In one of his autobiographical articles, the Filipino historian Reynaldo Ileto reminisces that during the 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian Studies experienced its ‘golden age’. According to Ileto, this golden age was created not simply by prominent professors and students stationed in the United States, but also the challenge from the work of ‘local’ scholars from Southeast Asia. This challenge was variously called ‘Asia-centric’ or ‘nationalist’ historiography, a response to the Eurocentrism and Orientalism of late colonial historiography.Footnote 1
When one looks at Southeast Asian Studies in Japan during the Vietnam War, we may also be able to trace a similar ‘golden age’. ‘Vietnam’ appeared everyday in the newspapers and on TV news bulletins. Many Japanese sympathised with the Vietnamese people and their suffering. Students and activists led teach-ins to protest against the US intrusion. It was in 1963 that the Center for Southeast Asian Studies was created at Kyoto University. In 1966, Tatsurō Yamamoto organised the Tōnan Ajia-shi gakkai (Japan Society for Southeast Asian History) to promote the historical study of the region. This remains the biggest association for Southeast Asian Studies in Japan, having changed its name to Tōnan Ajia Gakkai (Japan Society for Southeast Asian Studies) in 2006.
As Yumio Sakurai once recalled, in Japan, the heightened interest in studying Southeast Asia was also connected with the country's growing economy during the Vietnam War years. The Japanese economy was rapidly growing in the 1960s, but its relationship with East Asia remained strained due to the divide between capitalist and socialist camps as well as the anti-Japanese attitude of China and both Koreas. Japan needed a new space to invest in and Southeast Asia was set as its target.Footnote 2
More Japanese scholars and others began to translate the work of Southeast Asian politicians, novelists and scholars into the Japanese language to get to know local history, politics, culture, and economy from an insider's perspective. Since this was the time of the Vietnam War, the biographies of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap (in Japanese: Bo Guen Zappu) were especially favoured.Footnote 3 The biographies and speeches of other famous Southeast Asian leaders such as Sukarno (Sukaruno) and Norodom Sihanouk (Norodomu Sihanūku) were also translated.Footnote 4 Yet it is noteworthy that the largest number of translations were of Filipino works. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodian or Indonesian cases, where translators mainly translated texts by or about major leaders, in the Philippine case, translators were mainly interested in Filipino history. Many Filipino textbooks written by so-called ‘nationalist’ historians such as Gregorio Zaide, Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino were translated into Japanese during the 1970s. Yoshiko Nagano, an economic historian of the Philippines who has been translating Filipino historians’ work since the 1970s, recalls that there was a ‘translation boom’ in Japan for Philippine history books, then.Footnote 5
Why were there more translations of Filipino historians’ works than those by historians from elsewhere in Southeast Asia? The first and most important reason lies in the fact that these Filipino intellectuals wrote in English. The Japanese translators did not necessarily have to be experts in the national or local languages of the Philippines. This accessibility allowed for translators who were not necessarily scholars, as we will see, such as a peace movement leader, journalist, engineer or the wives of expatriate Japanese businessmen resident in the islands.
Aside from language accessibility, the fundamental question remains as to why these Japanese were interested in studying Philippine history and why they decided to translate Filipino historians’ texts? Although his 1976 translation was of a novel by Stevan Javellana (Sutevan Haveryāna), Without seeing the dawn, Yoshinao SakataniFootnote 6 explains his motivation for translating a novel describing guerrilla warfare in Panay island during the Second World War:
The Japanese were in the position of aggressor not merely toward the Filipino people but also in many areas in Asia. But due to our desire to immediately eliminate the nightmare of the past, which is partly escalated by our forgetful national persona, we are losing our memory of having been the aggressors in the past. We are meeting with people in Asia without feeling any guilt and upon seeing people's smiles, we then behave outrageously, based on our lazy assumption that bygones are bygones. Japan, restarted from its war defeat and devastation, successfully became a member of the largest economies by using the tragedy of the Asian people, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as its jump ramp. In contrast, the countries and areas of Asia which were once put under Japanese military control, are still suffering as developing nations. Their economies are stagnating and they are struggling in search of independence and development even three decades after the war. I believe that today is the most critical time for Japanese people: we need to touch our old wounds and through the pain sensed, we have to deeply reflect on our behaviour toward Asian people in the past three decades or more. The reason that I decided to translate this heart-wrenching novel, Without seeing the dawn, is to meet this urgent need. Without reconsidering our own behaviour as well as reorienting our current path, the Japanese people cannot be true friends of other Asian people.Footnote 7
Sakatani here mentions the ‘forgetful persona’ of postwar Japanese who were once the aggressors in Asia, but have now forgotten these memories of inflicting violence and are enjoying the fruits of their country's rapid economic growth by using the Korean War and Vietnam War as its ‘jump ramp’.
The Japanese could enjoy the fruits of their economic development by virtue of postwar Japan being placed under American hegemonic power. Kiichi Fujiwara, one of the editors of The Philippines and Japan in America's shadow (which inspired this article's title), points out a particular characteristic of postwar American power. The United States has maintained minimal direct territorial rule in order to advocate liberalism and democracy, while constructing military bases across Asia. He calls this ‘America's informal empire’, one whose rule is in direct contrast to the failed Japanese model of territorial expansion and pan-Asian nationalism. Fujiwara then points out that both the Philippines and Japan had been cast under this shadow of the United States’ liberal and informal empire after being defeated in war (the Philippines in 1902 and Japan in 1945) ostensibly under American tutelage, each giving up territory to the US for its military bases.Footnote 8
Although Fujiwara contrasts the United States’ informal imperialism with Japan's expansionist model, as William Appleman Williams’ classic 1966 work suggests, the US empire since the late nineteenth century was similar to Japan's model in that it sought economic expansion as represented by an ‘Open Door policy’. In order to continue its economic expansion after the Second World War and avoid another catastrosphic economic recession, US policymakers once again turned to foreign frontiers to build pro-American and anti-communist political and economic systems. This was epitomised by Secretary of State Dean Acheson's quote: ‘we are willing to help people who believe the way we do’. Williams points out the continuity of US expansionist economic policy through use of military force since the Second World War, indicated by its interventions in the Korean and the Indochina wars, despite its outlook changing from frontier exploitation to corporate capitalism.Footnote 9
Many recent studies show how America's brutal early twentieth-century invasion of the Philippines was justified by the discourse of US ‘exceptionalism’ which framed American colonialism as a period of tutelage for the Filipinos, who were unprepared for democracy and an independent economy.Footnote 10 With the exception of the battles of Okinawa and Iōjima against the Imperial Japanese Army towards the end of the Pacific War, the US forces did not use ground attacks to defeat Japan. Instead US forces hit major Japanese cities with massive air raids and dropped two atomic bombs, in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki, all resulting in a great number of deaths. Yet, as Kyoko Kishimoto points out, Japanese textbooks do not encourage students to hate America in their description of the atomic bombs whereas in the United States, the message of the atomic bombing was that the Japanese deserved to be bombed because of Pearl Harbor, as in ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’. In fact, Japanese discourse on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is carefully maintained not to evoke anti-US sentiments by insisting upon the prevention of similar tragedies and the need to maintain universal peace.Footnote 11
It is true that both Japan and the Philippines became pro-US nations after their respective defeats, but memories of violence wrought by the United States were not completely forgotten. Furthermore, the United States has continued after the Second World War to ‘help people who believe the way US does’ with accompanying massive violence. As we will see, the continual media coverage of the Vietnam War reminded the Japanese translators not only about Japan's own wartime wrongdoings, but also the violence with which the United States completely defeated Japan. As we will discuss, the Japanese translators who translated the texts of prominent Filipino nationalist historians, Gregorio Zaide, Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino, variously compared episodes of Philippine and Japanese history. My use of the term ‘America's shadow’ in this article means the arena where Filipino historians and Japanese translators share their experience of US violence, a space which was contingently opened up by the unfolding Vietnam War.
