Back in 2004, I sometimes used to tease my late grandmother, Tok.
"I'm going to Japan, Tok. I'm going to marry a Japanese and then we'll go to Japan."
"Haish, tok sah nak mengarut nak kahwin dengan orang Jepun kapir..."
"Being Japanese does not necessarily means they are non Muslim. I'm going to marry a Muslim Japanese."
"Orang Jepun pun ada yang Islam ka?"
"Of course! I'm going to marry Mohammado Amino Nakasone..."
"Hish, aku tak suka anak cucu aku kahwin orang Jepun kapir..."
"No, I'm not going to marry a non-Muslim lah Tok. Not all Japanese are non-Muslims. He's a Muslim. His name is Amino Nakasone..."
And it would go on and on.
Tok would pucker her lips in distaste, her face all crumpled and it was kind of fun to tease just to see her reaction.
Anyway, it wouldn't be difficult to guess why Tok had a thing against Japanese, as she was there to experience the harsh and brutal living condition during Japanese occupation of Malaya in the 1940s.
Still, despite having alzheimer's disease, long after the occupation was over, Tok could still sing the 'song of submission' that the children of her time had to sing for the Japanese army.
"Miyoto kaino suru akite
yokodi kotakoku kagaya kiba
ten shino shi hatsura koto
kiba uwa odorou oyashima"
(note: I'm not exactly sure of the actual lyric, but the verses above are more or less how it sounded to us)
Tok almost always sang "Miyoto kaino" in full spirit, complete with her hand waving in the air like a conductor. It was kind of contradiction really - for somebody who abhorred to be associated with Japanese to sing the song of submission with such passion.
Anyway, on the day we got married, I grinned sheepishly as I introduced "Amino Nakasone" to Tok.
Tok's immediate response?
"Hang tok sah nak mengarut nak kahwin dengan orang Jepun..."
Ha ha.
4 comments:
This is a cute post.
Long time no hear from you except for the odd FB updatesI read from you.
Hope everything's going well now.
My grandma when reminiscing about those hard days living under "jajahan Jepun" will start singing too. She was a school teacher back then.
orang dulu2 ingat zaman derita - kat toyota we all buat lawak ngan coordinator u know aarr ur great great father rape our great great mother u know very cruel hehe dia said nothing tak ternafi hehe
Lina: Alhamdulillah, things seem to go well for now :-)
Wah, tak sangka nenek kita sama-sama pandai nyanyi lagu jepun... dan cucu-cucunya pula, sama-sama fascinated dengan jepun, hehehe...
Erma: Your comment reminded me of a particular class discussion in Waseda. Our lecturer was saying that he disliked America for he could still remember cruel things the American soldiers did when he was a small child...
And then a Malaysian classmate said something along the line, "that's how some Malaysians feel about Japanese because they could still remember what the Japanese army did during the occupation in Malaya..."
Terkedu lecturer tu u...
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