The Past, Love, Money and Much More

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