It should be remembered, however, that the relationship between the original text and its translation is never equal. In her insightful discussion on the act of translation, Maria Tymoczko points out that translation is frequently a site of formal experimentation in receptor cultures, as translators import or adapt genres and formal strategies of the source text into the receptor system.Footnote 12 According to Tymoczko, there are two possible paths in this formal experimentation: ‘bringing the text to the audience’ and ‘bringing the audience to the text’. Thus the greater the prestige of the source culture and the source text, the easier it is to require that the audience comes to the text. But if the source culture and text are a minority for its receptors, Tymoczko points out that the
translator's refractions of a source text have analogues in the choices a minority-culture writer makes in representing the home culture, for no culture can be represented completely in any literary text, just as no source text can be fully represented in a translation. Selectivity is essential to the construction of any piece of literature, particularly when the intended audience includes readers who are unfamiliar with the cultural subject.Footnote 13
The source culture and texts which we discuss in this article are those of Filipinos whose culture and writings were not known among the Japanese people, at least before their works were translated. As in Tymoczko's observations, various choices were made by the Japanese translators such as additions and omissions in order to make the Filipino historians’ works fit into postwar Japanese society and culture. Here, Brian McVeigh's concept of ‘peace nationalism’ is helpful for reflecting on the past and present of these Japanese translators. McVeigh says:
Immediately after the war, many Japanese condemned the wartime period, and currently many concerned citizens deplore Japan's bloody rampage through Asia. These sentiments inform what may be called ‘peace nationalism’. Peace nationalism is driven by a mix of repentance (denunciation of war), national pride (‘only Japan has a war-renouncing Constitution’), a type of self-centered nationalism expressed as ‘one country pacifism’ (ikkoku heiwa-shugi), and a naïve denial of international realpolitik (since the war Japan has been a virtual protectorate of the United States and aided the latter in its Asian wars).Footnote 14
McVeigh's observations may be applied to Sakatani's reflections on the past and present quoted earlier when he condemns Japan's past aggressions in Asia during the Second World War as well as the present Japanese assistance to US military operations in Asia. Furthermore, as we will discuss, ‘peace nationalism’ formed by a mix of national repentance and pride is also found in the translations of Sakatani's Japanese contemporaries. This article will address how Filipino historians’ texts, motivated by nationalism, were converted to suit Japanese peace nationalism by creating some ‘noise’ within the translations.Footnote 15
Translating Gregorio Zaide: Japanese dilemmas between nationalism and peace
In 1973, Tatsurō Matsuhashi published a Japanese translation of the history of the Philippines by Gregorio Zaide (Guregorio Saide). Matsuhashi had lived in the Philippines for three years from 1964 to 1967, working as a member of the International Telecommunication Union's technical support staff. First, let us review Matsuhashi's original inspiration for doing the translation:
Even though the country where [I am] coming from is different, knowing [the Philippines’] history will lead us to stand on common ground. This is clear because everyone feels lonely and confused living in a different country without knowing its history. We could be content by experiencing the strangeness of different landscapes, races and languages, but this feeling only lasts briefly. Having compassion acquired through [understanding its] history enables us to truly understand the land, people and society of the country.Footnote 16
While living there, Matsuhashi had wanted to have a deeper understanding of Philippine history since Japan had occupied, ruled over and fought in the country during the Second World War. In the 1960s, the ties between both countries were becoming stronger, due to Japan's accelerated investment in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and he wanted to establish an understanding between the Japanese and Filipino peoples through learning about Philippine history.
Zaide's Philippine political and cultural history was originally published in 1949 in two volumes. Since then, it had been used as a school textbook, and by 1968 had been reprinted eleven times with additional coverage of the 1950s. The first volume discusses ancient history and the Spanish colonial period, while the second volume mainly discusses the American colonial period, the Japanese Occupation and the postwar independent government until the mid-1950s.
Pointing out the problems of Philippine historiography, which had been written either from a Spanish or an American point of view, Zaide explains in his preface that his book aimed to establish a new interpretation of Philippine history from a Filipino perspective.Footnote 17 However, Matsuhashi professes in his translator's note that in the Japanese translation he had deleted some parts of Zaide's book that he found to be excessively nationalistic from his Japanese perspective. Comparing the original revised edition in 1957 and Matsuhashi's translation, in this section we will discuss some of the deletions as well as additions in the latter, focusing on descriptions of both world wars in the twentieth century.Footnote 18
Zaide writes, for example, that in the First World War, many Filipino students and labourers in the United States volunteered in the US army. More than 4,000 able-bodied ‘Pinoy’ (Filipinos) in Hawaii insisted on joining the army even though they could have claimed exemption from military service. In addition, about 6,000 Filipinos enlisted in the US Navy. Zaide then continues:
The first Filipino to die fighting under the American flag during the World War I was Private Tomas Claudio, native of Morong, Rizal Province. He was seriously wounded in the battle of Chateau Thierry and died on June 29, 1918. He was the first Filipino to sacrifice his life in Flanders for the sake of democracy.Footnote 19
This description, which appears in the chapter titled ‘Growth of Philippine self-government’, is completely deleted in Matsuhashi's translation, though the other sections in the chapter remain in the translation. What were Matsuhashi's reasons for omitting Private Claudio's death in the First World War in his translation? If Matsuhashi had found something ‘too nationalistic’ about Zaide's description, we need to try to deduce why he felt this way.
