For International Women’s Day this 2022, we feature the work of a pioneering scholar and Professor Emeritus of the UP Asian Center—Dr. Josefa Saniel—who blazed the trail for Japanese Studies in the Philippines in the 1960s. The following is an excerpt to the introduction to a special issue of the journal, Asian Studies, that honors Dr. Saniel’s contributions to Asian Studies in the Philippines.

Born in 1925, she finished her Bachelor of Science in Education at the University of the Philippines (Magna Cum Laude) in 1949; obtained her M.A. in History at the University of Chicago in 1953 under a Fulbright Smith-Mundt grant (Soriano and Retizos 1981, 330); and took her PhD in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in 1961. She was supervised by John W. Hall,1 a student of Edwin O. Reischauer and an authority on premodern Japan (Scott 1997). Just as Professor Hall played an influential role in the development of Japanese Studies in the United States. so did Dr. Saniel in the case of the Philippines. She helped establish area studies as a field of study, and develop Japanese Studies as a graduate degree program, in the University of the Philippines. She also edited a collection of papers (Saniel 1967) presented at the “inaugural meeting of the Association for Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast” in San Francisco from 16 to 19 June 1967. Later on, she produced four different surveys of the state of Japanese Studies in the Philippines (1969, 1984, 1989b, 1992), and undertook an overview of Asian Studies and area studies programs in the United States and Canada (1989a).

….Ms. Saniel took up her PhD in the United States, specializing on Japan, while a colleague focused on China. She was part of a generation of Filipinos— Cesar Adib Majul, Felipe Jocano, Onofre D. Corpuz, among many others (Rafael 2015, 3)—who pursued graduate studies in the U.S. Back home, she wrote on modern Japanese history, with particular emphasis on the second half of the 19th century; Philippines-Japan relations; Japanese culture, society, and literature, and Japan’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia. Some of her publications were translated into Japanese and published in Japan.2 She is the author of Okuma Shigenobu and the Philippine 1898 Problem (1965b), and the pioneering, Japan and the Philippines, 1868-1898 (1963b), which is based on her PhD dissertation. Published by the University of the Philippines Press, it is her most-cited work. It was reprinted in 1969 and republished in New York by Russell Publishers Press in 1973 (UP EAA 2010, 100). The greatest achievement of the author’s research is the opening of a new field so far neglected by Western scholars…. One must praise Dr. Saniel for what must have been the extremely difficult research involved in detailing the activities of the shishi, Japanese military officers and civilians who were sent to the Philippines despite the official hands-off policy of Japan. (Flood 1965).

….She was doing area studies at a time of what might be called high nationalism in post-war Philippine society. She directed her gaze outward to Japan, while her many of her contemporaries—flushed in varying degrees of nationalism—largely looked inward to the Philippines. In principle, nationalism and area studies were not mutually exclusive and were in fact complementary,5 but by and large, Filipino nationalist scholarship focused on finding and defining the Filipino. Its radical, anticolonial strain rejected the foreign, imperial, and the colonial, not least if it was American.6 Dr. Saniel wrote her articles at a time when bitter memories of the Japanese occupation were still fresh. “The suspicion, antagonism and threat perception [of the Japanese] remained, albeit more intense because of trauma of the war” (Sta. Romana and Jose 1991, 79). In the 1960s and early 1970s, there also loomed a “fear of possible Japan’s ‘economic invasion’ and the fear of a possible re-militarization as a result of the Japan’s continuing expansion of…. economic capacities and capabilities…” (Reyes, Arizabal, and Saniel 1971, 3; cf. Sta. Romana and Jose 1991, 81– 82). Both countries did sign a Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation in 1960, but it was “probably the most scrutinized and vilified treaty in Philippine diplomatic history” (80). It was ratified only in 1973, after Congress had been abolished. It must be said, however, that this antiJapanese sentiment did not stop Japanese commodities from entering the Philippines (Saniel 1972, 377). In this nationalist context, Dr. Saniel’s works on Philippines-Japan relations—“Four Japanese and their Plans for Expansion in the Philippines” (1963a) and “The Japanese Minority in the Philippines Before Pearl Harbor” (1966)—were easy to overlook. A 1963 review of Japan and the Philippines, 1868–1898 dismisses the book’s significance to Philippine historiography on the 19th century, which at that time largely focused on the Philippine Revolution.

"the actual Japanese-Philippine interactions dealt with in the monograph were of subordinate importance to events occurring in each individual country during this period" (Rocamora 1963 quoted in Albos 1973, 229).

….Dr. Saniel saw area studies as part of nation-building and national development. Her article, Area Studies: A Focus of a Multidisciplinal Approach in the Social Sciences (1975) must partly be seen in this light. Here, she argues that such an approach is instrumental to responding to the needs of society. It provides a holistic way of looking an object of study that coordinates different disiciplines to, say, improve social policy or understand a country, region, or even a particular problem. In the 1960s, these needs meant modernization, state-building, and national development. Like many states after the Second World War, the Philippines was trying to modernize and develop its economy. Modernization theory was a key paradigm in academic and policy-making circles during the first few decades of the Cold War (see Lebra 1967 for an example of such scholarship). In Southeast Asia, modernization theory belonged to a broader political thrust: determine how primarily agricultural nations could develop and industrialize, and help stave off the communism (cf. Cullather 2010). At any rate, this inevitably entailed understanding the cultures— broadly understood—of Southeast Asian states. Thus was born what might be called the culture-for-development nexus. 7 The success of the Japanese economy in the 1960s added impetus to this trend. It showed developing nations like the Philippines that tradition need not conflict with modernity and Westernization, that they need not abandon—nay, must even rediscover—their culture in order to develop. Japan illustrated that these developing states could modernize on their own terms; and that the process need not be wholly imposed from the outside.

Three of Dr. Saniel’s works imbued this spirit of post-war state building and the role of culture in the enterprise. “The Mobilization of Traditional Values in the Modernization of Japan” (1965a) shows just that. “The Japanese Minority in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor: Social Organization in Davao” (1966) explores the Japanese family system and its role in promoting social cohesiveness in Davao. It was, among other things, an exposition of how culture (in the broadest sense) could be effectively harnessed for broader social and political goals. “Japan and the Philippines: From Traditional to Modern Societies” (1977) examines how the family systems and kinship relations of both countries figured (or otherwise) in state-building and modernization. Among other things, what emerges from these comparative studies is a contrast between the two countries. Meiji Japan had social cohesion, “strong and responsible leadership,” a “political system stable and powerful enough to channel cohesive social action in the attainment of national ends,” and “strong national group consciousness and solidarity” (Saniel 1965a, 143–45). By contrast, there was social and political fragmentation in the Philippines, and the prevalence of partisan interests that militate against nation-building. Advocating for “national cohesion” and loyalty to the “nation,” her conclusion in the discussion the Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, resonates today.

The crucial need of the Philippines today is the transcending of personal and small group interests which impede the channeling of loyalties to the larger community–the nation state. Once national cohesion is reached, it would be difficult for any country or people to bargain for any arrangement detrimental to the country and its people. The sooner this is realized by the Filipino leaders, the faster can national goals be reached, and the easier it will be for the Filipino political leaders to negotiate for mutually beneficial arrangements with another country, say Japan…. (Saniel 1971, 81)

To read the rest of the essay, and to download the seminal works of Dr. Saniel, please visit the website of Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, which has been published by the UP Asian Center since 1963. 

The Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The UP Asian Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. It also offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. For an overview of these graduate programs, click here. As an area studies institution, the Asian Center also publishes Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, the latest issue of which can be downloaded at the journal's website.