Woman who penned Bengali book on Japan captured on celluloid

As Allied war planes rained bombs on Tokyo, a lone woman wearing a helmet, would travel through the bomb-battered streets in the dead of night to reach the radio station to read news in Bengali for Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's Azad Hind Fauz.

For two years between 1942 and 1944 during the Second World War, she was not deterred by the risk to her life as she went to the radio station because her only mission was to eke out a living not only for herself but also to take care of her ailing Japanese husband Wemon Takeda with whom she fell in love with and got married as a 22-year-old in Dhaka.

This "exceptional" story of Hariprobha Basu Mallik, the first woman from the Indian subcontinent to write a book in Bengali on Japan in 1915, whose life has been recreated on the celluloid by veteran Bangladeshi director Tanvir Mokammel in his latest documentary Japani Bodhu (The Japanese Wife) that is scheduled to premiere in India in June.

After her marriage to Takeda, who had set up a soap-making factory in Dhaka, Hariprobha Basu Mallik became Hariprobha Takeda and travelled to Tokyo in 1912.

Born in 1890, Hariprobha would have remained unsung and largely forgotten but for her Bangamahilar Japan Jatra (The Journey of a Bengali Woman to Japan), a memoir of her journey to Japan in 1912, the first book on that country by any woman from Indian subcontinent, said Mokammel adding the book was first published from Dhaka in 1915.

When Hariprobha went to Japan with her husband in 1912, it was an opportunity for her to not only meet her in-laws but also see the Japanese socio-cultural life. She wrote a memoir, a kind of travelogue about the then Japan which, as portrayed in Hariprobha's book, is a different country altogether hundred years back, said Mokammel.

Hariprobha shifted permanently to Japan in 1941 when the country was in the throes of the Second World War and when Japanese nationals from across the world were returning to their homeland.

Besides the War, what made Hariprobha's life tougher was the illness of her husband and she, with the help of revolutionary Rashbehari Bose, took up the job of reader of Bengali news from Tokyo radio for Subhash Chandra Bose's Azad Hind Fouz in 1944-45 to make a living.

As bombs by allied forces were raining on Tokyo, Hariprobhoa saw all around her the horrors of the war as well the sufferings of the Japanese people and wrote another memoir on Japan.

It was revolutionary freedom fighter Rashbehari Bose who helped Hariprobha get the news reader's job for INA radio in Tokyo. Wearing a helmet, she used to travel in the dead of night to reach the radio station to read the news. It was during the Second World War that Hairprobha was introduced to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

After her husband's death in 1948, she shifted to West Bengal and stayed her with her sister in Jalpaiguri before breathing her last at Shambhunath Pandit Hospital Kolkata in 1972.

Mokammel said what inspired him to make the documentary was the "extraordinary courage" shown by Hariprobha in marrying a Japanese and taking the plunge into a totally different country, society and culture. She learnt Japanese and could speak the language fluently.

"I have huge respect for women like Hariprobha who muster the courage of venturing into totally unchartered territory in life. It takes a lot of courage to do so", the director said adding that "finding her books interesting and herself an exceptional character I decided to make a film on Hariprobha".

To Tanvir, the life of Hariprobha was like a patch of bright sunshine when societies in India and Japan were clouded by socio-economic backwardness and war.

The idea of the film was with Tanvir for the last ten years and the special reason he made it this year is because 2012 is the centenary year of Hariprobha's travel to Japan.

The research for the film has been done by journalists Manjurul Huq and Kajuhiro Watanabe and the documentary was shot in Tokyo , Kobe and Nagoya, the places where Hariprobah had lived or travelled, in India and in Bangladesh.

The 67-minute film, supported by Japan Foundation, has been shot by Golam Masum Zico and edited by Delhi-based Mahadeb Shi and its music done by Syed Shabab Ali Arzoo.