From the book's inside back cover we learn that Matsuhashi was born in Taiwan in 1919 and graduated from the Department of Engineering of Kyoto University in 1942. The problem is that Matsuhashi does not mention any personal experience of the Second World War. However, it should be noted that in October 1943, Hideki Tōjō’s cabinet had started drafting male university students, mainly those in the arts and humanities, to compensate for the shortage of soldiers in the front. According to a survey of the Kyoto University archives, 4,768 students out of 13,981 (34 per cent) were drafted between October 1943 until August 1945. Although the total number is not given, at least 264 undergraduates and 231 graduates died; 74 deaths were counted in the Philippines alone, a number even surpassing the wartime deaths of Kyoto University students in mainland Japan (50) and Okinawa (36).Footnote 20
Furthermore, one year after the departure of the first students to the front, ‘suicide attacks’ on US aircraft carriers commenced since Japanese military resources had been depleted. The suicide attackers, the ‘kamikaze tokkōtai’, were from Matsuhashi's generation who were in their late teens and early twenties. The first kamikaze attacks, departing from the Cagayan de Oro, Davao and Cebu bases, took place during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 25 October 1944. A total of 4,279 youths lost their lives in this suicide attack.Footnote 21
If the Japanese translation of Philippine history is an act of bringing the text to the audience rather than bringing the audience to the text, we need to consider Matsuhashi's omission of Claudio's death in the First World War together with the deaths of so many young Japanese during the Second World War. First of all, Matsuhashi himself belonged to the generation of suicide attackers and he could have died without experiencing Japan's postwar era of peace and development. He might have carefully considered Japanese readers’ perceptions on encountering the description of the young Filipino's death, which could evoke traumatic memories of losing sons, fathers or husbands.
Yet, unlike the omission of Tomas Claudio's death, Matsuhashi does not avoid translating other sensitive topics for Japanese readers such as the Bataan Death March, the failure of wartime Japanese rule in Asia, and the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers, all of which appear in the chapter on the Second World War. Zaide had described the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines as a tyrannical period, which disrupted democracy in the country especially as it was beginning to mature after the birth of the Commonwealth government in 1935. By not omitting this in his translation, Matsuhashi demonstrates his belief that the Japanese and the Filipinos could understand each other's history in a deeper sense by not forgetting Japan's wrongdoings during the war.
Another clue may be Matsuhashi's addition of an adjective to the title of chapter 22 in the second volume that discusses independence movements, from the Jones Law (1916) to the birth of the Commonwealth government (1935). The adjective is ‘peace’. In the original book, the chapter is simply titled ‘Independence movement’; Matsuhashi changed it to ‘Independence and peace movement’ (dokuritsu heiwa undō).
Why did Matsuhashi add this term to the title of chapter 22? It seems that Matsuhashi was adding a nuance to Zaide's original text so that it could fit better into postwar Japanese society, where ‘peace’ had become a powerful ideology of non-official, popular nationalism, as represented in the anti-Vietnam War movement.Footnote 22 Matsuhashi's insistence on ‘peace’ also tells us the reason that he could not agree with Zaide's commemoration of Tomas Claudio's death in 1918 for ‘the sake of democracy’.Footnote 23 It was as a democracy that postwar Japan obtained ‘independence and peace’. In this case, the translator rejected a chance to establish a common historical understanding between the Japanese and the Filipinos.
Translating Teodoro Agoncillo: For Japanese and Filipino friendship
Teodoro Agoncillo's textbook, A short history of the Philippines, was translated into Japanese by Gen Iwasaki and published in 1977. From the translator's introduction, we learn that Iwasaki was born in Tokyo in 1910 and obtained his bachelor's degree from Keio University in 1934. During the Second World War, he was sent to the battlefield in Southeast Asia and eventually returned to Japan from Singapore. He then became a Japanese language teacher for foreigners. In 1960 he was sent by the ministry of education to teach Japanese to Filipino students and held a visiting professorship at the University of the Philippines until 1964. There Iwasaki met with Agoncillo (Teodoro Agonshiruryo) and decided to translate his book, giving his motivation as follows:
Till today, A short history of the Philippines, written by Professor Teodoro Agoncillo is my first recommendation to readers who would like to know about Philippine history. The reason is, as mentioned several times in the book itself, to a greater or lesser degree Philippine history cannot escape from the perspectives of foreigners. Compared with this, the history [written by] this professor is based on the perspective of his own nationalism and it is a history truly written by Filipinos.Footnote 24
As in Matsuhashi's comment on Zaide, Iwasaki's note here also tells us that he found Agoncillo's book important because it was written from the perspective of Filipino nationalism. Iwasaki continues that the ministry of education had sent him to the Philippines not merely as a Japanese language teacher, but also with a mission to be a bridge of Japan–Philippine friendship. Iwasaki liked learning history and he started to study Philippine history to get to know more about the Filipino people. In particular, he became interested in learning about the Philippine Revolution and José Rizal's role in it. It was Agoncillo who personally gave him kind instruction on this key episode of Philippine history.
Iwasaki translated the title of A short history of the Philippines into Story of Philippine history (Firipin-shi monogatari). In his translator's afterword, Iwasaki shows his anxiety that Japanese readers might misread the term ‘story’ as indicating popular appeal. He explains his use of ‘story’ because Agoncillo himself liked to use this term in his Revolt of the masses: The story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan, a pioneering work of Philippine history ‘from below’.Footnote 25 Furthermore, before Iwasaki translated Agoncillo's book, he had already translated two important novels by José Rizal (Hose Risāru), Noli me tángere and El filibusterismo into Japanese from Spanish using the version published by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario de José Rizal during his stay in the Philippines.Footnote 26 This translation was admired by Esteban de Ocampo, then the director of the National Historical Institute (today's National Historical Commission of the Philippines), and Iwasaki was awarded the Knight Commander of Rizal in 1961. In A short history of the Philippines, Agoncillo includes some excerpts from both Rizal's novels, and Iwasaki was able to quote from his own translation of Rizal's novels in Firipin-shi monogatari.
Agoncillo provided a new preface for his Japanese readers in Iwasaki's translation. Expressing a strong wish that the translation of his book would further enrich the Japan–Philippine friendship, Agoncillo reminds the readers how Japanese history was important for Filipinos.
Japan and the Philippines, both located in the Orient, have kept friendly relations from the time before the Spaniards came to my country in the middle of the sixteenth century. Our two countries, together with other Asian countries, have a sufficient reason for further developing the spirit of good faith and friendship as indicated in [this] history. In the Philippines, Japanese history is not merely a history of a foreign country. For university students, particularly those who major in history and law, the course on Far Eastern history including Japan has been a compulsory subject long before the Pacific War. In high school, oriental history is compulsory. So those who received an education have knowledge about the history and culture of Japan. Today in the universities, the history of civilisation in the Orient is a compulsory course and the section on Japan is greatly appreciated.Footnote 27
Here Agoncillo reminds Japanese readers about the long-term friendship between Japan and the Philippines without mentioning the ‘bad’ Japanese Occupation of the Philippines. He may not have wanted to accuse and disrupt the minds of Japanese readers from his ‘Filipino’ concerns. As A short history of the Philippines starts with explaining the traditional Filipino concepts of loyalty to family and friends as represented in terms such as utang na loób (debt of gratitude) and pakikisama (the sense of deep camaraderie), Agoncillo here may be using his diplomatic skills to avoid making public condemnations for past wrongs because it would be taken as an affront.Footnote 28 Rather, by indicating Japanese history as a model of a successful civilisation in the Orient and calling for continuing friendship among Asian countries, echoing the ‘pan-Asiatic’ discourse heavily circulated in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, Agoncillo shows his respect for Japanese history.
