(L-R: Mori, a freelance graduate student, Prof. Miyawaki of Osaka University, Mr. Karlo Antonio David, Dr. Nelly Limbadan, Prof. Aoyama, Mr. Christian Pasion, and Ms. Tin Cordenillo after the panel presentation on 26 November 2022)
On November 26-27, 2022, a group from Ateneo de Davao University participated in the 5th Philippine Studies Conference in Japan (PSCJ), held at the University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus. Four researchers from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao gathered to share some of their latest findings from their different fields.
Anthropology graduate student Kristine Cordenillo gave a glimpse into a day in the lives of the Ata Manobo ethnolinguistic group in a remote village in the town of Kapalong, Davao del Norte. She showed their farming and healing practices and the stories she gathered from the community. Economist Christian Pasion zoomed in on urban poverty in the Philippines’ highly urbanized cities, creating a picture of the urban poor based on data provided by the 2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES). By providing this picture, he highlighted how the divide between rich and poor is increasing in Urban Philippines.
Local historian Karlo Antonio Galay David shared some fascinating stories that unfolded in his hometown of Kidapawan, Cotabato, during the Second World War, sharing tales of love and death between the locals and the occupying Japanese forces. And psychologist Nelly Limbadan looked at two distinct but similar communities in the Philippines with Japanese roots, the Nikkei-jin (descendants of historical Japanese immigrants to the Philippines) and the Japanese-Filipino Children (offspring of more recent unions between Filipinos and Japanese). She explored the challenges, difficulties, joys, and coping styles of these two communities as they deal with their distinct realities.
The four researchers came from different fields but were gathered together in Prof. Waka Aoyama’s socially engaged art project ‘Cultivating a Place Together.’ The project has proceeded with the guiding nickname ‘Project DEAI,’ emphasizing on encounters and unwitting discoveries – ‘deai,’ the Japanese word encounter, is a homophone of the ‘diay,’ an interjection in the Bisaya language (the four researcher’s shared tongue) said when something new is learned. After the four researchers shared their findings, they interacted with one another and the audience to highlight where the participants – who come from two nations and very different backgrounds – have arrived at new learning encounters.
This international participation is through JSPS KAKEN No.21H03700 headed by Dr. Waka Aoyama. She is a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo. She was a Visiting Researcher at the Joint Ateneo Institute for Mindanao Economics at Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines, from 2018 to 2019. Her research interests include Davao/Mindanao Studies; Studies on the Sama-Bajau in the urban Philippines; and the oral history of a Cebuano woman living in a low-income area of Davao City.
Article and Photos by Dr. Nelly Limbadan
