By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

I knocked in a room where some students were cooking as we were about to use the room at 3pm for rehearsal. The lady in charge was surprised and annoyed and blurted, “shit!” Keeping my cool I told her, “You should vacate, and why are you cursing?” She turned quiet.

I left the room and found a vacant place that also had a stage. We were supposed to rehearse to celebrate the Japanese-Filipino Friendship Day at De La Salle University, where I was the Chairperson of the Department of Culture, Religion and Peace.

A contraption that played music was being readied to start the event. The national anthem of Japan, “Kumpetei, Kempetai”, was supposed to be sung. The events manager prompted me: “Ma’m, since you are the Chairperson of the Department, please lead the singing of the national anthem of Japan, “Kumpetei, Kempetai”.

I said yes, but wondered why I should do it, I am not familiar with the lyrics and I am Filipino. Besides, we were not in a position to begin immediately after a dress rehearsal. I was visibly confused. The person who volunteered to operate the sound system, my nephew JC, signaled me to begin.

My confusion made me tense. I saw Alice Guo, singing “Bayang Magiliw”, the Philippine national anthem, in her flawless Filipino, ending with, “ . . . and mamatay ng dahil sa yo”. My confusion got worse. My throat dried up, my taste was bitter, and I requested for a glass of water.

I woke up. It was 2:58 a.m. What was that? My immediate reaction was to grab my mobile and searched for the words, “Kumpetei, Kempetai”. I found nothing on Kumpetei. But I found a word close to it, Kuṃpaṭi, a term from the Kannada language spoken in India, meaning “a dispute or disagreement, esp. one marked by anger and deep resentment”.  The second word Kempetai referred to the military police of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), an organization whose role included espionage, counter-intelligence and acted as civilian secret police, within Japan and its occupied territories, and was notorious for its brutality and role in suppressing dissent.

Next, I searched for the national anthem of Japan, which turned out to be Kimigayo, translated as “His Imperial Majesty’s Reign”, whose lyrics came from a waka (Japanese poem) that first appeared in the Kokin Wakashū (Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times), the first of 21 collections of Japanese poetry compiled at Imperial request, commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū published in ca.920.

The author of the poem is unknown, and the poetry had no title. Kimigayo has long been Japan’s de facto national anthem, the shortest in the world:

May your reign continue for a thousand,
eight thousand generations,
until the pebbles become rocks
and moss grows on them

I have not dreamt in color for a long time. “Kumpetei, Kempetai” is a surreal experience that is not extremely disorienting and bizarre. Perhaps it is a result of watching “Pulang Araw” and the Senate/ QUAD COMM hearings, which is slowly unfolding to be frightening and surreal in the magnitude of its threat to our national identity and security. My next nightmare is singing the national anthem of China, “March of the Volunteers” which ironically stemmed from the resistance war against the Imperial Japanese during World War II. It is not far-fetched, given the current state of our geo-politics and propensity for corruption, that surreality is staring us in the face, as boldly announced in the tarpaulins along Commonwealth Avenue a few years back under Duterte’s time, “Philippines, Province of China.”

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