Upon opening the pages of A short history of the Philippines, the Japanese reader might soon realise, however, that this Filipino historian does not hide his irritation toward Japan's economic development after the Second World War, aided by the United States.
It is this deep sense of loyalty that kept the Filipinos during the Second World War loyal to the Americans, and it is precisely this sense of loyalty that explains why Filipino resent the disparity between American financial aid to Japan, a former enemy, and to the Philippines, a loyal ally.Footnote 29
With his emphasis on the sense of Filipino friendship, implying mutual help under any circumstances, Agoncillo writes how Filipinos remained loyal to the Americans during the Second World War and it was the Americans who had betrayed this friendship by supporting their former enemy, Japan, after the war. Agoncillo emphasises that this was not the first time that the Americans had betrayed the Filipinos since they had used General Emilio Aguinaldo as an ally in order to oust the Spaniards from the islands, then later ran him down and ultimately captured him as an enemy. Therefore, Agoncillo states that the postwar anti-American posture of Filipino nationalism has the character of historical inevitability because the United States viewed the Filipino–American relationship only in a pragmatic sense, unlike the Filipinos, who see it in terms of utang na loób and pakikisama.Footnote 30
When utang na loób and pakikisama first appear in Agoncillo's text, Iwasaki puts them alphabetically by providing the pronunciation in katakana, a Japanese syllabary used for transcribing foreign language words.Footnote 31 Although both terms would have been totally unfamiliar to Japanese readers, Iwasaki wished the readers to understand them because the untranslatability of this concept of Filipino friendship is for Agoncillo a key in creating his anti-American nationalism. In the inside cover of the translation, Iwasaki introduces Agoncillo with his photograph and comments that Agoncillo's anti-American version of Filipino nationalism is attractive for the readers, but he does not explain why this would be so.
The answer might partly be found in two other books that Iwasaki had chosen to translate into Japanese in the 1960s. One is John Bell Rae's The American automobile, published in 1965 (part of the University of Chicago Press's History of American Civilisation series, edited by Daniel Boorstin), and the other, Mira Wilkins’ and Frank Ernest's American business abroad: Ford on six continents (1964).Footnote 32 When the Japanese economy was recovering from war devastation in the late 1950s, Japan had been put under pressure from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the trade organisation among capitalist countries, to liberalise its trade. The Japanese automobile industry was one of the United States’ main targets because Japanese car companies were not yet strong and the so-called big three, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, had plans for expansion. In the translator's note for Rae's American automobile, Iwasaki writes:
The history of American civilisation during the twentieth century is automobile history. It formed the prototype of the civilisation and the lifestyle of developed countries today. No other books except this one enable us to realise this fact deeply. In the editor's preface, Professor Boorstin articulately summarises this point.Footnote 33
On the one hand, Iwasaki admires the success of American civilisation, and its automobile industry. However, after mentioning the fact that in October 1965 the Japanese government removed restrictions on car imports, Iwasaki then proceeds to alert the readers that ‘what we are facing are the so-called big three, ranked in the first, third and fifth position in the American mining and manufacturing industry by Fortune, or the world's greatest and strongest companies’.
Although the topics of the books Iwasaki translated are so different, his Japanese economic nationalism as demonstrated here explains his empathy with Agoncillo's anti-American Filipino nationalism. Iwasaki was worried about how Japan would compete with the US car industry after having to open up its own industry. Through reading Agoncillo, moreover, Iwasaki and his readers were able to learn that the Philippines too had been forced to allow ‘free’ trade with the United States both as a colonial and as an independent state, although the economic power of the two countries had never been equal.Footnote 34
Translating Renato Constantino: Japanese negation of past nationalism
Yoshiyuki Tsurumi, who introduced and translated a series of the works of Filipino historian Renato Constantino (Renāto Konsutantīno) in the 1970s, began to have an interest in Southeast Asia due to the raging war in Vietnam in the late 1960s. He was a core member of ‘The betonamu ni heiwa wo! Shimin rengō’ (The Citizens’ Alliance for Peace in Vietnam), widely known by its acronym, Beheiren. The philosopher, Shunsuke Tsurumi, Yoshiyuki's cousin, founded the organisation in 1965. In addition, Makoto Oda, a political critic and novelist, was the group's representative. Beheiren opposed the US military involvement in Vietnam, and with its non-partisan and loosely organised structure, attracted thousands of supporters who engaged in any type of activism they pleased.Footnote 35
Yoshiyuki Tsurumi was born in Los Angeles in 1926. His father, Ken, was a diplomat and Yoshiyuki grew up moving from Washington DC to Portland, and then to Harbin in China. He held US citizenship until the age of eighteen and remembered his youthful days of living as a ‘half-American’. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Law) in 1956 and started working at the International House of Japan (IHJ; Kokusai Bunka Kaikan). IHJ is a private entity established by ‘pro-American’ intellectuals in 1952, with the aim of strengthening Japanese ties with the United States, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Japanese financial circles, to prevent Japan from becoming communist or returning to fascism. The House often invited ‘first-class’ American intellectuals, such as Henry Kissinger, to give lectures. Tsurumi recalled that sometime around 1963 he began to be sceptical about IHJ's policies, which were too inclined towards pro-American attitudes. He then wondered whether he could invite people from the Third World to come and give talks at the IHJ.Footnote 36
In 1965 Tsurumi had an opportunity to attend seminars at Harvard University. He chose to travel to Boston via Southeast Asia, India and Europe. His concerns about the Third World inspired this detour. When he arrived at Harvard, the Afro-American civil rights as well as New Left movements were heating up. While attending lectures and discussions, Tsurumi became close to the leaders of these movements. He also became critical about ‘white’ professors who protested against the US invasion of Vietnam in their lectures, but lived in luxurious houses in Boston and enjoyed French wine. Tsurumi encountered ‘another’ America when he was stationed in Boston. His return to the country of his youth at the time of the Vietnam War made him disillusioned with the United States.Footnote 37
After going back to Japan and returning to work at IHJ, Tsurumi joined Beheiren and participated in its activities. During this period, he also travelled around Southeast Asia and met local intellectuals and invited them to come and give talks in Tokyo. For Tsurumi, the Beheiren was not an anti-American movement that would entail painting a black-and-white picture of the situation to accuse the United States of its wrongdoings in Vietnam while portraying Japan as an innocent victim of war. His protests against American violence resulted from holding the nationality of a country which had brought about similar violence to Asia during the Second World War. Tsurumi then considered that giving up his Japanese nationality might enable him to protest against both Japanese and American violence. The following is an excerpt from his article originally published in 1967, titled ‘Nihon kokumin toshite no dannen (Abandoning Japanese nationality)’.
