A genealogy of japanese solidarity discourse on philippine history war with america and area studies in the cold war

A Genealogy of Japanese Solidarity Discourse on Philippine History: War with America and Area Studies in the Cold War Takamichi Serizawa A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2013             i    Ackowledgment I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Reynaldo C. Ileto, who has patiently and warmly taken care of my Ph.D. project since the summer 2008. With his inspiring mentorship, I could always feel excitement and happiness during my four and a half years of study at the NUS. I want to dedicate this thesis to “Prof. Rey” as a part of my “utang,” which I permanently owe him. The academic staff of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies taught me a lot. It was my great fun to join a department that allowed me to feel not strictly disciplined and that offered students like me a rather loosely-structured, relaxed, but nonetheless challenging atmosphere all the time. Particularly I want to express my gratitude to the Department’s Head, Associate Prof. Goh Benglan, Associate Prof. Jan Mrazek and Dr. Julius Bautista for helping me to shape my thinking in this academic journey. My thanks also got to my graduate colleagues. Preciosa de Joya and Alice Yap always listened to me and encouraged my project when I faced problems. Jun Cayron, Pitra Narendra, Wen Batocabe and Jay Cheong were the fellows from whom I learned many things through the medium of beer. I also thank Associate Prof. Maitrii AungThwin and Professor Barbara Watson Andaya at the History Department for kindly introducing me to important persons to contact during my U.S. fieldwork commenced in February 2012. With their moral support my trip became a more meaningful one. My U.S. archival work was kindly guided by the prominent librarians, Shiro Saito (in Hawaii) and Susan Go (in Michigan). They introduced me to interesting and important sources as well as welcoming me in my visits. Grant Goodman (in Kansas) and Pete Gosling (in Michigan), retired professors who had worked on both Japan and the Philippines (Southeast ii    Asia), shared their academic-life histories with me. Their “lectures” stimulated my curiosity, which drove me to write up about the “same” origin of Philippine and Japanese Studies in the United States. Since I started my study in NUS, I rarely had the chance to go back to Japan. I did not see my old professors at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Hitotsubashi University. Although I did not meet them, my inner dialogues with them always kept going on. The following are the Japanese scholars to whom I particularly want to express my gratitude: Professors Masafumi Yonetani, Hidefumi Ogawa, Masahiko Okawa, Yoshiko Nagano and Satoshi Nakano. Finally, I want to thank my family. My parents, Hisayasu and Fusae, did not hesitate to send me the old books that I had ordered online many times. My younger brother and sister, Masamichi and Hisako, visited Singapore several times instead of my having to go back to Japan to see them. My wife, Rena, always supported me mentally and even financially. We got married just before we came here to Singapore and I not believe I could have completed my Ph.D. project without her around. iii    Table of Contents Acknowledgement Summary i v Introduction: The Past and Present of Japan and the Philippines Studies on the impacts of Japanese Occupation in Southeast Asia Japanese Wartime Writings on the Philippines Selection of Japanese Wartime Sources by U.S. Area Studies Research Purpose and Organization of Chapters 14 19 23 Chapter 1: Japanese Wartime Use of Philippine History Ki Kimura: Collecting Archives under the War Japanese Use of Jose Rizal, Emilio Aguinaldo and Andres Bonifacio Jose Ramos and His Tie with Japan On National Name and Flag: Japanese Inquiring Eye on Filipino Veterans and Historians A Japanese Genealogy on Philippine History: Yukichi Fukuzawa (Meiji), Motosaku Tsuchiya (Taisho) and Ki Kimura (Wartime Showa) Summary 28 32 38 44 Chapter 2: Disseminating Tagalog: An Encounter between Filipino Revolution and Japanese Rule Tagalog for the Revolutionaries on the Eve of War Need for the Middle Class Inferior Scripts: Kana and Baybayin Teodoro Agoncillo’s Madilim pa Umaga Summary 48 56 60 62 65 72 77 84 88 Chapter 3: Friend and Foe Politics in the War: Japanese, Igorot, and U.S. Colonialism American Identification of Igorot Mining Development and Igorot-lowlander Politics Igorot miners’ collaboration with the Mitsui Mining Company An Igorot Guerrilla: Bado Dangwa An Igorot Collaborator: Hilary Pit-a-pit Clapp Summary 90 93 99 102 109 113 116 Chapter 4: Comparing U.S. Modernization Discourse on Japan and the Philippines (19451960’s) “Kindai”: Reification of a Western Concept Questioning “Positionality” in Conducting Area Studies The “Same” Origin of Japanese and Philippine Studies in the United States Summary 119 123 131 137 143 iv    Chapter 5: Dilemmas of a Japanese Historian: Tatsuro Yamamoto and the Ghost of the Greater East Asian War Tatsuro Yamamoto: Upbringing and Works (Re)Birth of Southeast Asian Studies in Japan Modernity and Morality: “Americanization” in Japanese Scholarship Summary 146 148 151 158 167 Chapter 6: Translation and Destiny Luis Taruc’s Born of the People: Translation by a Female Japanese Communist Gregorio Zaide’s Philippine History Text Book: Translation by a Japanese Engineer Yoshiyuki Tsurumi and Japan’s Contradiction with the Past: Translating Renato Constantino Shohei Ooka’s Compassion for Wandering, Starving, and Surrender in the Forests Summary 199 211 Conclusion 214 Bibliography 218 v    170 175 184 189 Summary This thesis examines the formation and reconstruction of Japanese knowledge on the Philippines by paying attention to the various impacts of Japan’s war against America and its defeat. So called “the Greater East Asian War” produced a large number of Japanese writings on the Philippines from governmental-military reports to private literature. Previous works criticized these writings as the products of a “wrong” history of what Japan did for Asian countries and people during its imperial era. In particular, private Japanese wartime accounts such as travel memoirs, essays and novels on the Philippines were simply disregarded due to their supposedly “ethno-centric,” “self-deceiving” and “violent” characters. The first part of the thesis sheds light on these “bad” Japanese accounts by tracing their roots in American colonial writings. The second part looks into the development of Area Studies in the Cold War to demonstrate how a postwar “forgetting” of Japanese wartime writings came about, contributing to a “disconnection” between Japan and the Philippines. vi    Introduction The Past and Present of Japan and the Philippines Dean C. Worcester, a scientist in the fields of botany and zoology, who served as US secretary of interior of the Philippines, once wrote a short essay on Japan in 1915 entitled “To Our Near Neighbor in the Far East.”1 Having visited Japan on fourteen different occasions during which he observed how people lived in the cities and the countryside, Worcester begins by expressing his impressions of the place: I have met your great ruler Mutsu Hito2 and others of your statesmen, and have been impressed with their progressive spirit, the thoroughness of their knowledge, and the saneness of their judgment. I have watched with sympathetic interest not the “civilization” (Heaven save the mark!) but the modernization of Japan and have admired the spirit in which you have met the manifold and complex problems which your recent unprecedented progress has presented for your solution. [Worcester, 1915: 183] (quotation marks and italics put in the original)                                                              The article is compiled in a book edited by the President of the Japan Society of America, Lindsay Russell. The book was published as a reply to its preceding publication from the Japanese side in 1914, Japan to America, written in English. Japanese politicians and scholars contributed essays for promoting two nations’ friendship. The name of Meiji Emperor.   1    Worcester uses the word “modernization” to name Meiji Japan’s successful development. His disapproval of the use of the term “civilization” alludes to the fact that Japan’s development is a unique example in Asia but not unique in terms of catching up with Western forms of development. Modernization was an important task for him as a scientist as well as colonial officer during his posting in the Philippines from 1901 to 1913. In particular, Worcester paid much effort to the development of the non-Christian tribes in the islands. His autobiographical book, The Philippines Past and Present (1914), spares many pages for his observations on the problems and solutions in the development of non-Christian tribes and shows how he had difficulties in bringing modernization to them. It is worth noting, however, that Worcester’s positive assessment of Japan is entangled with US territorial concerns in the Far East. He continues, then: Not a few Americans have been obsessed with the idea that you would ultimately fight us to get the Philippines. I confess to incredulity when some of your public speakers tell us that you not consider these potentially very rich Islands worth having. You know them too well. Neither does it seem probable that your experiences in Formosa would deter you from improving a really favorable opportunity to extend your possessions farther southward. You are not so easily discouraged. But we believe that it would be foolish for you to attempt to take the Philippines from us, and we not believe that you are a foolish people. With the opportunities for expansion which you now have, possession of the Philippines would be a pitifully insignificant compensation for the moral and material loss which would result were you thus to earn for yourself the hostility of your oldest and best friend among the nations [Worcester, 1915: 186-187]. 2    From this quotation, we can assume that Worcester thought of Japan as modern enough not to entertain foolish thoughts about invading a US-held territory, the Philippines. Even after the Philippines was declared pacified by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, the Filipino-American War did not end. Filipino revolutionary struggles against the United States persisted under the leadership of figures such as Macario Sakay and Felipe Salvador.The rumor that Japan would assist these Filipino revolutionary movements by invading the islands, had been seriously argued in Philippine newspapers and constabulary reports during Worcester’s stay there. Around thirty years later, during World War II, Worcester’s concern came true. Japan did invade the Philippines in 1941 and occupied the islands until 1945. Japan’s defeat in the war and the subsequent GHQ/SCAP occupation ensured that Japan would never again be a danger to the United States in terms of territorial issues. Rather, Japan has maintained a strong friendship with the United States through supporting its foreign policy by hosting its military bases. With almost the same title as Worcester’s 1914 book, Edwin Reischauer, professor of Japanese history at Harvard, who later served as US ambassador to Tokyo, published his Japan Past and Present some 14 years later. Original drafts had been written in Washington as early as the autumn of 1945, when the war had just ended. Upon its publication in 1953, Reischauer reminded his readers that: The chief addition I made in the portion of the text treating the prewar period was to include an analysis of Japanese politics in terms of power groups within Japanese society during the 1920’s and 1930’s. My principal change in interpretation was to stress those forces opposed to the growth of democracy rather than the democratic tendencies 3    ita, S. (2001). War and Ethnicity in the Study of Modern Japan. In the Center for Japanese Studies, Japan in the World, the World in Japan (pp. 181-196). