You are cordially invited to a CSEAS Tonan Talk, a Brown Bag lecture series. The talk is open to the public, and you can bring your lunch bag to the place. The details are as follows.

Title: Friend or Foe? Representations of the Japanese in the Philippines Print Media: 1940s to the Present
Speaker: Dr. Karl Ian Uy Cheng Chua, Assistant Professor, the Department of History and Japanese Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University
Date: April 28 (Mon.), 12.00-13.30, 2014
Place: STonan tei (Room No. 201), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Abstract:
The Japanese have suffered a terrible reputation with regard to how they are represented in history. School history textbooks usually portray the Japanese as brutal colonial masters despite the fact that they were in the Philippines for only three years, as opposed to the Spaniards, who were there for almost 400 years, and the Americans, who colonized the country for 40 years. However, non-textbook materials, such as komiks and children’s fiction, seem to provide a very different portrayal of the Japanese occupation period. Instead of demonizing them, oral accounts of survivors would tell of Korean or Taiwanese soldiers, fighting with the Japanese, being more undisciplined and brutal than their Japanese comrades. Furthermore, there are accounts which separate ‘good and kind’ Japanese from the ‘brutal and evil’ ones. Thus, there seems to be inconsistencies in how the Japanese are represented.

This paper analyses how the Japanese were represented in Philippine print media, specifically komiks during the following periods: the immediate post-war, when war reparations and other post-war issues were a central issue; and the present, when Japanese Popular Culture and other soft power tools have permeated the Philippines. Through the findings, one can trace the evolution of how Japanese were represented and identify the influences affecting those representations.

About the speaker:
Karl Ian Uy Cheng Chua received his PhD from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo in 2010. He is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Japanese Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He has published an article entitled, ‘The stories they tell: Komiks during the Japanese occupation, 1942–1944’, Philippines Studies 53: 1 (2005), pp. 59–90, and book chapters in the following edited volumes entitled, Lydia Yu-Jose, Ricardo T. Jose, Yoshimura Mako and Teow See Heng, eds, Japan and Southeast Asia: Continuity and Change in Modern Times, (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014), Mark Baildon, Kah Seng Loh, Ivy Maria Lim, Gül İnanç, and Junaidah Jaffar, eds. *Controversial History Education in Asian Contexts *(Routledge, 2013), and Paul Morris, Naoko Shimazu, and Edward Vickers, eds., *Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia *(Routledge, 2013). Currently, he is an Asian Public Intellectual Junior Fellow conducting research on the history of disaster education for children in Japan.

Moderator: Hau Caroline, CSEAS

This Tonan Talk is supported by “Southeast Asian Studies for Sustainable Humanosphere” Research Program, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University
 

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