Philippine Japanese Relations

Relations between Japan and the Philippines have come a long way. This volume uncovers the ups and downs of this relationship from the late-nineteenth century to the 1990s, through periods of cooperation and trust, suspicion and war, close entanglement with the United States, and diplomacy through regional and international organizations.

"This book revises the common observation that Philippines-Japan relations are characterized by inequality. Such an observation is the twin of another common observation, that the bilateral relationship between the Philippines and Japan is largely economic in nature. . . . For two countries that have had relations for more than a century, there is certainly something more that can be said about this relationship, aside from the obvious. We can arrive at a more significant and nuanced characterization of Philippines-Japan relations by looking at the other aspects of the relationship without totally dismissing the admittedly important economic relationship. As we conditionally admit that the relationship is unequal, we look at the balance to see which side is heavier; we change the contents of the balance and vary their combinations to find out if one side is always heavier than the other or if both sides are sometimes equal. "The book does this by narrating how the past is remembered, by bridging the elite and the popular, and by describing people-to-people relations across national borders within and beyond state structure." --from the Introduction

Spain, China and Japan in Manila, 1571-1644 offers a new perspective on the connected histories of Spain, China, and Japan as they emerged and developed following Manila's foundation as the capital of the Spanish Philippines in 1571. Examining a wealth of multilingual primary sources, Birgit Tremml-Werner shows that cross-cultural encounters not only shaped Manila's development as a "Eurasian" port city, but also had profound political, economic, and social ramifications for the three pre-modern states. Combining a systematic comparison with a focus on specific actors during this period, this book addresses many long-held misconceptions and offers a more balanced and multi-faceted view of these nations' histories.