The countries have been doing some pretty heavy business together: trains, money, China. Especially China.
Ships, radar, the BRP Teresa Magbanua, BRP Melchora Aquino, big ships and real steel, diplomacy you can stub your toe on.
The future was bright; the partnership was entering a golden age. Japan and the Philippines mark 70 years of diplomatic relations.
Seventy years. A hell of a time to arrive. You expect the man standing in the middle of all this to have elbows and the appetite for the center of the photograph.
Endo does not seem to. He is modest, soft-spoken, easy on the eyes. Almost boyish sometimes. He smiles and doesn’t come at you, doesn’t have that big-shot imperial diplomat swagger beneath where a man enters only after his title had arrived five minutes before he did.
Endo almost disappears inside his. Then he talks. “I am honored to serve and shoulder this responsibility to be the bridge between our two countries at a time like this,” he said when he arrived in Manila.
Endo called himself a bridge. A bridge. A bridge over what?
The answer is strange because almost nobody thinks of it anymore.
Japan now means sushi, Toyotas, Uniqlo, anime, Hibiki, cherry blossoms, cheap flights to Osaka.
That wasn’t always Japan.
For a generation of Filipinos, Japan meant war, most of us have become lucky enough to forget.
The war left deep scars in the Philippines.
Manila was devastated, and many families lost loved ones. Those memories cannot be fully addressed by words or material assistance alone; they require remembrance, understanding, and a commitment to lasting friendship.
Before the bridge came reconciliation, there was a closed door — and behind it, 105 Japanese war criminals. On the other stood Elpidio Quirino. There was no cheap grace in this. The Japanese had killed members of Quirino’s own family. His family. Not somebody else’s names carved into somebody else’s stone. He knew exactly what Japan had taken, then he opened the door anyway.
That wasn’t a bridge yet. One side lays a plank. The other lays another. Somebody comes back. Somebody does business. Somebody hires somebody. Somebody falls in love. A Filipino kid goes to Japan. A Japanese family makes a life here. A Filipino sailor boards a Japanese ship. A Japanese tourist lands in Manila. A Filipino tourist lands in Tokyo.
Bridge between cultures
Somebody learns the other guy isn’t the story his grandfather told him.
Then their children meet.
Then their grandchildren don’t understand why this was ever strange.
And, one day, nearly 85 years after Japanese troops invaded the Philippines, Japanese troops are here again.
