Java

 

To quote the great French writer Honoré de Balzac… ‘To get to the point, project yourselves at once across the ocean and the Asian seas, traverse the great spaces on a good sailing brig, and let us come at once to Java, my island of choice’. (Voyage de Paris à Java, 1832)

It was not because it was Balzac’s ‘Island of choice’, but because I had an overwhelming desire to visit the great Buddhist site of Borobudur, that I went across the Java Sea, to the Indonesian island of Java. I flew from Kuala Lumpur International Airport ((KUL, 2) to Yogyakarta (JOG), via Airasia, quite unlike Java Man (Homo Erectus Erectus), who decided to take an alternate route and traversed a land bridge called Sundaland, to reach Central Java some long time before Borobudur was built.

For some, Java is synonymous with coffee, but we shall get to that. I landed in Yogyakarta, which is now known as the cultural capital of the island of Java. Yogyakarta has been variously acknowledged as jogya, Djokja, Yokya, Jokya, Juju, Ayogyakèrta, ‘Ng’yug’ya or Yug’ya-kerta, Djojo-Carta and Djokakarta, for your information.

I am further persuaded that the name Yogyakarta may have been derived from Sanskrit or, further, from the Indian epic Ramayana, in which Na-yud-ya is mentioned. This is all according to the long departed Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (born 1781 died 1826), of Singapore hotel fame, gin slings and the like. Raffles was one of the many biographers of Java and Indonesia, and was Fellow of the Royal Society and Lieutenant-Governor of British Java from 1811 to 1815. Another source of information is Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (born in 1856 and died in 1928) and yet another is W. Basil Worsfold (born 1858 and died 1939), should you wish to check.

After some two and a half hours we landed at a very unprepossessing Adisutjipto International Airport. We walked, eyes taking in the homely structures and sparse ground crew, from the plane as Indonesia welcomed us with droplets of warm rain. Inside a very small reception area, I immediately began to scrabble in my small yellow bag, made in Cambodia from re-cycled fishing net, and withdrew what I had been led to believe would be the requisite visa payment (US$35). Coming from Malaysia where the currency ranges from low to suicidal, that amount of American Dollars just seemed too much just to be able to enter a country, and spend my hard earned cash there. Never mind, I was finally in Indonesia, and about to see Borobudur after 66 years of existence.

I looked around inside that small building housing the immigration department. There was a tiny window off to the right, with a young lady wearing a headscarf. She was sitting under a sign, VOA (Visa On Arrival I translated), and dragged my hefty weariness toward that sign, and that towards that young lady. I was still reluctant to part with the better part of MY (Malaysian Ringgit) 140. She smiled. I forced a weak smile back. She asked me how long I intended to stay in Indonesia, I said about a week. She smiled in such a way as to lead me to believe that I was short changing myself by such a brief visit, and then, she said ‘it’s free, no is visa required’. I am not young. My hearing is not all that it should be, so I stood, somewhat stunned, thinking that was not what I had learned on the internet. She assured me that it was correct. Rather than argue further, and have to pay, I gave up while the going was good and accepted my good fortune.

We inched towards the Immigration Officers. One kindly immigration officer chopped my passport with no fuss and, amazingly, there I was in Indonesia, well, on the island of Java. We headed into the city of Yogyakarta and towards the hotel that I’d pre-booked, the oddly sounding Hotel Pyrenees. I just couldn’t and, admittedly, still can’t, see the connection.

I was transported from the airport in a local taxi and through drearily uncomely streets, to our bright green and white hotel. I had been experiencing a strange feeling of deja vu; of having been there before. Perhaps it was the many signs in the Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia), which is akin to Malay, or Yogyakarta’s simultaneous resemblance to the less salubrious districts of Manila, but cleaner and without the dangerously careening jeepneys. During our short trip that deja vu feeling never really left, later I also added Cambodia to that list of similar places.

For those of us who have spent a colossal amount of time in the West, Java is a name exotic and mysterious. In America, Java has become synonymous with coffee. That coupling dates back to the days when the Dutch had planted Arabica coffee beans in Java. That island quickly became the second largest supplier of coffee in the world. The first being Brazil. Sadly, in 1876, a fungus called the coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) wiped out most of the Arabica coffee plants, leaving Java and Indonesia in a much poorer state. Java eventually replanted its destroyed plantations with the less favourable Robusta beans, but the name Java remained. Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi) now supplies about a third of the world’s coffee.

Curiously, and there may not even be a connection, but the young French poet Arthur Rimbaud, on June 10, 1876, at the age of 21 set sail for Java, the very same year as the blight attacked the Javanese coffee plantations. He had enlisted in the Dutch Colonial Army and was transported, on board the Prince of Orange, to Batavia (now known as Jakarta). He had landed on July 22nd, and promptly deserted after two months. Eventually he caught a British ship and was back home in Ardennes, France, with his mother by December 31, 1876. There is no solid evidence that Rimbaud had read Honore de Balzac’s Journey from Paris to Java (1832), but a poet friend of Rimbaud’s had. Some years before Rimbaud had left France, Edgar Allan Poe had written his short story of Java (Manuscript found in a bottle, a tale about Java), published in 1833, and translated into French by Charles Baudelaire, in 1855. 

