January 27 webinar: Revisiting Filipino migration to Japan

Join us this Monday, January 27, from 8 to 10 AM, for an online webinar on the theme "Revisiting Filipino Migration to Japan: Situationer, Challenges, and Prospects", organized by the Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences at De La Salle University (DLSU) and co-sponsored by the Center for Development Studies at Toyo University and Center for Global Studies at Shizuoka University.

Doctor of Sociology and Professor Sachi Takahata of Shizuoka University in Japan will present highlights of her newly-published book entitled “The Filipino Marriage Migrants and Nikkeijin in the 1980s to 2020s: A Japanese Viewpoint.”

Published last May 2024, the original title of her book written in Japanese is "Zainichi Filipin-jin Shakai: 1980 kara 2020 nen-dai no Kekkon-imin to Nikkeijin."

"Kalakasan", a 30-minute documentary will also be shown as a visual introduction of who and what Dr. Sachi will discuss.

This is the January 27 webinar’s Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/97343091949.

We would like to thank Dr. Jerome Cleofas, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences DLSU Manila for his wonderful support for this event. Thank you especially to Ms. Yellowbelle Duaqui, the webinar’s overall coordinator.

Thank you as well to her students, members/officers of DLSU GLASS, for the following support: emcees Pau Baquiran and Sydney Dela Cruz, pubmat creator Ericka Castro, Margaret Reyno for the opening prayer, Erika Oblea and Dominic Vicencio for Zoom technical support, Catherine Ong for emailed invitations and Jane Uda for the Certificates.

Special mention and thanks also go to the following for agreeing to serve as panel reactors: Dr. Karl Ian Cheng Chua, Dr. Johanna Zulueta, and Dr. Jocelyn Celero.

To Prof. Ryo Matsumaru, director of the Center for Sustainable Development Studies and Professor of Toyo University, thank you for your time for the closing remarks.

For questions and inquiries about the Monday webinar, please contact Jane Uda at [email protected].

Having studied, married, resided, worked, and researched from the 1970s to 2017 in Japan (with special focus on and advocacy for Filipino migrants), I join those who are enthusiastically looking forward to next Monday’s webinar to listen to Dr. Sachi’s presentation about Filipino married women and Nikkeijins in the 1980s to 2020s.

Some initial observations. Dr. Sachi’s choice of subjects, the married Filipino women and the Nikkeijins, (descendants of Japanese nationals) from among other Filipinos in Japan, is very interesting and significant.

These two groups represent the very limited number of Filipinos who have crossed or have been allowed to enter the intimate, very private close circle of Japanese families.

Japanese blood flows among the children of Filipino women married to Japanese and the Nikkeijin. This is the cutting edge of these two migrants groups to be discussed by Dr. Sachi. These groups may even redeem the dwindling/aging Japanese population and society?

These two selected Filipino migrant groups also call attention, not only to race but to gender as well, specifically the role of Filipino women, across time, in intimately bridging not only the personal and familial but cultural/societal gaps between the Filipinos and the Japanese.

The focus on the time period is worth noting too. Filipino migration in particular but migration in general reflects the convergence of personal narratives and biographies with histories and structures of nations, societies and the whole world.

To recall, Filipino women entered Japan in thousands from the 1970s, the Nikkeijins allowed in Japan only in 1990.

So much has changed since then. Demographics have changed, so have societies, so has the entire global community.

Among the young, single Filipino Japayukis or the hanayomes (the brides) of the ‘70s-‘80s are now mothers, grandmothers, widows, the healthy, the sick, even the departed.

Together with the Nikkeijins, it will be interesting to know if their situation/challenges/prospects then and now have changed, for better or for worse?