Philippine-Japanese Professorial Exchanges in the 1930's

Abstract

During the 1930's the pace of contact between the Philippines and Japan quickened noticeably. This was, of course, the result of the concurrence of the promise of the United States to grant independence to the Philippines, embodied firmly in the Tydings- McDuffie Act of 1934, and of the intensified interest in Southeast Asia at all levels in Japan. One manifestation of this phenomenon was the development of mutual Philippine-Japanese undertakings in what might broadly be called the cultural realm. I have already described elsewhere the establishment and operation of such organizations at the Philippine Society of Japan1 and of Philippine-Japanese student exchanges. However, in the paragraphs which follow I will turn my attention to the inception and subsequent scope of the exchange of university professors between Japan and the Philippines. In so doing, I hope to suggest that these exchanges, though limited in nature, were meaningful cultural interchanges for both countries and that their termination was precipitated not by any lack of enthusiasm on the part of either Japan or the Philippines but rather by the impasse in American-Japanese relations which immediately preceded the outbreak of World War II.