Over many years the island of Java been made exotic, not least by colonialists like Sir Stanford Raffles. Over time it has been re-mythologised, made part of many lewd and lurid Western narratives concerning the exotic and erotic romanticism. In 1889, at the Dutch East Indies pavilion of the Parisian Exposition Universelle (Universal Exposition) four dancers, Sarkiem, Tamina, Sukia and Wakiem, ordinary women from the Javanese village of Wonogiri, had danced for their country. 

If they had been Parisian women, Paris would have been scandalised at their showing of naked skin on their arms, shoulders and calves (as depicted both in photographs taken at the time). It was not enough that these young women were eroticised as female Javanese dancers, but in Paris they had to be seen as being tempting, alluring princesses (of the Manjunegaran kingdom) to enhance the myth and mysticism enveloping that far distant island of Java.

Within the six months they were in Paris, those dancers became chic, preparing future Parisian audiences for yet more exotic harmonies from composers like Claude Debussy who, in a letter written to the poet Pierre Louÿsin (1895), mentioned “Do you not remember  the Javanese music, able to express every shade of meaning, even unmentionable shades, and which makes our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts?”

But that is not all. Between 1924 and 1925 the Polish-American pianist and composer, Leopold Godowsky, after a sojourn in the East and a visit to Java, wrote his Java Suite for piano. The suite is composed of twelve movements, ranging from the spiritually evocative, and tinkling delicacy of Borobudur in Moonlight, to the grandiose, cascading, melody of In the Streets of Old Batavia. This is made even more enticing when listening to Esther Budiardjo’s renditions, for she was born in Jakarta, on the island of Java.

As the century moved on, musicians and singers continued to make the Indonesian island of Java exotic. Java Jive, was written by the New York composers Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, and originally recorded in 1940 by the Ink Spots. The song is about coffee, rather than the island, while some years later, a now famous rendition of a very different jazz tune - Java, by Al Hirt, was originally written in 1958 by Allen Toussaint and Danny Kessler, from New Orleans which, one might think, was quite possibly about the island and not the coffee.

However, Kessler was a race track fan. The tune was, like many of his tunes, named after Java, the racehorse. At least two other racehorses had been named Java - Java Gold and Java Joe. In 1977, the now late Rick Danko, of Bob Dylan’s former back group (known as The Band), solo recorded Java Blues, not about the island or about the racehorse, but about coffee, while one black American entertainer, self titled Sir Lady Java, was an African American transgendered dancer. She was also an activist and female impersonator, popular in the 1950s and 60s. One could only guess the relationship between coffee, an island, and his/her flamboyant character.

Film makers too have fed into the lure of Java as exotica. Films featuring Java include Lily van Java (1928), Wild Orchids (1929) featuring Greta Garbo, Java Head with Anna May Wong (1934), Fair Wind to Java with Fred McMurray, Krakatoa East of Java (1969, with Maximilian Schell) and Java Heat with Mickey Rourke (2013).

Fictional books concerning Java, from which many of the above films came, include Honore de Balzac’s Journey from Paris to Java, Jewel of the Java Sea by Dan Cushman, Alistair Maclean’s South by Java Head, Java Strip Joy Girl by Bill S.Ballinger, Java Spider by British author Geoffrey Archer and, of course, Rimbaud in Java by Jamie James, which is more about Rimbaud than it is about Java . Various lurid short stories, including Java Quest by Frank Roberts, fed off that erotically charged, exotic, orient.

So there we were, all anxious to get out and about. I quickly showered and took myself off to the street which appeared to be a central attraction in Yogyakarta - Jalan Malioboro (Marlborough Street, named after the Duke of Marlborough). No sooner had I turned the corner from Jalan Sosrowijayan, into Jalan Malioboro, than an enthusiastic gentleman waylaid me, wanting to show me his batik, not etchings. He was most insistent, telling us that it was the last day of the show, and that he had batik from all around Java. The show was, apparently, touring and would disappear to another venue, in a different part of Java, the next day.  So there was a sense of urgency, for me to catch this incredible sight  before it left, for we would be most disappointed once it did. As the ‘gallery’ was along the same road I was walking, we followed. True enough there were batik works in the gallery. I was a little tired and resisted the pressure to purchase. The purveyor was not happy. I was sad that I would be unable to see the works properly the next day, when we were not so tired, and I accepted that.

So, it was with some surprise to see the same gentleman, the next day, saying the self same things to other tourists, for and subsequent days during our stay there. He re-approached me, then realised he had seen us the day before. I reminded him of this, and walked on. Later, I took a look at Tripadvisor which warns of this scam. Helpful travellers have spoken of the very same Jalan Malioboro batik scam since 2015.