As a result, I often misplace money or entirely forget that I have even received it in the first place, hard as that may sound to believe. And as I say, most of this money, the money that was in my possession after the Teikoku Bank murders and which the police therefore suspected I had stolen from the bank, this money came from either my embezzlement of the Society for Tempera Painters, to which I did not wish to confess, or from my various patrons, whom I did not wish to involve with the police. Some of these men are of exceedingly high standing.

  Anyway, because of the name-card I had exchanged with Dr Matsui, and because of my confused and contradictory alibis, and because of the large amounts of cash in my possession, and because of my sudden trip to Hokkaido that February, and even because of my appearance, I was arrested in August 1948 in Otaru, Hokkaido, and charged with the murders, attempted murders and robbery of the Teikoku Bank in Toshima Ward in Tokyo on 26 January 1948.

  At first, the police had come to Otaru ‘just in passing’ and as a ‘matter of routine’; then the police started to come once a month, and again ‘just in passing’, as a ‘matter of routine’; then the police came once a week, not ‘just in passing’, not as a ‘matter of routine’; and then, finally, they came once a day until they never went away, until that August day when they took me away with them.

  Now I can recall very little about that journey back to Tokyo, little except for the crowds and the heat, the blanket over my head and the darkness around me and within me. I do remember I was frightened, particularly by the crowds that met our train at Ueno Station. I remember worrying about my wife and my children, about what they must be going through, about what they must be thinking.

  Similarly, those first days in police custody in Tokyo are now forgotten and lost to me, forgotten and lost in an accelerating whirlwind of entering rooms and leaving rooms, of sitting down and standing up, a nauseous blur of different voices from different mouths, an ever-more deafening crescendo of questions and accusations–

  ‘You are a bad man, you are a wicked man,’ said the voices. ‘Is it not possible you are also a murderous man, a killer?’

  Some of the voices were aggressive, some of the voices were consoling but, whatever their motivation, whatever their tone, soon I began to feel as though I was being hypnotized.

  And in my cell, I now had visions.

  Each night, at the window in my cell, a tall man in a black mask appeared, pointing a foreign gun at me through the iron bars, and the man would whisper, ‘Confess. Confess. Confess …’

  And then the dead, one by one, night after night, the Teikoku Bank Dead came to me and said, ‘You are a bad man, you are a wicked man we know. You are our murderer, our killer …

  ‘You should be executed, executed by potassium cyanide, to taste the pain we tasted, to suffer as we still suffer …’

  Then finally, one night in September, as the prison clock struck midnight, the Buddha himself came to my cell and he said, ‘Hirasawa, Hirasawa, listen to me carefully. I know you sincerely wish to be cleansed of all your sins and I know you are not the killer, but in order to be truly cleansed of your own sins, you must willingly accept the sins of others. So confess, confess …’

  I now believed I had only two ways to escape. I could either kill myself or I could confess. So first of all, I tried to kill myself. And three times I tried. First, I cut my left radial artery. Then, I drove my head into a pillar in the interrogation room. Finally, I swallowed five suppositories. But each time I failed to die. And I shed tears –

  For I then knew only the other way now remained.

  Still, it is hard for me to remember now, and so hard for me to fully explain, what exactly led me to confess to crimes I had not committed. For though I felt hypnotized by the voices, and though I was plagued by the visions, I had not been threatened and I had not been tortured. Nor was I coerced, though I suppose I felt persuaded by the visions, by the voices, that it would be for the best to confess, the best for my wife and for my children, and for my father back in Otaru. And so, one day that September, I confessed –

  And not only to the Teikoku Bank murders, but to every bad thing, to every crime I could think of, including to the assassinations of Prime Minister Inukai and Baron Takuma Dan, the president of Mitsui, and every coup d’état I could remember.

  And for a time, following my false confessions, the voices ceased and the visions left, and there was a strange silence and benign warmth around me as I learned and repeated the statements they wanted from me, as I copied and re-enacted the crimes they said I had done, in the silence and in the warmth.

  I had, in fact, confessed to things I had not done, things of which I was innocent, before. Some doctors and my supporters have stated that such false confessions are a symptom of K-disease, a side-effect of the rabies vaccination. And maybe it is true. But I really don’t know. I cannot say. For such behaviour on my part, along with my repeated denials of the things I had done, the things of which I was truly guilty, predates my wife’s bite and my rabies vaccination and has, in truth, been a trait of mine since an early age, for as long as I can recall. Now I can only surmise that it was as though my mind was a rope, a rope made from two threads; one thread my true-self, the other my hypnotized-self, until that thread snapped.

  For then, one day in November, it was as if I suddenly woke up. I remember I had just been served hot miso soup for my breakfast and as I took a sip, I heard a loud pop, as though a balloon had burst close-by my brain. And I suddenly recognized what I had done, what I was doing, and I suddenly thought, ‘I am incriminating myself, and not only myself, but all the people who love me, my wife and my children, my family and my friends.’ And I also thought, ‘And I am shaming the victims of the crime. I am protecting the real killer. What if the killer were to strike again, to kill more people?’ And I suddenly realized, ‘I must recant and apologize to the nation.’

  Another way to explain what happened to me that morning would be to describe a stage, a stage where the curtain rises and the stage is bare, but there on the stage is an actor and the actor is naked before his audience. That is what I felt had happened to me now; that the curtain had risen and there I was –

  Naked before the world –

  Innocent,
yet guilty –

  And so I remain.

  For as everybody knows, despite retracting my confession, I was found guilty and sentenced to death. And so, knowing each day may well be my last, I now live each day in a state of readiness and repentance; readiness for death by hanging and what will follow, repentance for the things I have put my wife and my children through.

  My wife has divorced me. My children have disowned me. Rightly, they are ashamed of me and they deny me, deny that I am now or ever was their father. They have changed their name, the name I gave them, my name. They have abandoned and disowned that name, my name. But the blame, the fault, is all mine.

  I should not have married. I should not have had children. Not being the person I am. I did not deserve my wife’s love. I did not deserve my children’s love. Not being the person I am. Not with all the things I have done, not with all the lies I have told.

  Now my ex-wife hates me. Now my children hate me. Being the person I am. My wife believes I am guilty. My children believe I am guilty. Being the person I am. And though I am innocent of the crimes my wife and my children believe I committed, I am still guilty. Being the person I am. Guilty of so many other crimes. Guilty of so many other lies. Being the person I am –

  A bad and wicked person.

  And though I know many kind people do believe I am innocent of the crimes of which I have been convicted, though I know many people work tirelessly to clear my name and to save me from this death sentence, and though I know these same people would be upset, even angry, to read these words, I must confess:

  I am resigned to my fate.

  For though I am innocent of the Teikoku Bank murders, I am guilty of so many other crimes. Crimes against my wife, crimes against my children, crimes against their hearts. And I truly believe I deserve to die for these bad things I have done, the terrible hurt I have caused them, the lies I have told them. In short, for the life I have led.