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Philippine-Japanese Professorial Exchanges in the 1930's
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
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During the 1930's the pace of contact between the Philippines and Japan quickened noticeably. This was, of course, the result of the concurrence of the promise of the United States to grant independence to the Philippines, embodied firmly in the Tydings- McDuffie Act of 1934, and of the intensified interest in Southeast Asia at all levels in Japan. One manifestation of this phenomenon was the development of mutual Philippine-Japanese undertakings in what might broadly be called the cultural realm. I have already described elsewhere the establishment and operation of such organizations at the Philippine Society of Japan1 and of Philippine-Japanese student exchanges. However, in the paragraphs which follow I will turn my attention to the inception and subsequent scope of the exchange of university professors between Japan and the Philippines. In so doing, I hope to suggest that these exchanges, though limited in nature, were meaningful cultural interchanges for both countries and that their termination was precipitated not by any lack of enthusiasm on the part of either Japan or the Philippines but rather by the impasse in American-Japanese relations which immediately preceded the outbreak of World War II.
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1968
References
1. See Goodman, Grant K., “The Philippine Society of Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. XXII, Nos. 1–2, 131–146.Google Scholar
2. See Goodman, Grant K., “Philippine-Japanese Student Exchanges, 1935–1940,” in Four Aspects of Philippine-Japanese Relations, 19)0–1940, Monograph Series No. 9, Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University, New Haven, 1967.Google Scholar
3. Papers of Manuel L. Quezon, National Library, Manila, Nov. 27, 1934. Marquis Tokugawa Yorisada had lirst met Quezon on a visit to Manila in January, 1925. Subsequently Quezon had visited the home of Tokugawa in Tokyo on several of his brief stopovers in Japan en route to and from the United States, and thus the two men were relatively well acquainted. It is interesting to note that both Tokugawa and Oshima were subsequently high ranking officials of the Japanese wartime occupation of the Philippines.
4. Tribune (Manila), 12 19, 1934Google Scholar. Oshima was accompanied on his trip by Prof. Ito Yuten, professor of education at Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan, who commented on the similarities between Taiwan and the Philippines and recommended that Filipino students study in Taiwan.
5. Japan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1.1.10.2–17, 1935. (Hereafter cited as “JMFA” plus file number, date and classification if given).
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Actually, the first visiting academic lecturer to come to the Philippines from Japan was Prof. Matsunami Niichiro, professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University, who had visited the Philippines in the summer of 1920. Prof. Matsunami became an outspoken advocate of Philippine independence and a revered figure among Filipino intellectuals.
9. Graphic, 12 10, 1936, 86.Google Scholar
10. Nazareno, Rodolfo L., “Contemporary Japan,” Graphic, 01 21, 1937, 28.Google Scholar
11. ibid., 29.
12. JMFA 1.1.4.0.6–2, Feb. 17, 1937.
13. Herald (Manila), 11 10, 1938.Google Scholar
14. JMFA J.1.20.J2–5, Dec. 31, 1938.
15. Bulletin, 03 4, 1939.Google Scholar
16. JMFA K.2.1.0.4–1, Jan. 28, 1939.
17. Negishi, Yoshitaro, Japanese Spirit and Culture (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1939).Google Scholar
18. There appears to be an error in the dating since the Herald reported the speech as being delivered at a Rotary luncheon on Feb. 9. At the head table with Prof. Negishi were Acting Consul General Kihara Jitaro, George H. Enosawa of the Philippines-Japan Quarterly, representatives of the Philippine Lumber Exportation Co. and of the NYK Line and Pio Duran, attorney for several Japanese firms whom Rotary President Dr. Victor Buencamino called “Probably the most acceptable Filipino ambassador to Tokyo when the time comes.” (Herald, 02 9, 1939).Google Scholar
19. Some of the terms described by Prof. Negishi were sabi (elegant simplicity), wabi (quiet taste), furyu (refinement), giri (duty), ninjo (humaneness), mono no aware (aesthetic sense).
20. The Japanese, especially the Japanese in the Philippines, were already preparing for the employment of Tagalog as the national language as witness the publication in Manila by the Atlas Supply Co. in 1939 of Conversational Tagalog for Japanese Use written by Oki Jitsuo, a Japanese who had lived in the Philippines for over ten years.
21. In defense of this opinion Prof. Negishi gave an indirect nod of approval to the American political system:
Party politics will not produce a man of that type, except in America. I don't know what, but there is something about the Americans which I cannot fathom but whenever they choose a man tor president, that man immediately becomes a man of different type. He miraculously seems to become a man of strength and is able to control the nation. This is rather difficult to expect from other nations.
(Herald, 04 24, 1939).Google Scholar
22. Prof. Negishi was not the only individual lecturing to Filipinos on Japanese ideals and philosophy. In August of 1939 Paul R. Verzosa, a Philippine journalist and scholar with close ties to the Japanese, was invited by Prof. Gregoria Zaide, head of the History Department at Far Eastern University, to lecture on bushido to the students of Philippine History and Culture at Far Eastern University. An abridged version of that lecture was later published under the title Our Moral Code in the Light of Bushido. Verzosa pointed out to his audience that for four centuries the Filipinos had been a subject people both politically and economically and attributed this sad fact to “a fundamental weakness in the fiber” of the Philippine nation which “lacked an ethical code to produce a great nation, a cohesive community.” In contrast, said Verzosa, was the great empire of Japan which for twq thousand years had remained unconquered and unconquerable because of the “mighty spirit of endurance, patience and sagacity” which the Japanese people had inherited from the “great knights of chivalry” known as samurai, samurai who were courageous, he said, because they followed bushido. Today, Verzosa recounted, the average Japanese citizen was a modern samurai — humble, thrifty, industrious, austere, courageous.
To the mind of the average Japanese his country is his first and last consideration in his life. His love for his country whose symbol is the Emperor, is the all-embracing passion that submerges him in the vast project of human conduct putting aside his own self, even his own family, his own beloved parents to the welfare of his land of birth, to the dignity of his Emperor whose fatherly care looks after the fate of his subjects.
Given this picture of the loyal, obedient servant of the state as an ideal of virtue and patriotism, Verzosa urged his listeners to do all in their power to emulate the Japanese example.
Let us hold in esteem the influence of the Bushido, at least in its Filipino version, for its moral power is already tested … and in consonance with Bushido let us try to build up the structure of a Filipino code of ethical standards, call it anything, so long as we can have a virile youth, a powerful race, a country of which you and your children will be proud, a radiant Philippines.
(All quotations are taken from Verzosa, Paul R., Our Moral Code in the Light of Bushido (Manila: 1940), 4, 7, II.)Google Scholar
23. The full text of Prof. Naito's broadcast is found in Hirippin Joho, No. 33, 02 28, 1940, 70–75.Google Scholar
24. JMFA 1.1.1.0.1.–1, Oct. 23, 1940.
25. Ibid.
26. ibid.