World War II in Malaya saw a greater increase in prostitution, due to deliberate policy and the conditions of war. After the initial stages of raping of women by advancing Japanese soldiers (as well as local men), women were required to be offered as part of services demanded from the people by the Japanese military officers. The Japanese military required villages to supply women for their troops. In larger towns, young girls were rounded up and kept in military brothels to service Japanese soldiers and such brothels. This is an excerpt from the book Peasants, Proletarians, and Prostitutes: A Preliminary Investigation into the Work of Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya by Lai, Ah Eng (1986).
I NEVER knew Malaysia had geishas. Not until director Michael Ang called me up early this year, telling me about this new tele-movie he will be producing for Astro Ria that is inspired by historical events, entitledGeisha Melayu Terakhir.
I was intrigued. And then he started telling me about the different roles in the movie. I became more fascinated.
And the moment I heard how the local girls in Malaya during World War II were captured and forced into prostitution to serve the Japanese soldiers as mock ‘geishas’, I was hooked.
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| Playing the part: Scha al-Yahya, Dawn Jeremiah and Tiz Zaqyah playing their part in the movie. |
A few months later, the script arrived and I pored over it, finishing the entire 90-minute movie script in 30 minutes. The story revolves around a girl Suraya and her life after the death of her father.
Played by Scha Alyahya, she is forced to fend for herself and support her family in the kampung and the only way to do that during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya was to work for these soldiers.
Suraya captures the attention of Mejar Shiro (played by Dazrin) amongst a slew of other men and he makes her an offer she can’t refuse: to work in their makeshift “teahouses”, otherwise known in this story as “brothels”.
With much reluctance, this new maiko (apprentice geisha) goes under the tutelage of her onee-san (an older geisha acting as a mentor), played by Tiz Zaqyah and befriends a fellow maiko, Mei, played by yours truly.
Expect chaos to ensue once a Japanese army camp is bombed by the MPAJA (The Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army). I couldn’t believe the twists and turns in the story and I crossed my fingers that the few minor risque elements in the show would get past our infamously uptight censorship boards.
I couldn’t wait to start shooting. This would be my first project that is set in a totally different era, a first period piece that I’ll be playing a part in. Imagine the costumes! Imagine the hairdos! Imagine the makeup! I was ecstatic!
When the day came, I was amazed at the care taken in the choice of locations and props. Most of the scenes were done at Istana Bilah in Papan, Perak, which was built in 1896 by Raja Bilah, a Mandailing aristocrat of Sumatran descent, who made Perak his home and final resting place.
Of course, I didn’t know it at that time and thought to myself as I drove to location, “What an eerily dead town Papan is, how can anyone possibly live here?”
I began by shooting an emotional scene and started getting made up in Geisha makeup (there was just so much to put on!), donned the costumes and accessories and continued shooting into the night.
As we were having our supper, some members of our production crew reported having seen “something” in the outdoor toilet, by the neck of the woods (how cliched). People have also reported having heard the azan from the surau next to the mansion, even though that surau has been empty for decades.
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| Surau |
Something told me to google this Istana Bilah and although I found no official reports of the mansion being “occupied by otherworldly creatures”, it was still very very old and the surrounding areas were supposedly haunted.
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| Istana Billah di Papan Perak penuh mistri |
So there I was, inside the said mansion, imagining all sorts of things during my break before my next scene.
Luckily our director Michael initiated a conversation with the mansion’s elderly owner who lived in a house next door and she clarified that although there may be “spirits” around, no harm was ever done to visitors of the mansion and its surroundings. Thank heavens.
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| KE VII |
Geisha Melayu Terakhir was a blast to shoot. It was an amazing script with great costumes. I got to work with talented actors and met wonderful people.