‘Abandoning Japanese nationality’ has been gradually formed from my humble experience of joining peace movements since the struggle against Ampo [Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan]. Therefore, this ‘abandonment’ does not stem from my personal sentiments, rather was created as an approach of the peace movements in Japan. I myself believe that a so-called ‘movement to abandon nationality’ is needed and will be accomplished among Japanese nationals and also be accomplished globally by the example of such a Japanese movement.Footnote 38
Ampo Tōsō, the struggle against the US–Japan Security Treaty, was the Japanese civilian movement first mobilised in 1959–60. The movement protested the renewal of the security treaty which many Japanese saw as a way to involve Japan in America's wars as an ally. This reminded the Japanese of the war that had ended just 15 years ago. As Simon Avenell points out, Beheiren complemented the Ampo model of civic protest such as the provision of safe houses for American deserters, provocative street marches, anti-war newspaper advertisements, international peace conferences, speaking tours by US activists, and creative mobilisations against munitions manufacturers. They proved that the Ampo model of autonomous citizen activism, based on the concept of nonviolence, had vitality even years after its formulation in those earlier protests.Footnote 39
The Ampo protests had taken place during the premiership of Nobusuke Kishi, maternal grandfather of prime minister Shinzō Abe. In the pre-war period, Kishi had been the top official dispatched to Manchukuo, the Japanese-sponsored government in northeastern China established in 1932. On the eve of the war he was appointed minister of industry and commerce. When the war ended, he was classified as a ‘Class A’ war criminal and imprisoned at Sugamo by order of the General Headquarters/Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP). He was released on 24 December 1948, a day after seven war criminals were sentenced to death by hanging, including Hideki Tōjō and Seishirō Itagaki. Among the highest-ranking wartime officials, both had worked closely with Kishi in Manchukuo.Footnote 40
While recounting Kishi's career in Manchukuo, Hideo Kobayashi points out that the GHQ/SCAP knew that Kishi was keenly aware of the postwar paradigm shift from ‘suzerain and colony’ to ‘anti-communism and economic development’. This is the reason that Kishi was not sentenced to death. Furthermore, Kishi cut ties with communist China and as a fortress of anti-communism, he emphasised the strengthening of Japan's economic alliances with Taiwan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.Footnote 41 After his retirement from politics, Kishi became the chairman of Firipin kyōkai (Philippine Society of Japan) under the ministry of foreign affairs. Kishi contributed a foreword for Matsuhashi's translation of Zaide's history, and strongly recommended the book to readers.Footnote 42
Kishi's war-related career, however, provoked Japanese civilian protests during the Ampo struggle. Kishi tried to silence the large public demonstrations using right-wing and criminal syndicates. In the Diet, he also barred members of the Japanese Socialist Party from attending its sessions by using the constabulary. Enforcing these ‘undemocratic’ methods, Kishi and the US president, Dwight Eisenhower, awaited the day, 19 June 1960, when the treaty would be automatically renewed.
By joining the Ampo struggle and Beheiren, Tsurumi's criticism of the United States coincided with his criticism of Japan's cooperation with the United States with regard to military supplies as well as the provision of military bases for the war in Indochina. He aspired to non-violence and was involved in the peace movement. Based on the concept of nonviolence, Tsurumi and his colleagues launched an English-language periodical, Ampo, in 1969. Subtitled ‘A report from the Japanese People's Movement’, the periodical was aimed at letting foreign readers know about the Japanese ‘New’ Left movements which had originated in the Ampo struggle.Footnote 43 Tsurumi would say that the journal's name, Ampo, was not an abbreviation for anything, but if someone asked the origin of the name, say that it identified the treaty which sparked the civilian protests in 1960. The idea was Makoto Oda's, the Beheiren representative, who ironically applied the term Ampo to strengthen their own civilian movements against the government.Footnote 44
It should be noted, however, that Tsurumi also confesses to being in a dilemma. He is unable to ask the same things, nonviolence, of people in developing countries who are engaged in resistance and needing to arm themselves for their survival. Still, he says it is important to stop the military support for these developing countries. Thus while he promotes the ‘abandoning of Japanese nationality’ Tsurumi also urges:
Japan must exercise patience; as a developed industrial country interacting with developing countries in Asia and Africa, this is the attitude required. As proven by the US commitment in the Vietnam War, it is best to observe patiently the radical reforms and revolution in developing countries even though they may be viewed as immature by those in developed countries.Footnote 45
Tsurumi rephrases the word patience as jingi (humanity and justice) of the Japanese people who have already established a developed, industrial society that is ahead of the developing countries. Developed countries, especially Japan and the United States, need to stop using violence and also stop providing military support to developing countries.
In the 1970s Tsurumi selected important articles by Constantino, the Filipino historian who had vividly criticised the continuing colonialism of the Philippines even though the nation had achieved independence from the United States in 1946. Tsurumi's translation was compiled into two volumes titled Firipin nashonarizumuron (Essays on Philippine nationalism). In the translator's note, Tsurumi shows his understanding of the essence of Constantino's historical perspective:
Constantino's central proposition about Philippine history is that the past has no origins. Thus, when he says it is only history which can give us the right views, this is not to mean the kind of historical study which explores new facts about the past. Before speaking about independence and emancipation, the subject of the nation itself can only be born by negating its [established] history. In this sense, Constantino's basic task lies in the history of the future. He also cautions against the temptation to search for the origins of Philippine history in some ‘virgin culture’ before the colonial invasion. Constantino's nationalism in Philippine history is a nationalism reflecting the future and only exemplified by actions that reach out to the future.Footnote 46
Of course, Constantino does not negate the importance of the Philippine Revolution or the Filipino–American War in narrating Philippine history. So, why did Tsurumi's read Constantino's text as a repudiation of the past? Tsurumi's appropriation of Constantino's texts here alludes to the fact that Tsurumi himself could never accept the history of nationalism for either the Philippines or Japan. Nationalism in both countries had been distorted by Spanish and US colonialism in the case of the Philippines, and their own militarism in the Greater East Asian War for Japan. By negating past nationalisms, Tsurumi felt, both countries could view the future with more hope.
Tsurumi also cites the following note by Constantino on the Vietnam War in his translator's afterword. Constantino points out a major difference between Vietnamese and Filipino attitudes toward independence.
In contrast to the struggles in Vietnam ours was premised on liberation by the Americans. Essentially therefore, the guerrillas were fighting America's war; so they were really heroes of America and not of the Philippines. Why did we not react to the situation the way the Vietnamese did? Why did our leaders in the Resistance not seize the opportunity to declare our own freedom?Footnote 47
Here Constantino vividly contrasts the resistance of Filipinos and Vietnamese; for the former it was a struggle for the Americans to return to the islands and for the latter it was a struggle for national independence. Repeating Constantino's ‘Why did our leaders in the resistance not seize the opportunity?’, Tsurumi then mentions a Japanese sinologist, Yoshimi Takeuchi, who also regretted the lost opportunity of Japan's defeat at the end of the Pacific War in a similar manner to Constantino. Takeuchi writes that 15 August 1945, the day the Japanese Emperor declared the ‘end’ of the war, was a humiliating event. For Takeuchi the defeat itself was not humiliating, but the way it took place mattered. He grieved the lost opportunity for Japan to shift to a republican state.
