Reclaiming Filipino Narratives at the Philippine Studies Forum in Japan

My first academic conference was in May, in Diliman. Three weeks later I was in Tokyo, at the Philippine Studies Forum in Japan. That one was my first outside the country.

It ran on 21 and 22 June 2025 at the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo. This was the thirtieth annual edition, and it drew Filipinists from Japan, the Philippines, and beyond. A Filipinist is a scholar whose field is the Philippines. Taihei Okada, a professor of area studies at the University of Tokyo, chaired the steering committee.

My paper was “Reclaiming Filipino Narratives: The CIS Bamboo Framework for Culturally Intelligent Storytelling in Philippine Film and Series.” I presented it in person.

Why film and series

In Diliman I had argued the framework in general terms. But in Tokyo I put it against actual Philippine film and television, because a framework that cannot read specific work is not a framework. It is a slogan.

Philippine series now travel on streaming platforms and reach viewers who have never set foot in the country. So the question I brought to the Philippine Studies Forum in Japan was simple. What survives the crossing, and what quietly gets dropped?

And the first word of the title carries weight. Reclaiming. Not adapting, not translating for a foreign buyer. The premise is that the narrative already belongs to us, so the work is holding on to it while the story travels.

Why the Philippine Studies Forum in Japan felt different

At home the audience shares the references. You can say the name of a show and the room already knows what you mean.

The Philippine Studies Forum in Japan was not that. The room held Japanese scholars who study the Philippines closely and Filipino researchers based in Japan. They know the material well, but many of them know it from outside daily Filipino life. That is exactly the gap the framework is about. So it was a fitting place for a first outing abroad. They could follow the argument without needing the shorthand.

After Tokyo the year kept moving. Diliman in May, Tokyo in June, then London in September, then Davao and Los Baños in October, then the book in Santa Monica in November.