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Yamashita, M. (2000). Nanshin no Manazashi. 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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 4(3), 433-450. Young, J. (1959). Checklist of Microfilm Reproductions pf Selected Archives of the Japanese Army, Navy, and Other Government Agencies, 1868-1945. Washington D.C. Young, L. (1999). Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yu-Jose, L. (1999) Japan Views the Philippines 1900-1944. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Zaide, G. (1957). Philippine Political and Cultural History (2 vols). Manila: Philippine Education Company. Zaide, G. (1973). Firipin no Rekishi. (T. Matsuhashi, Trans.) Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha. Zolberg, A. (2006). A Nation by Design. New York: Harvard University Press.   236    [...]... 200 1a: 28-30] Taking Ileto’s provocative reading into consideration, the following three chapters are a preliminary inquiry into the workings of a US -Japanese orientalizing discourse in the writing of Philippine and Southeast Asian history Specifically, the second part of the thesis asks: Given the dismissal and even exclusion of Japanese wartime writing in the postwar institutionalization of Area Studies. .. back the islands from the Japanese invaders The first liberation event was led by Arthur MacArthur and the second one by his son, Douglas Ileto observes that the FilipinoAmerican War, which was just as terrible as the Filipino wars against Spain and Japan, is totally 5    suppressed in this US liberation narrative In the Iraq war that frames Bush’s speech, the Spanish and Japanese tyrants of the past... Philippines, Japanese solidarity discourse on the Philippines, which appeared in the time of WWII, has a peculiar “lineage” in American colonial literature 24    The first three chapters will pursue this topic and study Japanese wartime accounts on the Philippines in relation to American colonial power and knowledge Chapter 1 focuses on the formation of Japanese attitudes toward, and manipulation of, ... distancing themselves from the wartime and thus Japan-centered perspective of previous imperial studies Postwar Japanese pioneering scholars of the region also locate the beginning of Japanese studies of Southeast Asia in 1966 when the “Tonan Ajia-shi Gakkai” (Japan Society for Southeast Asian History) was created [Yamamoto, 1997; Sakurai, 2009] Toru Yano, the pioneering scholar of Japan’s southward advance... studies on Southeast Asia from the wartime “wrongly-used” history Particularly focusing on essays by Tatsuro Yamamoto, founder of postwar Southeast Asian Studies of Japan, I 26    demonstrate some unique dilemmas of postwar Japanese historians that surfaced in the writing of national/colonial histories of Southeast Asian countries The last chapter sheds light on postwar Japanese “amateur” and thus non-institutionalized... early stage of Area Studies was a time when the US was struggling to gain hegemony in Southeast Asia, and there was a strong need for understanding the region The Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia was carefully examined to in order to establish it as a historical watershed—from colony to independence— as we discussed earlier It is a curious facet of antithetical academic orientations that, on one... accounts assess Filipinos as backward people while empathizing with American colonialism She also argues that this earlier Japanese view in peacetime was carried forward 14    during the Japanese occupation with its violent methods employed to bolster notions of Japanese supremacy in the Philippines Setsuho Ikehata has introduced some Japanese perceptions on the Philippine revolution and the war against America. .. emergence and development of postwar Japanese scholarship on Southeast Asia My purpose in this thesis is not to resurrect Japanese wartime narratives and studies on nanpo with a view to reevaluating them from a “nationalist” perspective, as a superficial critic of this thesis might decry Rather, I believe that if the Greater East Asian War was a mistake, we need to examine the formation of Japan’s Asiatic discourse, ... War) This change had the effect of dismissing or even devaluing Japanese wartime literature on nanpo because they were bad sources As mentioned, it was in 1966 when the “Tonan Ajia-shi Gakkai” (Japan Society for Southeast Asian History) was created and it took more than twenty years for Japanese scholars to re-start their study on Southeast Asia The first chairperson of Tonan Ajia-shi Gakkai was Tatsuro... revolt against West, thus has always recalled the memory of the war and postwar Japan should not repeat the same error This understanding is, however, narrow and represents a stereotyped image of Japanese solidarity discourse on Asia Of course this thesis cannot comprehend every form of Japanese solidarity discourse and although I mainly deal with the love-hate politics between America, Japan, and the Philippines, . Summary This thesis examines the formation and reconstruction of Japanese knowledge on the Philippines by paying attention to the various impacts of Japan’s war against America and its defeat A Genealogy of Japanese Solidarity Discourse on Philippine History: War with America and Area Studies in the Cold War Takamichi Serizawa A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF. Studies on the Impacts of Japanese Occupation in Southeast Asia Scholars of Southeast Asian history have paid a keen interest in knowing the impacts and aftermaths of World War II, when Japan