I expected Japan's defeat, but I did not expect that defeat was destined while the state still maintained such national unity. I had dreamt that the US military would land on (the mainland) and there would emerge the split between pro-peace and militaristic groups within the Japanese elites. The situation might have progressed with an accompanying nationwide revolutionary movement.Footnote 48
Takeuchi criticised the Japanese emperor and imperial system for keeping the Japanese people enslaved forever. Upon Japan's defeat there could have been a chance for the Japanese emperor, leaders, and even masses to abandon the imperial system and make the country republican. But, as John Dower clearly points out, the easiest way for GHQ/SCAP to enforce the Potsdam stipulations, which included the unconditional surrender of the government of Japan, was to work indirectly through a Japanese government instructed by the emperor. Shigemitsu Mamoru, the minister of foreign affairs, told General Douglas MacArthur that Emperor Hirohito had always opposed the recent war, had been ever-diligent in seeking peace, and played a decisive role in ending the hostilities. Shigemitsu even emphasised that Hirohito understood the terms of the Potsdam declaration and was fully prepared to support them.Footnote 49
By collaborating with America, as in the case of the Philippines, Japan's opportunity for revolution was gone, however. Tsurumi then wonders why China and a few other former colonised countries in Southeast Asia chose another path, unlike the Philippines and Japan. In the following we may understand Tsurumi's sympathies with Constantino's views more clearly in the translator's explanation of why he had chosen to compile and translate this Filipino historian's essays.
The reason why I have become obsessed with Constantino is not because there is a Philippines and it fascinated me. Quite the opposite, it seems to me that through Constantino's observations I could start to rethink Japan from a perspective not previously sensed. Therefore, what I have written so far here indicates that I may be reading [this work] too subjectively and viewing it from a personal angle. I beg the readers’ understanding on this point. Constantino says the term ‘Filipino people’ is a developing concept, for example. Given his total denial of the past, this remark is full of his anguish. But when I wonder whether ‘the Japanese people’ can also be a developing concept, I feel wonderfully inspired. The approach may not be the same as that of the Filipino people, but it will be astonishing when the day comes when ‘being Japanese’ will be a developing concept as well.Footnote 50
Here, we can clearly see Tsurumi's change in viewpoint from ‘abandoning being a Japanese national’ in 1967 to the ‘Japanese people as a developing concept’ in 1977, a change mediated and inspired by Constantino. Tsurumi's reading of Constantino emphasises the latter's seeming negation of the past, although this view is not congruent with Constantino's own original text. However, Tsurumi's internal conflicts about being a Japanese national enabled him to study Philippine history with excitement because doing so refreshed his own perspectives on the history of Japan.
Shōhei Ōoka's empathy toward Philippine history
Shōhei Ōoka was a novelist and his most famous book, Reite senki (A record of the Battle of Leyte), has been regarded as the seminal history of Japanese battles against the United States in the Philippines during the Second World War. Reite senki began as a series of articles in the monthly magazine, Chūōkōron, from January 1966 to July 1969, against the background of the increasingly intense US military engagement in Vietnam, which were then compiled and published in 1971.
During the Pacific War, Ōoka had been drafted and sent to Mindoro as a cryptographer in July 1944 and was captured by the US army in January 1945. Based on his battle and post-surrender experience in the Philippines, he had already written two novels, Furyoki (Taken captive: A Japanese POW's story) in 1949 and Nobi (Fires on the plain) in 1952.
Compared with his novels on the battles in the Philippines, Reite senki, published some two decades later, is different in its articulation of historicity. The work is based on a lot of historical sources, including unpublished ones and interviews with survivors. Minato Kawamura, a scholar of Japan's colonial literature, points out the main characteristics of Reite senki:
Almost all descriptions in Reite senki are highly detailed and precise. The work is fully committed to describing the fierce battles between Japanese and American forces in Leyte which the author, Shōhei Ōoka, did not directly experience. While drawing on a massive number of historical accounts and sources from both the Japanese and American sides, the approach seems to be as historically accurate as possible in order to reproduce the deadly combat of Japan's army in Leyte between October 1944 and April 1945.Footnote 51
Kawamura here forgets to note that Ōoka also used sources and accounts from the Philippines in the consolidated version published in 1971. For this edition, Ōoka received advice from Setsuho Ikehata, a pioneering scholar of Philippine history then and later, the doyenne of Philippine Studies in Japan. Ōoka wanted his draft to be checked by some experts in Philippine history before its publication; and the editor of the publishing company, Chūōkōronsha, nominated Ikehata. As Ikehata reminisces in an interview conducted by Satoshi Nakano, she criticised Ōoka's original version for having almost no description of Philippine society and people. She noted the fact that Ōoka did not seem to care about Filipino perspectives, as demonstrated by his intention of writing a history based on a desire to honour the memory of Japanese soldiers who died in Leyte and his fellow soldiers who died in Mindoro island. During the Battle of Leyte, some 80,000 Japanese soldiers died and Ōoka pays tribute to their sacrifice in his afterword.Footnote 52
Ikehata questioned Ōoka's dedication to the soldiers’ memory because it did not take into account Filipino perspectives on the same events, and the fact that both peoples lost a large number of their countryfolk. Ōoka accepted her criticism and greatly revised his draft.Footnote 53 It is noteworthy that in the 1971 version, Ōoka compares the histories of the Philippines and Japan, finding similarities and differences. This historical comparison was not included in the original serialised story. For example, while reviewing the United States’ postwar (re)arrangement of Filipino leaders against the Hukbalahap (Huks), Ōoka draws parallels between the Philippines and Japan in terms of the United States’ preservation of elite rule against communism. He points out the fact that Japan became a useful country for the United States after the surrender. It had modern docks, an aircraft industry, train networks and a well-educated population of 90 million. In terms of preventing communism from spreading in Asia, he says that Japan was more effective than the Philippines. Ōoka then summarises the situation as follows:
We remember well the date of 15 August 1945 and the postwar arrangements of Japan after its surrender. In Asia, we are the only independent country besides the Philippines to call the American forces a ‘liberation army’. It is the only country in the world whose communists cooperated with the United States.Footnote 54
Ōoka points out the similar impacts of US occupation forces on postwar Japan and the Philippines; in both cases, the forces were welcomed and deemed a ‘liberation army’ even by the Japanese communists. Following the publication of Reite senki, Ōoka had continued to observe Filipino resistance activities. In 1984, 13 years after its first publication, he revised Reite senki extensively, including updating the sources, adding a chapter, and extending the epilogue. As we have pointed out, the 1970s was a boom time for the translation of Philippine historiography and literature into Japanese. Ōoka now had a deeper understanding of Philippine history, including learning about the Pomeroy–Sison controversy on the history of leftist movements.
