Thinking of Kris, Joey
over 'mongo con hielo'

BEING away from home provides some perspective on the scope of the Kris-Joey breakup. On the lurid topic, my mailbox was swamped with all sorts of messages that far outnumbered all the junk mail I now receive regularly from presidential aspirants. From the quiet retreat of Kyoto, I could imagine how the world stopped in the Philippines for Kris Aquino and Joey Marquez. Some readers suggested I hook on the topic and write on Juan Luna who also poked a gun on his wife during a jealous rage. The main difference here is that Luna actually pulled the trigger and murdered both Mrs. Luna and his meddlesome mother-in-law.

Other readers requested a column on heroes with sexually transmitted disease, and all I could think of were the rumors, floated by Apolinario Mabini's political enemies, suggesting that our Sublime Paralytic was syphilitic. Post mortem autopsy has ruled out STD. Mabini's legs became useless due to polio. Yet the syphilis rumor is so hard to dispel. Given my limited experience, I cannot convince those who have made up their mind that one does not become a cripple due to venereal disease. Even castrati can sing and walk.

To get fresh air and ideas, I walked aimlessly around Kyoto and noticed three things: golden Billiken statues in antique shops, shaved ice and mongo in small restaurants and children playing Jak en Poy. All of the above were introduced in the Philippines at some point. The only question is whether we can trace their origins back to Japan.

"Mongo con hielo" and "halo-halo" are so much part of Philippine cuisine, we think they have been there forever, that these were probably indigenous. Halo-halo needed ice and the Philippines got its first taste of ice in the 19th century, when an ice ship carrying crystal clear blocks of ice from Wenham Lake, USA made a quick stopover in Manila before proceeding to India. Thus, halo-halo cannot be traced all the way back to pre-Spanish times. I don't think it was economical in the 19th century to shave imported ice into halo-halo, so perhaps we can date it to the turn of the 20th century when the Americans established the Insular Ice Plant by the Pasig. I presume Japanese settlers introduced mongo con hielo, which developed into that fantasy of mixed colors -- candied banana, assorted beans, leche flan, ube ice cream -- that we know today as halo-halo. Tracing food origins can sometimes lead to some surprises as most Filipinos do not know that corn and chico are just some of the crops introduced in the Philippines by the Spaniards from Mexico.

As I watched Japanese children play what I know as Jak en Poy, I was surprised to hear them shout "Jan Ken Pon!" as they formed in the air with their fingers the hand symbols for rock, paper and scissors. The rules of the game were simply familiar; even the rhyme they chanted "Attchi muite hoy! (Hey! Look here!) sounded just like the phrase we use in the Philippines "Jak en Poy. Hali-hali hoy!" (Come-come hey!). The Oy! Sound especially caught our interest because in the Philippines we used to chant "Jak en poy mukhang unggoy! Anyway, the game must have come to the Philippines from China or Japan, though one source on the Internet says Jak en Poy was known in ancient Egypt!

Significantly, just like with the halo-halo, the Filipinos improvised on Jak en Poy's rock, paper and scissors by adding two of our own finger flashing forms: pako/nail, symbolized by a clenched hand with a bent index finger sticking out, and ulan/rain, which is symbolized by a hand raised with all fingers wiggling spider-like. So when was the game introduced into the Philippines and from where? I leave that to the anthropologists.

As for Billiken, this is the elf-like figure with a big tummy and a mischievous smile. Naked except for a loincloth, he is depicted seated with arms on his sides and the soles of his big feet upright. I noticed a Japanese rubbing his feet for luck. No one in my generation knows about Billiken anymore, but as a historian I know Billiken was the mascot of the pre-war Manila Carnival. An Internet search led to the site of the Saint Louis Billikens (not Saint Louis University in Baguio City, this was SLU, USA). Billiken is the mascot of the SLU football team. Billiken did not originate from China or Japan or the Philippines but from the mind of a certain Florence Pretz of Kansas, Missouri who made the first Billiken patterned after Joss the Chinese God of "things as they ought to be." Or is this actually a corruption of a line from Rudyard Kipling's "L'envoi" that reads: "shall draw the Thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They ARE!" Whatever its origins, Billiken became a fad. Manufactured in the thousands from 1909 to 1912, it became one of the first copyrighted dolls. Billiken is cute in a perverse sort of way and it would make an interesting study to wonder how this image was said to bring three types of good luck: If you bought a Billiken, he brought you luck. If you are given a Billiken as a present, it brought better luck. And to have a Billiken stolen from you brought the best luck.

While Manila enjoys Kris and Joey, your historian is in Kyoto looking at Billikens, trying mongo con hielo and watching children play Jan Ken Pon, following up links between Japan and the Philippines.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu