Reflections After Shogun
by Irineo B. R. Salazar
Rudyard Kipling once said that East and West would never meet. They do meet in Shogun(2024) and the real-life equivalent of John Blackthorne was William Adams (not AFAM) and though he probably wasn’t as important to Ieyasu Tokugawa aka Toranaga as in the series, he had a significant role with the Shogun. Spoiler alert: Hosokawa Gracia wasn’t involved with Adams like Miyako with Blackthorne, but she was Catholic and her death played a role in paving the way for Tokugawa’s victory at Sekigahara.
(source: Wikimedia Commons)
East and West had also met decades before the events of Shogun in the Philippines, most notably when Magellan landed there by chance and Legazpi came again five decades after to conquer. The exile of Catholic daimyo Blessed Justo Takayama to Manila and the martyrdom of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz in Nagasaki would be much later. Centuries later, Commodore Perry would land in Japan, long before Dewey in Manila. The Sulu Sultanate would also have its own Adams, Captain Schück, in that period.
But are East and West really totally different in spite of meeting? Kurosawa made Ran which adapts King Lear to a Japanese setting, while The Magnificent Seven was the cowboy movie remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. There are human commonalities. What probably is distinctly Western is a certain maverick and upstart mindset compared to the until now quite conservative cultures of the East, though the East has now caught up with the West and at times exceeded it at least in economy and technology.
One can indeed ask why some countries managed to evade colonialism and some didn’t. Given that Southeast Asian temperament is something for itself, should Filipinos rather watch The King and I than Shogun for ideas? In any case, Yul Brynner always looks cool.
Maybe unlike Java and Japan who had already been invaded by Mongols, the Philippines simply hadn’t experienced major invasions before and therefore were relatively easy to take, not even able to form a tribal alliance like the Gauls against Caesar.
Just a few things that come to mind after a great series. East-West, colonialism, nations. Leadership and strategy. Toranaga says he studies the wind. What can we learn from that?
Irineo B. R. Salazar
Munich, 25 April 2024
links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(pilot)
- https://www.quora.com/What-does-AFAM-mean-in-the-Philippines-Ive-heard-it
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosokawa_Gracia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Takayama
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_C._Perry
- https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/captain-herman-leopold-schuck-the-saga-of-a-german-sea-captain-in-19th-century-sulu-sulawesi-seas/
- https://youtu.be/9T2HrcHZKO4?si=IqivyLWxPPjoGmIQ
- https://youtu.be/7FxBjEbEPX0?si=AB4KMncLq_MUTdhT
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Irineo,
Correct me if I am wrong that if the Americans have not taken over from the Spaniards, it would either be the Japanese, Germans or French.
ps the US has debt of gratitude with France for helping them with England.
Before I go off tangent.
I still have not watched a single episode on Netflix. Maybe I should beginning today.
I remember the one with Richard Chamberlain though not vividly.
I think this is from disney plus
OK thanks Gian.
Shows on Disney Plus but is from FX networks and also shows on Hulu.
Have you read the book Irineo? Have the books somewhere haven’t had the time to open and read.
No, and we didn’t have those kinds of books at home. My father did have a paperback book on the Tokugawa Shogunate, but I didn’t read that either. He did point out the patience of Tokugawa Ieyasu, long before the 1980 series came out.
I preferred Malolos the Crisis of the Republic by Agoncillo (basically the Heneral Luna story) probably because it kinda had teleserye drama even in book form. That was way before I discovered Macchiavelli or had heard of Sun Tzu.
The part where Toranaga in e10 said Anjin wasn’t really important i just kept him there cuz he made me laugh. Made me laugh. and then I saw the videos of Blinken and Xi . and that made me laugh even further, Ireneo. Blinken i’m sure makes Xi laugh too. him taking notes, can you imagine Anjin taking notes when he had audience with Toranaga? these Dept of State folks are just clueless, man.
Toranaga also said, “he’ll (Anjin) never leave Japan for when the new ship is done, I will burn it again.” I think the “he made me laugh” statement is about TAIJITU. Toranaga acknowledged that Anjin is the yang (light side) to his yin (dark side). Anjin’s temperament and western ideas balances him out . Just my take.
those two looks between toranaga & yabushige “why tell a dead man the future” then shared smile and toranaga & anjin when he was pulling his ship w everyone like oh shit this mofo knew the whole time. priceless. the rosary clutched in the dream and the rosary let go in the water was beautiful. yup that dude’s stuck in Japan. i have a major crush on Moeka Hoshi now, jp. hers was the break away role in Shogun, this girl can act.
Well, Yabushige said “why tell a dead man the future” to his nephew at the start of the series, so Omi was snitching to Toranaga all along.
The Tokugawa Shogunate was known for its network of spies as Tokugawa Ieyasu was a control freak, and those that ratted on people publicly wore baskets just like the notorious WW2-era Makapili in the Philippines.
Though Yabushige was funny – and as opportunistic as a Filipino politician:
Interestingly, this recent blog sees as many women key players in the coming Philippine elections as in the Shogun series:
Of course your favorite is there LCPL_X even as some have already (probably wrongly) written her off.
“..The best thing about Sara is she knows her limitations, hence her decline of the Presidency, the first instance of that kind in human history.
Sara has found the remarkable formula for a politician of leveraging silence. She will occasionally throw a verbal jab as when she called the Speaker “Tambaloslos” which started the fight with him; but has politically thrived by fostering an aura of mystery. She continues to under perform at the DepEd. She is leading the 2028 Presidential polls but her numbers have started to drop together with BBM’s. The best thing for her would be to team up with somebody in 2028 who can run a Government while she remains a ceremonial head..”
she needs her LAM
most towns and small cities here have city managers and mayors. mayors get elected along with council members have to do politics and fund raising etc., then they pawn all their work to the city manager with his staff who have masters in public administration or such. so the day to day running is done by some who were not elected. seems to work fine. so long as the people keep pestering those they voted into office so they can in turn pester the manager. in my opinion, Inday Sara should start talking about joining the SCO that way the US gifts her more money. but start moving the economic center to Cebu and Davao. her mom’s side is a long line of Cebu public administrators the Abellanas. she can leverage that. Dutertes too ones who stayed in Cebu. she’s got a deep bench she can access.
A bench full of shifty-eyed characters, heads hooded, drool dripping.
The what-ifs are mind-boggling and consider all kinds of butterfly effects.
Doesn’t really matter whether you look at 1571 or at 1898.
There was at least theoretical unity in 1898 even as some places in the Visayas had their own setup, Sulu first made its separate deal with USA and even Luzon might have gone down in warlord conflicts – IF there had been no claimants for the Philippines.
IF Legazpi had not come in 1568 or Urdaneta had not found the tornaviaje or way back to Mexico (no way to get reinforcements etc.) there could have been the Portuguese or Dutch who were active in Taiwan in the 1600s alongside the Spanish.
If they had ignored the Philippines because no galleon trade (only Spain had the silver for that and what if they hadn’t found it) then maybe Brunei would have fought Sulu at some point as their trade routes intersected, then what states might have formed?
Shogun 2024 makes the old Shogun look so very 1980s even as it was a good series.
The main difference is that Shogun today was co-produced by the Japanese main actor and takes the Japanese view more into consideration as the old series had a Western POV.
Thanks for the valuable insights
Welcome. One more comment before I head off to the office..
Isolation a la Tokugawa was good for Japan in the end because of how they handled it. Joseon, aka Korea, even repelled American attempts to open it for trade as we know from “Mr. Sunshine” on Netflix, but finally, isolation led to stagnation in their case. The Chinese Manchu dynasty also pursued isolation with Macao only as the gateway to the world, but isolation also it seems made them weak and led to what Chinese today call “The Century of Humiliation” with 8 powers including Japan occupying Shanghai etc etc but maybe Chem will chime in on this as China is complex and I know too little of them except some bullet points like Opium War, Taiping rebellion, Boxer rebellion, the grandmother of the Last Emperor, Yuan Shi Kai etc
SHOGUN made me read about pre-colonial Filipino warriors. I’ve gleaned that PH was colonized despite the fact that she has brave, strong and fierce warriors because of its archipelagic nature, the decentralized defense structures and tribalism.
I also theorize that the very reasons why PH was colonized are the same reasons why PH’s progress is at a snail phase for years.
Well, clearly, Panay and Cebu helped Legazpi attack Manila. Kudarat warned the Maranaos not to trust the Spanish, look at what happened to the Tagalogs and Visayans, but did he help them? So yes, you are right about tribalism.
Japan is also islands but its main island, Honshu, is dominant. And of course, Japan had already experienced invasion by the Mongols just like Java had, so they were readier to defend.
According to Richard Heydarian, until now, the Philippines mostly has barangay geopolitics.
https://opinion.inquirer.net/173137/barangay-geopolitics-bobo-ba-tayo
(start quote)..“Bobo ba tayo? (Are we that stupid?)”
The same (rhetorical) question comes to mind whenever I hear about former president Rodrigo Duterte’s antics and the bonkers ideas coming out of his club of pro-Beijing influencers. The former president’s foreign policy outlook is, to put it charitably, nothing short of “barangay geopolitics,” namely, it’s a hopelessly naïve and parochial worldview that lacks any proper understanding of our national interest and the rough texture of contemporary international affairs.
To begin with, apologists of the so-called “gentleman’s agreement” between Duterte and China not only feign innocence but even pretentiously project strategic maturity by emphasizing the supposed wisdom of retaining the status quo over the Ayungin Shoal. But anyone with a functioning gray matter and a single pulse of patriotic heartbeat would know that had we not fortified BRP Sierra Madre, our de facto base over the contested shoal, China would have ended up occupying yet another Philippine-claimed land feature. For heaven’s sake, haven’t we learned anything from losing the Panganiban Reef and Panatag Shoal? Bobo ba tayo?
Moreover, there are few things as preposterous as calling for neutrality in regional affairs, given that (i) we have a treaty alliance with one of the two superpowers and, even more importantly, (ii) we are directly embroiled in territorial disputes with China with a clear risk of direct confrontation. Allies can’t be neutral but, more crucially, we can’t be neutral in our own disputes! Bobo ba tayo? Third, the Duterte camp keeps on harping on the need for diplomacy. I completely agree, because that’s like saying “water is wet!” Of course, we need diplomacy, since no one wants war, including China. But diplomacy without any leverage is tantamount to capitulation. Only fools think that a rising hegemon will concede on territorial and maritime issues based on polite talk and subservience.
Lest we forget, the former president secured, to put it precisely, zero real concessions in the West Philippine Sea and zero big-ticket infrastructure investments from China. Similar to our neighbors, who stood their ground in the South China Sea and made their redlines clear to China before getting large-scale investments, we need to secure Beijing’s grudging respect before proper peace negotiations..(end quote)
I did compare President Duterte to Raja Humabon in being transactional and spur of the moment. Lack of geopolitical threats at the time (see my article The Philippines From the Edge to the Middle of Things, which shows that the Philippines was a week away by sail from the Asian mainland – the Carribean was three weeks away by sail from Spain for comparison) due to less advanced transportation, communication and weaponry meant Humabon could do it. Raja Tupas was helpless when Legazpi came with real soldiers then with reinforcements. Sometimes it is frustrating how little some Filipinos realize the world has totally changed.
bobo ba tayo! and a whole gang of them are in the senate now getting restless because of the coming 2025 election. new batch of bobos in the offing and to be welcomed, lol!
this could well be another off topic bobo:
jinggoy, although not obviously bobo seems to be heading the bobo way vs doctors in cahoot with gift giving pharmas, thus calling attention to doctors prescribing said pharma’s uber pricey medicines na halos hindi abot kaya ng karamihan.
jinggoy probly knows too that philhealth may reimburse medical expenses of those na walang kaya hence gobyerno ay dawit and maybe the target all along. the government has deep pocket after all.
if jinggoy wants to stop doctors from prescribing dearer medicines, he ought to author a law that requires doctors to prescribe generic (cheaper) medicines. though jinggoy may still have to bear in mind that pharmaceutical companies that make generic medicines may also give gifts to doctors thanking them for prescribing their medicines vs similar pharma companies that make similar generic medicines.
apparently, health secretary herbosa downplay jinggoy’s concern, herbosa probly ‘saw’ a metaphorical dog chasing its own tail, lol!
anyhow, if you are prescribed a very expensive medicine, what’s stopping you from going back to your doctor and asking for a cheaper brand of medicine be prescribed to you? or right after consultation, immediately tell doctor to prescribe you a cheaper brand of medicine, and dont let him talk you out of it.
but, if you’re already at the botica and you realised your medicines are very expensive, ask the pharmacist to give you the expensive medicine’s equivalent in generic medicine.
there is already a law on generics. As can be seen in the opioid crisis it is all about incentives. a more engaged and functioning primary healthcare would be able to handle this. We all want enforcement but the key is there would never be enough watchmen. we should really focus on the bottom line.
People spend an ungodly amount in non essential over the counter no approved therapeutic claims.
Doctors are in a position of trust.
Ban advertisement for Supplements
Ban advertisement for medicine with generics
In policy leverage is key because there would.never be enough watchmen.
Problema nga sa atin puro batas na impractical ang enforcement
“We all want enforcement but the key is there would never be enough watchmen. ”
————–
Information dissemination might be the best approach. Have this posted in every medical clinic, hospitals and pharmacies the patient bill of rights.
yeah agree. we need to access the social layer of enforcement. we have to educate people that this is not okay. they target new doctors that haven’t made it yet, seeing classmates from rich backgrounds make them more susceptible to such actions
doctors are in the position of trust but dont always do the right thing, resulting in some of them put on probation and even jailed for wrongdoing.
we can be our own watchmen putting doctors on check. last time I asked a doctor to prescribe me cheaper generic medicine, he looked at me like I was the hampas lupa beggar na patay gutom so devoid of dignity. in return, I looked back at him like he was the worst and the most despicable doctor on the planet so lacking in integrity, and in the end, he acquiesced.
go to the pharmacist and ask for its generic equivalent.
thanks, some pharmacists are unwilling to overrule doctors’ order, so be prepared to put up an argument. they listened in the end though and often give advice. and sometimes maybe just to give us the roundabout and let us wait longer for our script to be filled, pharmacist do phone doctors and informed them of the changes made. medical professionals are not used to their decision being challenged. so be patient and you’ll get your generics eventually.
The top pharmacists have no reluctance to offer generics, in my experience. I think they are ethically bound to provide them.
Yep, an option to consumers. I heard in the US, medical insurance dictates which drugs are covered.
Hopefully, the trade agreement between India and the Philippines on generic medicine will help ease the cost of these drugs.
Thanks for the insights, Irineo. I’ve had X arguments with former blogging icon DJB, him advocating for some odd unachievable neutrality and me trying to figure out how one gets China out of the WPS under neutrality. It’s a crazy concept to me. A mental game detached from reality. Like Leftists protesting US imperialism. Alice eating the wrong cakes I figure.
independent foreign policy does not exist. this is like saying all things being equal which exist in the vacuum of one’s mind.
Haha! Those mind vacuums are everywhere. Sucking sense into some eternal void.
@JP, James Clavell was my idol for years, man, those great wonderful thick tomes forcing me to grasp that the mind can operate in compartments. And giving me a crush on Asian mysteries, not unlike Corporal X’s.
I think if no US it could jolly well be the English. They were the rising power and in the neighbourhood.
Thanks
@Gian,
please release the comment I saw in the email notifications from a reader named Paugie.
in any case thanks Paugie for visiting the blog and your comments are appreciated.
cannot release
to the aforementioned commenter, Paugie,
please feel free to comment again. I posted an earlier version a few hours ago where you first commented, it was over written by the final version posted by the administrator.
oh, man. i wanna read this book so bad now, ireneo! do you know the author, his grand son? great grand son?
My brother first told me about Schück and his Tausug descendants ages ago, so he might have met the book’s author.
Here’s a summary of Shück’s life https://wbethge.lima-city.de/schuckengl.htm partial quote:
“..In 1864 Captain Schück navigates his classical route Singapore – North Borneo with its three-masted sailing boat “Wilhelmine”. But then his ship gets caught in a storm, is sent off of the course and strands on the beach in front of Jolo with broken masts and torn sails. Schück is looking for help with the Sultan of Jolo Jamal ul Alam. He sends the greetings of the German empire government and presents the Sultan as present the newly developed Mauser gun. Its the beginning of a “romantic appearing”(2) friendship of both. They agree to improve the mutual trade. The Sultan is interested in still more Mauser guns, slaves (especially for pearl fishing) and opium. Sultan Jamal Al-Alam does not only help him with the repair of the ship, he also issues him a letter of safe-conduct against pirate attacks. Pirate attacks were then at the agenda and Schück will appreciates this royal charter in the following time.
Now our captain has become thirty years and he is looking for a woman. He finds this woman in Sophie Wilhelmine Hornstein whom he has met as a governess in England. Since he is very preoccupied by his businesses in South East Asia, Sophie travels alone to Singapore where the two get married in 1865. From the marriage altogether four sons and four daughters result within the years 1866 – 1877. Two children were born on board of ship. Temporarily wife Sophie lives with her daughters also in Germany.
In the meantime another Prussian captain contacted the Sultan. He takes along a letter to the Prussian king Wilhelm I. This letter arises surprise in Berlin. In the letter the Sultan reports to his royal “dear brother” of consecutive Spanish attacks on his empire and he requests Prussian support in his independence fight. The letter is not answered, however. Bismarck considers the Prussian empire still “not yet ripe enough” for venturesome overseas protection areas or colonies. Only 22 years later in 1884 the German empire establishes colonies of its own in Namibia and Togo. The Bismarck archipelago in the South Seas becomes a German protective zone in1885.
Captain Schück keeps on his commercial activities in this time. In 1868 his ship is captured by Chinese pirates near the harbor of Hong Kong. His daughter Army tells later:
“The married couple sailed together for two years when the ship was seized by Chinese pirates. The wind was too calm for an escape. The Chinese rowing junks encircled the ship and Schück hided his wife in the top basket hoping that she is in security there. The pirates came to board and asked the handing out of all money and all objects of value of Schück and brought him tied up under board. Captain Schück succeeded in escaping, however. He followed the pirate leader who was on the way to the mast top trying to catch the wife. The pirate was successful in tearing a ring from the ear of Schück´s wife; but then he was pushed by Schück into the sea. Meanwhile the complete crew was also tied up. Schück took his revolver and threatened the leader, who came to board again: “The first shot is for you. The second for me “. But the pregnant wife of Schück pleaded :”Wait, wait, there is still time for shooting”. And she shall be still right. A British warship approaches and the pirates flee. Schück´s ship reached the port of Hong Kong badly damaged” (3).
The damaged ship means a heavy financial blow to Schück and his copartners. But with the help of friends Schück can purchase a new ship and he continues his prospering trade in the South Chinese Sea. Wife Sophie stays in the meantime with most of their children either in Germany or Singapore.
