Christine Piper: After Darkness

Born from a Japanese mother and Australian father, Christine Piper’s ambition was to write a novel based on a Japanese internee’s perspective in Australia during World War II. And that is exactly what this year’s Australian Vogel Award winning novel After Darkness is all about.

After Darkness tells the story of Tomakazu Ibaraki a Japanese doctor interred at an enemy alien camp in remote South Australia. Ibaraki is an ambitious surgeon who becomes embroiled in research at the Epidemic Prevention Laboratory within the Army Medical College in Tokyo as part of horrific top-secret experiments in Japanese warfare. After certain events he leaves Japan and takes up a post in a small town in Broome known as Japtown ¾ where other Japanese settlers reside ¾ in charge of the hospital. In 1942 he is sent to camp Loveday until he is able to once again return to Japan.

Ibaraki’s story comes alive through Piper’s clever use of transition between past and present, carefully jig-sawing all of the pieces of Ibaraki’s life together. His reclusive and detached personality is revealed through the imagery rather than in an over abundance of dialogue. Ibaraki’s inability to connect and bare his true feelings is echoed in his relationship with characters such as Stan Suzuki, Kayoko and Sister Bernice, as he stands back and watches their own angst and inner turmoils.

As Piper reveals more of Ibaraki’s psyche and changes, she shows us the world through his eyes. She writes: ‘Hayashi sat at the front of the ward. His arms were on the table before him, elbows butterflying open a book. Behind him, beds stretched back in two long rows. Patients lay or sat on their beds in various states of fitful rest.’ Such images reveal intimate moments in time before words are spoken and the serenity is broken, or the horror exposed.

At times I found Piper overused Ibaraki’s silence adding a little tediousness to the flow of the novel. But this is only a minor flaw and in no way reflects the powerful story that is brought to life about discretion, friendship, honour and loyalty.

Piper’s After Darkness delves into a controversial period in Australian history through a unique perspective in Ibaraki’s life both in Japan and Australia.