Just as any country that experienced wars, Thailand, which was involved in both world wars, has its share of bestseller novels that are themed on wartime love stories.
Possibly the most famous work among such novels is Wimol Siripaiboon's "Khu Kam," a love story between a Thai woman and an idealistic Japanese soldier during World War II after Japan invaded Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand.
An all-time favourite for many Thais, the romance novel Wimol wrote as Thommayanti, her pen name -- and published as a complete work in 1969 -- has been adapted into six TV soap operas, four movies and a musical, some of them with the title "Sunset at Chaophraya."
Set in the early phase of World War II, the novel begins with a nationalist Thai woman named "Angsumalin" harbouring hatred toward the Japanese soldier "Kobori." Later in the novel, heartbreaking love develops between the two.
In an interview, Wimol, 81, said that as someone who experienced the war, she narrated in her work the lesson that war causes a tremendous loss to mankind.
As she sees it, love is the bonding of two hearts, but when a conflict or war is involved, people must perform their duties for their own countries, like Angsumalin and Kobori, the novel's protagonists.
"Kobori had to die at the end because I wanted to show that war causes death and damage, whether you are on the side of the Axis or Allies", Wimol said.
She said she was inspired to write the novel by her own experiences with Japanese soldiers, who entered her country to invade Malaya and Burma. Thailand had allowed the troops access through the country and signed a mutual defense pact with Japan.
Tension from the war had forced her family to temporarily leave Bangkok's outskirts for another province. While riding in a train, she received warm treatment from an unknown Japanese soldier.
"I was 6 years old and stood next to my mother who had carried my younger sister in the packed train. Suddenly a Japanese soldier had me sit on his lap," Wimol said. "The soldier frightened my mother when he refused to give me back to her at first."
Wimol's father guessed that the soldier might have missed a daughter he had left back home.
She and her family also had interactions with Japanese soldiers who had stationed in western Bangkok.
Stories abound in Thailand of brutal treatment of local residents and others by Japanese soldiers, particularly in Kanchanaburi province, where Japan's military built the infamous "Death Railway," using Allied prisoners of war as forced labor, to support its forces in the Burma campaign of the Second World War.
"I don't know what happened in other parts of Thailand but what I experienced was quite good. The Japanese soldiers I met did not harm us and that (experience) led to (creating) Kobori" as the main character in the novel, she said.
According to the author, who has penned more than 100 novels, Kobori reflected an ideal Japanese man who is disciplined and adheres to military regulations, and was modeled after a commander of Japanese forces in Thailand during World War II, Lt Gen Aketo Nakamura.
Wimol said she did not know Lt Gen Nakamura in person but read books about him, and that her impression of him was positive. He seemed to her to have helped ease frosty relations that had developed between local Thais and Japanese soldiers.
As she sees it, the novel shows rocky relations between Thailand and Japan, both at personal and national levels, during a war in which Thailand allowed Japan to use its territory even as a group of Thais was secretly cooperating with the Allies.
The story between Kobori and his Thai lover is fiction, but Wimol says many scenes in the novel come from her direct experiences, including products traded between Japanese soldiers and local residents, and bomb attacks by the Allies.
"I was young but I have vivid memories of Japanese soldiers walking or driving by as children including me shouted to them 'arigato,' 'banzai' and chaiyo (a Thai word that expresses a delight or cheer) just to have fun," Wimol said with a laugh.
In a reflection of Khu Kam's popularity in Thailand, a number of Thais used to call Japanese men who visited the country "Kobori," according to the novelist.
"A Japanese man who is called Kobori by Thai people should be proud as he is a symbol of kindness, warmth and discipline."