In 1872 Schück visits again the island of Jolo. He brings along the greetings of the German emperor and – much to the delight of Sultan Jamal ul Alam – Mauser guns. The friendship between captain and the Sultan consolidates more. Schück is now operating as amateur diplomat and a kind of German trade consul. Again the Sultan looks for the protection of the German empire and offers a coal station for the imperial fleet. In this matter Schück has two audiences with the German emperor and Chancellor Bismarck. The empire government however is still afraid of intra-European complications. The Sultan are only given some presents (a golden watch, a dagger and a vase), but his political wishes remain unfulfilled.
The Spanish navy bombards Jolo in 1873 and Spanish declarations emphasize again that any foreign trade with the islands – especially such of weapons – is strictly forbidden. In the same year German and British trading ships are seized in the Sulu Sea. After strong German and British protests they are set free with compensations. For Captain Schück the trade with the islands is risky but also profitable. He wants to expand the trade with the islands and with the financial help of his Austrian friend Carl Schomburgh he builds up a trade station with docks and stores in Sandakan Bay, which is part of the area of the Sultan and is now situated in Malaysia.
However, Spain does not slacken off. In 1876 they move with 33 ships and 9000 men and “hundreds of priests and nuns” (x) to besiege Jolo at first. Sultan Jamal ul Alam declares the “Jihad” (sacred war). A famine spreads in the occupied city of Jolo. Captain Schück is the knight in shining amour. He succeeds in smuggling in rice in the town, which he gets from Borneo. The Sultan and population of Jolo will be always grateful to him for this courageous action. The Spanish troops settle in Jolo and parts of the town get into fire. Schück escapes to the south and smuggles on secret, mangrove-covered channels weapons to the front line. The Spaniards are for him on the trace. They capture his ship “Minna” and bring it to Manila. Since no weapons on ship can be found, it is given free soon afterwards.
1877/78 two Sulu protocols are signed by Spain, England and the German empire. They mean a power loss for the Sultan, because now – on a international basis – all sovereignty right over the Sulu region are granted to Spain and Sulu becomes a Spanish patronage area. The parties to the contract leave the Sultan only the title, own flag, religious freedom and some authorizations with respect to the inner administration. The Spanish trade embargo is canceled and the area gets the status of a free trade zone.
In the meantime Schück established a new commercial station with name Parana on the island of Jolo. Here he feels so secure and self-confident, that he registers the local boats under the German empire flag.
Schück is now joined together with the Sultan by a blood brotherhood, which should last according to the tradition of the country more than more than 44 generations. As sign of gratitude for his supports Sultan Jamal ul-Alam transfers to him a large area of land in Lukat Lupas near the city of Jolo. The size is 5000 hectares – for comparison: Cory Aquino`s well known Hacienda Luicita in the province Tarlac has merely a size of approx. 4000 hectares today. Now he is a big landowner and he concentrates his work on plantations. After the cancellation of the commercial blockade the smuggling of goods is no longer so lucrative for him. Moreover, the Sultan does not like to be dependent on food imports. Schück sells his ship, consults German farming experts and gets with his “Teutonic personality” (Serafin D. Quiason) in his second native country an agricultural expert with respect to systematic irrigation, floor enrichment, seed, harvest, storekeeping and packing. He plants tapioca, coffee, cocoa, Abaka and natural coconut palms. He starts his plantation work with 100 “slaves” – later he has 300 “slaves”. Very few is known about the ownership and legal status of these “slaves”. Even his descendant and biographer Schück-Montemayor, who investigated the life of Schück very carefully, could not get further information. But it is known that the Sultans in the region employed slaves especially for pearl diving and in the farming sector. We should also mention that Schück later established a ward for his working slaves and their family members. The medical treatment was free of costs.
A lot of domestic and foreign guests are visiting the plantation with its two-storey house and Schück is highly praised for his plantation. Nonetheless the peaceful picture is on closer examination a little bit cloudy. Schück teaches his women how to operate with pistols. The house has a ladder, which could pulled up. And in the house guns were disposed near hatches to shoot against “bandits” and “renegades” (rebels).
We already mentioned that wife Sophie lives for a longer time also in Europe or in Singapore. And our Captain Schück is surely not a sexual ascetic. The Sultan procures for him in absence of his wife Sophie a new partner. It is the only 15-year Sharifa Yap, a pretty Chinese sturdy Moslem from the local nobility circle. Schück converts to the Islam and marries according the Islamic rite. Sharifa gives birth to a son named Julius and she helps also in managing the plantation. In 1880 return the first wife Sophie returns to Jolo, however. We know nothing about the mutual discussion. The two reconcile themselves again. Sophie stays now on the side of her husband and regards Julius as a son of her. For Sharifa which leaves the house a second marriage is arranged with a rich Chinese.
In 1881 Sultan Jamalul Alam passes away. In his last years he realized the political weakness of his Sultanate. There was no remedy against the supremacy of European technology and enormous capital strength. There was much quarrelling about his successor. Finally the only 15-year old Badarud Din II. gets elected. He is heavily addicted to opium and reigns only three years.