In 1967, prior to the boom, William Pomeroy's The forest was translated by Yuriko Kitani who taught African Studies at Tokyo Kyōiku Daigaku (Tokyo University of Education), today's University of Tsukuba. The book records Pomeroy's two-year-long Huk activities, which ended when he and his Filipino wife surrendered in April 1952. Ten years after Pomeroy's book, Jose Maria Sison's Philippine society and revolution, written under the pen name of Amado Guerrero, was translated by Masao Kitazawa. Influenced by Sison's background in Mao Zedong thought, Kitazawa claims the need for solidarity among the peasants and workers of Japan, the Philippines and the Third World, which looked to Indochina's success in establishing a people's assembly.Footnote 55
In the book, Masao's wife, Yōko Kitazawa, also introduces the details of the controversy between Pomeroy and Sison. She says that the clash between them was due to their differences in emphasis — Pomeroy on ‘race’ and Sison on ‘class’ — in terms of analysing US colonialism.Footnote 56 Although Ōoka could read English and French, he learned about the contemporary popular movements in the Philippines and heated debates through these translations into Japanese. Ōoka, who had never been a communist, nevertheless interprets the Pomeroy–Sison controversy from a different angle. On the relations between the Hukbalahap and the New People's Army (NPA) led by Sison, he says:
When the first print [of Reite senki] was published, Luis Taruc,Footnote 57 the leader of the Huks and the Peoples’ Liberation Army had already surrendered. But the American, William J. Pomeroy's The forest was translated in 1967 and this attracted the attention of the public with its romantic hegira with his Filipino wife, Celia, in the depths of the Sierra Madre Mountains. The secretary-general of the Philippine communist party, Jose Maria Sison, published a book, Philippine society and revolution, in Manila in 1970. It was translated into Japanese in 1977 and its mission and the movement's progression have become clear. Guerrero [Sison] refuted the claims of Pomeroy's The forest by calling it a work of subjectivism that describes revolution as a nightmare based on ‘bourgeois pessimism’ and ‘autobiographical comparisons with the heroes of Greek tragedy’. In 1971 a debate between Pomeroy and Guerrero was held in the United States. In 1967 I went to the Philippines to write this book. I heard a story that there were Huk checkpoints along the routes to Clark airbase and that tourists were being charged a passenger tax. According to Guerrero, this was their fate for being ‘gangs’. But The forest, after repeated readings, still seems to me an impressive work which tells the truth of a retreat in the forest.Footnote 58
Here Ōoka clearly shows his compassion toward Pomeroy and his Huk comrades who had fought and surrendered in the forest. His compassion cannot be understood by the language of Marxism since he simply uses a subjective word, ‘impressive’, in his assessment of The forest. In light of this, what then was his motivation for showing his sympathy towards this American guerrilla writer?
In the revised edition of the book in 1984, Ōoka puts more emphasis on the ‘tradition’ of resistance in the Philippines. He adds a chapter titled ‘Guerrillas’ in the early part of the book in order to inform readers about the history of Filipino resistance movements. He briefly reviews this history from the killing of Magellan in 1521, Bonifacio's revolt in 1896, the Filipino–American War, peasant revolts against landlords during the American colonial and Commonwealth periods, and the American and Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese in the Second World War.Footnote 59 These resistance movements all ‘failed’ except for the last one, however: the American and Filipino united front against Japan. This was Constantino's main concern, and he criticised Filipino collaboration with the United States for disrupting the development of Philippine nationalism.
Ōoka also extended his epilogue with a description of the Filipino–American War. This was also inspired by reading Tsurumi's translation of Constantino, which might have been introduced by Ikehata since she also took part in Tsurumi's project in the late 1970s. In reading Constantino, Ōoka uncovered ‘new’ facts: that during the Filipino–American War, it was in Samar and northern Leyte islands that Filipinos resisted most stubbornly against US forces. Fighting there lasted even after the official declaration of the end of the Filipino–American War in 1902. Constantino mentions that the US Army dispatched 2,000 soldiers to northern Samar as late as 1907 and did not admit that the war ended until the pacification of small revolts was completed in 1911. In the first compilation published in 1971, Ōoka had used the year 1902 to signal the end of the Filipino–American War. But in the revised edition in 1984, he changed the year the war ended to 1907, which was when the last armed resistance ended in southern Samar island.Footnote 60 He even agrees with Constantino's claim of 1911 as the official year for the end of the Filipino–American War.Footnote 61 By uncovering other ‘wrongdoings’ of America through reading Constantino, Ōoka became convinced in his belief that America's liberation of the Philippines in 1945 — led by General MacArthur — was in fact a ‘re-occupation’ of the Philippines.Footnote 62 By reading the translations of A past revisited and The continuing past, Ōoka shows his sympathies with Constantino:
Like Pomeroy and Celia, Constantino's books are his collected writings with his wife Letizia. The reconsideration of historical sources was handled by the families of his son and his daughter. The books were written with his family's support. Their contents are based on an exhaustive reconsideration of the literature. The books seem to me painful and angry, but patriotic. The more I know about Philippine history, the more I come to realise that the country is burdened by the most tragic destiny in the Orient besides that of my country.Footnote 63
As in the case of Constantino's translator, Yoshiyuki Tsurumi, we find here another case of a Japanese writer drawing parallels between the histories of the Philippines and Japan in terms of a common painful past. Inspired by Tsurumi's explanation of Constantino's repudiation of a Philippine past, Ōoka states that Japan and the Philippines were both burdened with the most tragic destinies in the ‘Orient’ after being defeated by the United States.
One may criticise Ōoka's juxtaposition, which seems to disregard Japan as an imperial and military power that had itself invaded, occupied and ruled the Philippines (and other Asian countries) during the Second World War. However, Ōoka does not forget to write about some Japanese misdeeds in the Philippines. Among the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers, Ōoka in particular mentions cannibalism. Cannibalism was the main theme of his novel Nobi and he also emphasises it in Reite senki, based on his interviews with Japanese and Filipino survivors, although he had never witnessed the act himself. He says ‘cannibalism was one of the most dreadful acts among the things we did during the Pacific War’. When the battle in Leyte ended with the US victory in May 1945, the main concern of the Japanese soldiers was to find food.
