Massaging information

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

BY PHILIP GOLINGAI

SANDWICHED between the Chop Kam Woh gift shop and wholesalers Hoong Hing Penjual Borong on Jalan Idris in Kampar, Perak, is an abandoned shop lot.

No. 135 is forlorn now but, 63 years ago, it was a hotbed of intrigue. It was a Japanese massage parlour then. Established in the early 1920s, the parlour was above a Japanese restaurant.

“Under British colonial rule, the town council enactment stated that a ‘prostitute shop’ should be located on two floors with the top floor used for servicing customers,” says 75-year-old local historian Chye Kooi Loong.

Chye Kooi Loong in front of what used to be a Japanese massage parlour cum intelligence gathering effort in Kampar.

“The Chinese, too, had their massage parlours in five cheap hotels in Kampar. They were really brothels if you ask me. But they (the Chinese massage parlours) could not compete with the Japanese one because the Japanese masseurs gave better service and charged cheaper as they were subsidised by Tokyo.”

The Japanese establishment was “very well patronised, from morning to night,” according to Chye, author of The History of the British Battalion – Malayan Campaign: 1941-42.

In 1940, Chye actually visited the restaurant. He was 11 years old when a family friend, a tin miner, told him, “Okay, young man, I will take you to see a Japanese restaurant.”

“What I remember is there were Japanese women singing and male customers drinking heated sake or Japanese tea. There was a dining area where you could eat Japanese dishes, like sukiyaki,” says the Kampar-born historian.

Did he see the massage girls?

“Oh, yes. They behaved very well. They knew we were children and they couldn’t be bothered with us,” he recalls. “Their faces were heavily painted with powder and cosmetics. They wore red lipstick and had Japanese-style hairdos. And they wore kimonos.”

The establishment was popular with British officers as it served “very good Japanese food” and they often took their wives along for dinner. That was on the ground floor.

“If you sought the services of the massage girls, they took you upstairs,” says Chye, adding that Kampar at that time was a big town as it also served the people of Gopeng and Tapah.

Payment for the massage, plus “further services”, was made in Straits dollars; the amount would be equivalent to RM100 today. The clientele ran the gamut from British government servants to tin miners and businessmen.

The Chinese, however, stopped patronising the massage parlour during the Sino-Japanese war that started on July 7, 1937.

“The Chinese hated the Japanese because they had attacked China. No Chinese dared to go into the shop. If you went in, you became a ‘running dog’. You would be stoned by the Chinese waiting outside.”

The parlour, Chye says, was one of the best places to get information.

“You go to a massage parlour, a girl will encourage you to get drunk on sake, and then say ‘marilah tuan, pergi mandi' (sir, let’s go for a bath). That’s how they got information out of you,” he explains.

These Japanese Mata Haris would go through the pockets of drunken British officers, photographing whatever they thought useful.

The officers never suspected they were being pumped for information as the girls were subtle, says Chye.

“For example, they would ask a police inspector, ‘Where are you from?’ and, ‘How many policemen are there in Kampar?’ It was all vital information needed by the Japanese military in planning (the invasion of Malaya),” he explains.

Tokyo was, of course, more than happy to subsidise the parlours as long as the stream of information kept flowing.

The parlour’s Japanese proprietor would also take the girls “fishing”.

“Actually, they were taking photos of the shoreline,” Chye says. “The British were not suspicious, they just thought the Japanese loved photography.”

Two months before the Japanese military launched its attack against Malaya, the massage parlour closed its doors, as did most of the other Japanese-owned shops in town.