Only two years later, in 1833, Sophie was also suddenly taken by death. She becomes the victim of a widespread cholera epidemic on Jolo. We should mention in this context, that in the same year the cholera-bacterium was discovered by the German mediciner and bacteriologist Koch.
Schück is now looking for a German governess for his children. He finds her in Elisa Boelter. A little bit later the two get married now again according to Christian rite. But the luck is not anymore on the side of Schück. A pest strikes his coconut plantations in 1877. They die. Schück misses the sea and he wants to take up again his work as merchant captain. He becomes particularly active in the trade with pearls. Staying at Singapore he takes a cholera contaminated meal in 1887. Ten hours after the meal he dies like his first wife Sophie at the same epidemic. He got 55 years old and was buried in Singapore.
The many descendants of captain Schück live now – also under the name “Schuck” – scattered in the Philippines, the USA and in Germany. The multilingual sons Eduard and Charles take later functions as official interpreters during the negotiations with the new American colonial masters. Charles is in 1917 victim of an assassination, he gets decapitated with a Kris (Indonesian sword). Son Julius – child of the liaison with Sharifa Yap – becomes a politician and he is in the twenties member of the Philippine House of Representatives..”
Ireneo, Yaps and Lims were a plenty there. so interesting. I know UP press editions tend to never get 2nd printings so I’ll have to finnagle a copy somewheres.
As for main take aways from Shogun i would just say focus on beauty, and since the center for creatives is in Cebu start there and expand out. then Seppuku, Filipinos need to demand Seppuku from their bureaucrats and oligarchs. like those people that left bullets in tourists’ luggage or things stolen from balikbayan boxes. the culprits shouldve been given a choice, commit seppuku or we’ll wipe out your whole blood line.
Beauty and seppuku are indeed connected and Shogun drove that home really well.
Great read, Irineo. Thanks for sharing this nugget.
Irineo, a jolly good read. A little too short, though.
I note you left out Australia and NZ. Worth pointing out the indigenous peoples of these 2 countries never got their countries back after West met them. From there continuing Eastwards, we come to North America where the Indians also lost their lands forever.
@chemrock, thanks.. I am indeed a bit on a word diet these days.
Re NZ, at least that country now is bilingual English/Maori, just like Peru is bilingual Spanish/Quechua, in both cases thanks to enough natives still around.
The thing with such big picture stuff is that one has to always choose what part of the picture one would like to describe because this could easily be a book.
@LCPL_X: Accountability is something Japan is great for until today. Now, if one lets heads roll literally in the Philippines, will they roll heads based on those who deserve it or based on who annoys them the most like Roxas after Yolanda or PNoy after Mamasapano?
YES, I am implying that there might be a fundamental character flaw in the culture, which Chem once described in terms of the Flor Contemplacion case. Sure, Japan has a harsh streak the Filipinos hated in WW2, but Filipinos might make the likes of Yabushige Shogun.
i was just thinking too, Ireneo, that aside from beauty and honor based seppuku. maybe practical seppuku would be beneficial in the Philippines, cuz i notice families there went from low middle class to poverty just with one hospitalization eg. sick kids or old people growing old. most Mango Ave. girls have stories of going to school then suddently becuz parent or sibling was hospitalize etc. etc. they end up in Mango Ave. Japan has a ‘suicide forest’, maybe just utilize the easy access to the sea drowning is peaceful they say. go against Catholic taboo save generations of Filipinos from ending up in dire poverty. make suicide normal. especially for old people there.
with that note, here’s musical break from Japan:
agree with this lance
gian, here’s another game Filipinos can get into. dunno if you’ve heard of it NetRunner. its from the maker of Magic the Gathering his name’s Richard Garfield. rights to this game was in limbo due to corporations squabbling so in true netrunner fashion fans just decided to coop the game and run with it. you can purchase games or (cuz they’re a non profit) print ’em out for free.
https://nullsignal.games/products/system-gateway/#starter
https://nullsignal.games/players/learn-to-play/
https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Mongols-try-to-invade-the-Philippines?ch=10&oid=35701567&share=a6309baa&srid=2Ay8A&target_type=question
https://academic.oup.com/past/article/232/1/87/1752419
Convicts or Conquistadores ? Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth-Century Pacific
https://www.quora.com/Did-the-pre-colonial-Filipinos-ever-interact-with-the-Japanese?ch=10&oid=12032232&share=623fc3f9&srid=2Ay8A&target_type=question
https://www.quora.com/Has-Britain-ever-invaded-Japan?ch=10&oid=102169365&share=b0cb50f1&srid=2Ay8A&target_type=question
Sound Break.. SB19 has brought out their new single Moonlight:
A behind-the-scenes video to complete the picture:
And a very interesting deeper analysis of the video by a young Filipino couple.
