Tucked inside a residential area in Davao City’s Calinan District, 40 minutes away from the city’s downtown stands a museum that takes visitors to a bygone pre-war era when this portion of Davao City was called Little Tokyo– the home of the largest Japanese community in the country.
“This museum was built in 1994 through the generosity of a Japanese who was born in Davao, Mr. Uchida together with the Tokyo Mushashino Lions Club. This museum is a repository of the rich history of Japanese descendants who used to live in Davao City,” says Karina Melissa Yoshida Cadiogan, head curator of the IMIN Philippine-Japan Historical Museum.
The history of Japanese migration to Davao started in 1903 when American abaca planters started bringing in workers from Japan to work in the vast abaca plantations. The first batch of migrants were led by Suda Ryosuke from Kagoshima Prefecture.
“They came to Davao to have a better life and that is how their story started, from then on they became abaca farmers, they had abaca plantations around Davao and they married Filipinas, they had their own families here. And Davao gave them a better life, far from the life they had in Japan,” Cadiogan says.
“They can be compared to our OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) going abroad to have a better life, these Japanese immigrants came here to search and find a better life in Davao,” added Cadiogan, who is a fourth generation Nikkei Jin (a person of Japanese descent), one of the 8,000-10,000 Nikkei Jins currently living in Davao City.
The Japanese community prospered as these settlers became successful and owned abaca plantations, one of these successful abaca entrepreneurs is Ohta Kyozaburo, who established a plantation in Mintal and is considered as the “father of abaca development.”
Most of the progressive pre-war Japanese community in Davao resided along the Mintal-Calinan-Toril area where most of the fertile abaca plantations were located. At its heyday Davao hosted the largest Japanese migrant community in Southeast Asia reaching as high as 20,000 people. There were Japanese schools, stores, restaurants, hospitals, photo studios, and many other businesses lining the streets of Davao.
With abaca one of world’s in-demand export commodity, the Japanese mechanization of the abaca stripping through a machine called Hagutan enabled to them to strip and produce more fibers to be exported as marine cordage for the growing merchant and naval shipping market and which gave them enormous profits making the Japanese rich and influential.
Not many know that Davao City was created primarily to nip the Japanese influence in the area. The Municipality of Davao and the Municipal District of Guianga where much of the Japanese plantations are located was merged into one city in 1937. The early Davao City Mayors were appointed and not elected, as the commonwealth government feared that the Japanese would control the local elections.
However the good days would come to an end with World War II. And when allied liberation came alongside the defeat of Japan, these immigrants including the children of Japanese parents would be repatriated to their homeland.
But the Filipino spouses and children of the Filipino under 15 years of age would not be permitted to go to Japan. Cut off from their spouses and parents and with strong anti-Japanese sentiment prevailing during the post-war years, many hid in the mountains and tried to conceal their Japanese identity.
As friendship and amity were restored between the two countries particularly during the 1962 Philippine visit of Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko, which marked a milestone in the reconciliation process, groups of Japanese started to visit the country and in 1968 a batch of 80 former Japanese immigrants made a sentimental return journey to Davao.
This would start the annual tradition of Iresai, a ceremony to honor their ancestors. Groups of Japanese tourists would come to Davao City in the month of August and proceed to the Mintal Public Cemetery to visit the graves of their ancestors. Mintal, a barangay near Calinan was once the site of a large Japanese community and is often referred to as Little Tokyo.
In 1980, the second-generation Nikkei Jin (Japanese descendants) would form the Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai Incorporated (PNJK) whose main thrust is “to restore the lost image and identity of the war-displaced Japanese Descendants Society in the Philippines.”
One of PNJK’s main supporters is Uchida Tatsuo, a Davao-born Japanese, and a successful businessman in Japan who would put up the Imin Museum in 1994 inside the Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai School in Calinan.
The museum would be renovated in 2019 under the Japanese Grassroots Cultural Funding Cooperation (GGP) of the Japanese Government and additional funding coming from Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai Inc. and the Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai International School.
The new museum
“Imin” means migration in Japanese and the museum presents the life of Japanese settlers in Davao during the early 20th century.
The 2019 renovation meant better and comfortable exhibit space with old artifacts, visual materials and digital videos. The museum is curated in such a way that it is interactive where visitors can try out Iminshi (migrants) culture and lifestyle during that era.
“We try to make the museum interactive, we don’t want to be a boring museum, if the tourists come they will not regret coming here,” Cadiogan says.
Visitors can have the opportunity to wear Yukata, traditional attire which was worn in the Davao community. One can also sit and try a Zashikia style- traditional dinner seating arrangement with a low table on tatami flooring. The main museum area is a replica of the old 1930s San Pedro Street where many Japanese owned shops were located. There are also exhibits on abaca and the Hagutan, which gave prosperity to the Japanese in Davao.
She says the IMIN complements the museums in the city as it shows Davao City’s march to progress.
“It’s not just a museum for the Japanese descendants but it’s a museum for the city to showcase how it was built from the 1900s. If you visit the museum you will see the progress of the city,”
One part of the museum shows the impact of World War II to the Japanese community in Davao, which for Japan Consul General in Davao, Yoshishisa Ishikawa provides a valuable lesson to museum visitors.
“The most important mission of Imin is to tell what happened in the past. Most Japanese tourists don’t know the history. Imin will help them be aware of the past,” Consul General Ishikawa said.
He says the museum in essence tells the story of friendship and peace.
The IMIN Philippine-Japan Historical Museum is open Mondays to Saturdays (Sundays visit need advance booking) 8:00 am- 12:00 noon, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm. Entrance Fee is pegged at P100 for adults (18 years old and above), P80 for PWDs and senior citizens and P50 for children. (RVC/RG Alama, PIA-XI)
