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I AM
writing this at the lobby of the Aichi ken Seinen Kaikan,
or the Aichi Prefectural Youth Hostel. It is not a fancy
place if one considers that our landmark for it is a
Hilton Hotel. I am here with seven students from Ateneo
de Manila to make—well, in a small way—history by doing
fieldwork in Japan under a course that dares to question
our many images of this country. The course takes a look
at the way the country presents itself through sites and
monuments. v In a sense, there is
Japan that is read through the books:
Japan of
the samurai, of the geisha, of cherry blossoms. We like
these images, but these visual instruments are not fair
to this country that has more to offer really than
lovely sites and symbols of the ephemeral.
The
history-making aspect is there because while we have
been offering educational trips to
Japan,
this time we are formalizing the journeys into
three-credit units. At the end of the sojourn, the
participants will be asked to write about their
impressions through a formal paper, with the hope that
certain theories will give them the distance to be clear
and critical of their descriptions and analysis.
As with
all kinds of travels, the meaning of the experiences
comes in the bumps and halts of the trip than in its
terminus. This hostel, for example, is no more the end
than it is part of a still relatively long trip we are
making. In fact, the experience for these three young
men and four young women began in the tarmac of the
Ninoy Aquino International
Airport.
We were
up early for the
6 am flight. At
3 am,
some of the students were already lined up before
Northwest Airlines. The line was long but we were
settled for the ride right on time. I fell asleep
waiting for the plane to lift off. After an hour, I woke
up only to be told by one of the students that we had
not left the
Philippines
yet.
The
experience was nothing new to a Bicolano. Years back
when there was still the Mayon Limited plying between
Tutuban and Naga, I would always fall asleep for hours
and wake up to find that we were still in the same
terminal! But that was the train, and that was a long
time ago. This was Northwest, and we were traveling
abroad.
The
staff and the crew of the airline were most kind to tell
us that something was being checked and that if we would
only look out, there were indeed technicians looking at
some parts near one of the wings. Strangely enough, I
didn’t feel scared that I was onboard a plane, a major
part of which was being repaired. The captain repeatedly
told us that, yes, in 30 minutes, we would be flying. He
would laugh a bit and cough a bit and you could feel he
was also trying to humor himself. He was so honest, we
stayed with him for almost three hours on the tarmac.
Soon
there were pretzels being given and water dispensed.
Soon also, some certificate expressing apologies and
offering extra mileage were given to passengers. These
things were greatly appreciated. The ease and calm on
the part of the stewardesses helped a lot.
My mind,
however, was on Prof. Masaaki Satake, a dear friend, who
could only have been waiting for us at the airport
beginning at 11:30 in the morning. When we arrived in
Japan at almost 4 in the afternoon, he was still
there—but the
Nagoya
Castle
was no more.
The
Nagoya Castle had disappeared. Dr. Satake had one news
for us: we could not go anymore to Nagoya Castle because
it was too late. Too late, in fact, that we missed also
our lunch.
The
whole day had disappeared, except for a walk through the
Sakae area, the business district that we are in now. As
I write this, in fact, we are not sure if our host can
still find time for us and bring us to this castle.
Nagoya Castle
is Nagoya. What the city is now in relation to the two
major economic capitals of Osaka and Tokyo is what the
castle was to the warring forces then. The Tokugawa
Shogunate saw the strength of the castle as a buffer
against the other forces coming from all directions. Now
these students are going to miss the castle.
Like any
tourist sites, castles close in Japan. The evening
offers different sites, and the castle and the memory of
wars and strifes are not part of the evening sites.
Something was awaiting us: the Nagoya Tower.
We
climbed it by way of an elevator. Going down, the guests
have a choice of using the lift or climbing down the
stairs with only quality wires and matting shielding you
from falling off the 180-meter tower, the first
intensive radio-wave tower in
Japan.
As the brochures state it, only the Nagoya TV Tower is
registered as a tangible cultural property among the
country’s tourist towers.
