A Genealogy of Japanese Solidarity Discourse on Philippine History: War with America and Area Studies in the Cold War

Abstract

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.