I like that analysis video, Ireneo. the music itself its too boybandy for my tastes. but how a fandom coalesces and how they drive products forward is really interesting. its this whole ecosystem that wasn’t there before but thanks to social media etc. ps youtube i don’t consider social media, things tend to take a life of its own now. for example, Netrunner is this card game from the same maker of Magic: the Gathering which is more a cash crop for Wizards of the Coast (owned by Hasbro) the owners of said IP. Richard Garfield its game designer was into D&D but because he grew up mostly abroad due to his dad’s work he couldn’t play D&D language barrier etc. so he come s up with Magic: the Gathering.
he wasn’t happy with it so he came up with Netrunner like 10 years after in mid 1990s. Cyberpunkish about hackers (runners) vs. big corporations in the future. i’m not into computers but i think this concept would’ve been ahead of its time then, though Tron etc. was popular, but i’m thinking thats why it only lasted for 4 yrs then it was cancelled. but another company subcontracted it borrowed the license to it and republished it in 2012. it was kinda successful with a new following, but after 6 years it was cancelled. maybe due to Richard Garfield coming up with another card game called Keyforge which would be more of milking cow than Magic potentially because you ‘re buying decks as is instead of cards. so maybe because Netrunner as a cash cow couldn’t compare to Magic and Keyforge (still nascent). they stopped production of Netrunner. i dunno, thinking as a corporation here.
in 2018 the fandom just decided to continue it.
which is ironic because that’s kinda what the game is all about subverting corporations and their agendas. so its like the game here programmed the players to ensure its own survival. its almost poetry. but to connect it to what you’re looking at re Philippine music industry which I’m very interested in now cuz of you, is there similar fandom activity going on in the Philippines. for example, Null Signal Games which is the non profit keeping Netrunner alive holds competitions and conventions. they’ve already been threatened with a lawsuit but IP owners wisely backed off. the license owners of this IP would be best to just stand back and let this play out, anyways if it gets really popular as the owners of the IP they can always just take over. the comic industry i’m keeping an eye on there, because if you can print books graphic novels you can print games especially TTRPG. in any case music and the arts as medium for change is already widely known life immitates art vice versa, but where do games fall in all this. its art too no? these guys are kinda monty Pythonesque but their analyses are pretty good actually though they just focus on the games itself not really wider influence of said games though its hinted…
heres the nuts and bolts of the game play,
one of the things I am curious about is how the comics industry of the Philippines died.
When I was growing up comics was a big deal in the province. It plus radio was also the way pinoy values and stories were transmitted. It was where I learned of the tikbalang etc.
Comics in the 80 and 90s in the Philippines was part of the pipeline of Philippine Movies.
Newspaper -> Comics -> Radio Play -> Movies
Comics -> Movies
Newspaper stuff was mostly because of the sensationalism that allowed people to become household names.
Comics because the easiest way to write compelling stuff is to crib from the classics. It is like how Ran is the best adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
a practically useless list: Category:Philippine comics adapted into films – Wikipedia
To contrast this to Japan.
Manga -> Anime -> Live Action
The Philippines lost the comic book artist as a mass medium while Manga still survives probably buoyed by the 3rd largest economy in the world.
Long story short, the Philippines is not a written culture it is not even a culture that introspects a lot. We don’t have enough intellectuals that study our culture and try to explain it to itself. Maybe the we will be able to record our culture as long as youtube remains.
I think like most things it boils down to the idea folks vs. the folks that actually create it. don king vs. mike Tyson drama, gian. in the Philippines its the idea folks that win cuz lots of upper class there have ideas, cuz ideas are like assholes everybody has one. so like in Cebu the moneyed folks commission arts projects maybe comics i dunno enough of this industry there, theres enough hungry starving artists there that getting something created is pennies on the dollar. same in construction there, over here plumbing carpentery heavy machine operators are actual trades but there its like slavery. they’re skills not even valued. so get rid of the upper class is the only solution, this i agreed with Micha to the moon and back. absent of that solution is to get money from Filipinos who’ll not exploit creative types there and that’ll be Fil-Ams (OFWs people who’ve made it abroad). that’s why i’m closely looking into Kwento Comics mom daughter team from here. utilizing talent there. but they’re not putting out enough with the staff they have on hand. its like gas stations there with 30 attendants just standing around. but i’m hopeful, gian. as for intellectuals studying your culture, i think Ireneo’s output of this is more than enough to last centuries. just start creating now, too much instrospection is like critical theory here, gian, a waste of time, just start making stuff (not plastics and more trash) but useful stuff that last and or are meaningful. my only advice is sure Trese and Haliya type genres are good but they should expand to Sci Fi speculative fiction hell even China vs. Philippine scenarios meaning int’l affairs geopolitics I would add if you really want cultural introspection theres a whole genre about sexual fiction: https://penthouse.ink If i were creative or won the lottery here i would totally make comics about Mango Ave. maybe mix it with fantasy and sci-fi. like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. and make that introspective like why are Filipinas having to prostitute themselves literally and figuratively what happened to the men. did you know there was a brain drain of comic artists in the 70s, i don’t know if this connects to your dying industry scenario. but the silver lining is comic books is a lot easier to do now a days with digital art tools making it easier to send files to and fro. study that Null Signal Games model, its kinda like your blockchain organization at play.
thinking I can probably start something here in QC for some of the things we are discussing. Let’s see.