A tower
that displays and communicates, a media site that is
also acknowledged as a tangible cultural property. Japan
honors parks and people in terms of their importance in
culture. My students are learning more. They are seeing
a city with great sidewalks with no car appropriating
the spaces. I miss my Scout Chuatoco. Several months
ago, men started working on it and building sidewalks.
The design was very Japanese as it followed the bumps
and waves of the ground. Then the men painted the ground
a brick-red. Now, cars are parked on these sidewalks and
the people are back once more on the road. Ducking the
passing cars.
Order is
all over the city and apparent to the Filipino students.
I point to them signs that say the use of mobile phone
is not allowed in the area. For some reason, they also
notice that the city is not part of any texting capital.
Charming really.
I keep
telling them that I miss seeing something: a cohort of
young Filipinas giggling and attracting the attention of
the locals. The rules on migration have changed already
and although there are still young women who are able to
enter Japan as entertainers, the number has gone down.
A
Japanese student tells me the stereotype about Filipinas
being hostesses is slowly changing. Now, the Japanese
think of the Filipina as caregiver and nurses. I do not
know if this is good. We still have to see our nurses
and caregivers being accepted by this country and being
rightfully paid. Not as trainees but as professionals
noted for their professionalism.
The
notion of
Japan
allowing in our nurses and caregivers also indicate that
indeed we are a nation that is good in creating human
resources for labor export, rather than a nation keen on
developing employment for its own people.
In the
meantime, my students have visited this university
called Nagoya Gakuin University, which must be the one
of the loveliest universities in the country. NGU, as it
is called, is located in a quiet neighborhood with
condominiums that do not grow wild and tall but are
controlled greatly by designs that are fresh and
intelligent. These buildings inspire quiet rather than
awe.
As you
walk the long quiet street, the long façade of NGU
stretches and ends to the left in small hills and crops
of trees and shrubs. The campus does not have a
perimeter fence. It looks like the street merely flows
into the school ground. A Methodist chapel stands across
the main building. Cut out on its wall is a cross.
In the
school, lounges abound. Lounge chairs are placed outside
the elevators; windows look out to the massive
development happening in the city. Nagoya was the site
of the latest World Expo, where our coconut-themed
pavilion drew admiration from the visitors and won
awards, too. But the development did not end with the
closing of the exposition. It triggered further
development.
The
Philippines is here in Nagoya. As the students are
introduced, Japanese students respond in varied ways,
most of them flattering. One female student, her
eyelashes threatening to be longer than the Tales of
Genji, exclaims to tell us that people always mistake
her for a Filipina. She seems to be proud of this,
although, with all honesty, I do not see much of what I
believe a Filipina should be in appearances. She is
dressed in the fashion called Yamamba, the mountain
witch. Her eyelids are silvery white and her body has
this artificial tan. She is gregarious and that must be
the Filipina in her.
A young
man was waiting for us in the hostel when we arrived. He
had spiked blond hair and very pale skin that made him
look like a young boy. He was Kenji, half-Filipino.
Kenji
followed us and he was conscious of his Filipino blood.
He appeared to miss Filipinos of his age. He must have
enjoyed so much his summer vacations in the Philippines
that he longed to be with Filipinos. This is one
Filipino proud of his being Filipino. Certainly, there
is no discourse of the vanishing in him.
That
discourse is with us. We will look for it here in Nagoya
and we will look for it in Tokyo, in the massive City
Hall of Tokyo in Shinjuku, in the beyond-crazy
Takeshita-dori. But before we look at the Gothic Lolita
and Sweet Lolita in Harajuku, before we pay homage to
the lean building housing Hanae Mori’s design, we will
visit first the Meiji Shrine, the emperor who is always
credited for
Japan
jumping into Western civilization.
There
with the giant trees and the giant torii, at the
boundary between the sacred and the profane we will step
up our search for identities of this country that has
been successful in using the perspective of the Outsider
to remain exotic, inscrutable and powerful. |