The troops had already lost their formations. It was easier to find food if the division broke into small groups. Within their group, each person did not concern himself with other's actions, and groups broke up and come together repeatedly. Everyone had to search for their own food. There was a common understanding among the soldiers that if one found food while the others did not, they would not share nor ask others to share, according to Private First Class Horigome. No one shared their belongings and there came to be a form of society, which was based on the last step short of the most desperate act that one could commit. Under this lonely scheme of human relationships, soldiers easily committed suicide.Footnote 64
In the forests and mountains, the enemy of the Japanese soldiers who had lost their battle formations was no longer the US Army but hunger. Ōoka describes in detail how they wandered about desperately looking for food and were exhausted, wounded, and dying of malnutrition. He criticises the headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army since it was in charge of delivering food properly. The headquarters had abandoned this duty. The lack of food drove the soldiers to the edge. At the same time, they were not allowed to surrender, though the international POW agreement promised the order and the right to surrender in cases where the maintenance of troops proved to be hazardous. Under such hopeless circumstances which forces people to revert to their basest instincts, many Japanese soldiers raped women and bayoneted civilians. For these reasons, Ōoka concluded that the headquarters should have given the officers in the Philippines the right to surrender. This could have prevented the meaningless fighting and killings between the Japanese and American forces, and the misery and mass deaths from starvation and cannibalism in Luzon, Mindanao and Bisayas.Footnote 65
Reite senki was originally written by Ōoka to honour the memory of the Japanese soldiers who had died in Leyte, as mentioned earlier. He concludes that in spite of the extreme situation which had driven them to act out of survival instincts, Japanese soldiers at the battlefront, from commander to private, fought well.Footnote 66 But inspired by Constantino and Ikehata, he was also motivated to include the perspectives of the Filipino guerrillas. On the one hand, he shows his respect for the Japanese soldiers; on the other hand, he also shows his respect for the Filipino guerrillas. What does this entail? In fact, Ōoka's inconsistency was a cause of controversy among Japanese intellectual history circles. For example, Ryūichi Narita, a historian of modern Japan, argues that Ōoka's insistence on noting that ‘they fought well’ would cause one to overlook the importance of the Filipino resistance and lose sight of their own perspective.Footnote 67 Still, Norihiro Katō, the author of America's shadow, praises Ōoka for showing Japanese pride despite defeat.Footnote 68
To end this article, I want to question the meaning of Ōoka's admiration for the Japanese soldiers — together with his appreciative comments on Constantino and Pomeroy — to locate his thoughts beyond the controversy that he generated among Japanese historians. As we have seen, Ōoka had changed the year the Filipino–American War ended in the revised version of Reite senki. This change was greatly inspired by Ikehata's advice and Constantino's translated works in Japanese. As we have seen, Ikehata had pointed out the lack of Filipino perspectives on the resistance in the original version, and Constantino's works had filled this gap.
Constantino pays particular attention to the details of Filipino battles against the US army in Leyte and Samar — where Japan and the United States were also to fight during the Pacific War. During the Filipino–American War, resistance fighters in these areas were called tulisanes (bandits) or ladrones (robbers): despite being tortured, put in camps, and starved, they continued fighting from their forest hideouts.Footnote 69
At the same time Pomeroy's record of his Huk battles also details how they fought in the Sierra Madre Mountains in northeast Luzon. The lack of food was also the main problem in their forest refuge. In particular, after Ramon Magsaysay was appointed as the secretary of national defence in August 1950 by president Elpidio Quirino, the suppression of the Huks intensified. Bagong silang (new birth), the Huks’ stations which produced and supplied food and disseminated information set along their military routes, were subsequently destroyed. The Huks, consisting of men and women, old and young, were scattered by the attacks of the government troops, which descended upon the small groups of Huks wandering in the forest looking for food and lost comrades.Footnote 70
As someone who was drafted into the Japanese army and had fought in the Philippines, Ōoka knew from experience how hard it was to survive in the Philippine forest if supplies were cut off. He also wrote in detail of this hardship in Reite senki. In terms of finding similar hardships, he could empathise with the tulisanes and ladrones during the Filipino–American War and the Huks during the Cold War. Tulisanese, Ladrones, Huks and Japanese soldiers wandered, starved, surrendered and eventually lost their wars. This was the common experience that Ōoka sought to find among the Filipinos, the Japanese, and even the Americans who fought in the Philippine forests.
Unlike the chronicles of American guerrilla leaders in the Philippines during the Second World War whose narratives start with the inevitable surrender to Japan at the beginning of the war, and end with a glorious victory against Japan,Footnote 71 Ōoka's sympathy is directed to all who were defeated in war. According to Kenzaburō Ōe, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1994, Ōoka was even not ashamed about being a captive of the US Army. He thought it was the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army and the emperor that were in charge of the war and still had not admitted their wrongdoings who should have felt ashamed.Footnote 72
Ōoka's bond with the Filipino and American guerrilla ‘war losers’ was not an assertive act but a passive one, through his reading of translated Filipino history. The last paragraph of Reite senki simply describes his thoughts on the war in Leyte:
The history of the battles in Leyte tells the Japanese and American people, who now have amnesia, about how and what they would encounter when seeking to profit from other's land. It also shows that the aggressors will bring ill effects to the country. Furthermore, history has proven that these ill effects will return to us. The testimony of the dead is multifaceted. The land of Leyte keeps telling this fact with a voice which can only be heard by those who wish to hear it.Footnote 73
This passage clearly shows that Ōoka tried to listen to the testimonies of the dead while writing Reite senki. His criticism was not only addressed to the ‘old’ Japan and America who invaded the Philippines in the Second World War, but also to the ‘current’ Japan and America who sought to gain similar profits from the Vietnam War while forgetting their past. Thus, when he states that the testimony of the dead in Leyte is multifaceted, the testimony consists not only of Japanese soldiers but also of all those who died in battle. He states that this testimony could only be heard by those who wished to hear it. Ōoka attempted to listen to the voices of the dead, and reached out to the vestiges of Tulisanes, Ladrones, Huks and their American comrade Pomeroy, Japanese soldiers and even Vietnamese guerrillas who also wandered, starved and died in the forest. This is why he added a new chapter called ‘Guerrillas’ in the 1984 edition, thirteen years after Reite senki was first published.
Conclusion
In examining the original texts and their Japanese translations, we have discovered that Japanese translators of Filipino writers added some ‘noises’ which were not found in the originals, by using techniques such as deletion, addition, and subjective overreading or even misreading of the text. Using Tymoczko's observations as a guide, we demonstrated the various strategies used by the Japanese translators to make the work of Filipino historians fit into postwar Japanese society and culture.
We also paid attention to the so-called ‘peace nationalism’ among the Japanese translators, and suggested that this lens brought them some difficulties when translating Filipino nationalist history, which did not necessarily accord with prevailing Japanese ideas of peace. For example, Matsuhashi, who translated Zaide, could not agree with the latter's pointing out a Filipino youth's martyrdom while serving in the US Army during the First World War and thus omitted this episode. Iwasaki was impressed with Agoncillo's anti-American nationalism because he hoped that Filipino–Japanese friendship would not be based merely on pragmatic or economic grounds, like that of the Americans. By interpreting Constantino's writings as a negation of past Philippine nationalism, his translator Tsurumi could articulate a vision of a similar Japanese and Philippine nationalism that looked only to the future. Ōoka, himself a keen reader of translated Philippine historiography, highlighted what he saw as parallels between Japanese and Philippine history in terms of both countries suffering defeat by and existing in a client relation to a hegemonic United States.
These ‘noises’ illuminate the fact that the act of translation did not only bring about empathy and understanding, but a kind of disagreement, consciously or unconsciously, among these Japanese translators toward Filipino historians’ texts. As demonstrated in this article, these noises surfaced when the Japanese translators found themselves in a dilemma between articulations of ‘peace’ and those of ‘nationalism’. For the Japanese translators during the Cold War, nationalism stemming from a violent struggle for self-determination was to be reoriented towards peace, based on the lessons that they themselves had learned from Japan's defeat and the violence that they were also witnessing in the Vietnam War. Thus, instead of evoking a Japanese nationalism which could not be directly applied due to its past failures, they entrusted their desire for peace and independence to the texts of Filipino historians, in turn creating some interesting noises in their translations, or postwar Japanese rewriting of Philippine history.