Another point I am thinking about is that with the less common multi generation and multi family household compounds due to expensive real estate, OFW families, etc the normal apprenticeship of children observing their elders and learning how to be a Filipino becomes less pronounced.
We are a culture of experience and verbal communication. This is why even well-educated people here do not default to reading the fucking manual.
For this young pinoy we can surmise that what they are learning is parts from other cultures that do not apply to them or a host of other problems common when you plant an invasive species. These are then invasive beliefs.
Some invasive beliefs are superior and useful. I guess we just need to test things out.
Seems like you’re making the Tokugawa argument, gian. but Philippines isn’t Japan nor its culture ever homogeneous. so i would argue that Filipino cultures superiority is precisely in the testing things out, it is constantly in this phase. Now i don’t know why the Philippine comic industry died down in the 80s-90s or whether that’s just a province thing. or maybe its died down since the 70s cuz American comic companies caused a brain drain and it just took a couple of decades to catch up to the province. or maybe it was just the advent of tv ‘s where before Filipinos gathered in homes with tv’s then eventually each homes had tv’s. like what happened here in the 60s and 70s. Marvel and DC died down in the 80s then went up again around the time of Tim burton’s BATMAN. which culminated in the formation of Image comics and that generated another cycle of content. maybe you’re onto something re verbal vs. written. but the fact that texting was perfected in the Philippines i think Filipinos do have a written itch, gian. Filipino comics by the way came from American comics. before that they were dealing with tattoos and with the coming of the Spanish it was magical designs. I don’t think Aetas/negritos did tattoos. so those would be the closest to your oral tradition, but Austronesian filipinos have always been written types, gian. so maybe the difference is in the format, like i can see why manuals won’t be read they need to be more like IKEA. but this idea of oral reminded me of Ireneo’s friends playing Dungeons and Dragons at UP. the books would be in English (i don’t think they’d have resources to translate) the question now is how did Ireneo’s friends interact with the RPG were they speaking English or in Tagalog or Taglish when playing as wizards dwarves etc? as for grandparents being repositories of wisdom well we stuck ’em in retirement homes here and those folks are the biggest Trump supporters so I don’t necessarily agree that culture requires old people really those bums usually don’t know what they’re doing also just as lost.
My D&D playing high school classmates were a group very fluent in English and in those days aka early 1980s, that kind of crowd (relatively affluent kids) still spoke mainly English, nowadays they / their kids would speak more Tagalog.
It is a bit like the old crowd that still spoke Spanish in the 1930s had basically stopped by the 1950s, and the old folks still might have used phrases in the 1980s.
Nowadays, someone with Spanish heritage might still call her grandmother mamita just like ABS-CBN teleserye star Janine Gutierrez calls her grandma, Pilita Corrales. But she probably doesn’t speak Spanish anymore and will usually speak some form of Filipino like most today..
have met people my age who still speak Spanish at home. they have the features of obvious Spanish blood
I wonder how common they still are, especially if one looks at the surnames of the richest Filipinos today compared to back in the 1960s. And are they still a real community / subculture? True, the Ayalas kept marrying Latin Americans or their own cousins.
I also doubt that the kind of rich kids that “speak Tagalog only to the maids” (like a beauty contestant said in the 1960s) are still that common. La Salle choir kids who came to Germany in the late 1980s mainly spoke Tagalog to each other, I observed. Of course, the “habitus” of social classes remains, Justin of SB19 clearly speaks Tagalog differently from Josh of SB19 and Gigi de Lana. That plenty of Visayans learn more English than Tagalog is also real of course. But am I likely to meet someone who speaks neither English nor Tagalog as happened to me in Cebu back in 1975, the only time I ever was there? The thing for me is how far is the Philippines already one society that somehow can communicate across islands and classes?
Common problem of school children in Metro Manila is that they have low scores in Filipino.
A lot of unsorted questions come to my mind
1) is it because they only speak English at home if middle class or upwards?
2) is the Filipino taught in school still too different from real street lingo for middle class downwards? It doesn’t have to be vulgar, but it should be real. One can learn the poetic Tagalog of OPM for sure, and read Balagtas, which is hard, but who needs a language not really used?
3) whom can they understand in reality? Vice Ganda I am quite sure. How about TV Patrol? Abante maybe not.
Re 2) I nearly failed in Filipino in Grade 5, but that teacher was the daughter of Lope K Santos. Her expectations and the Filipino of her father’s teaching was a very artificial language.
Using a language too far from reality can lead to the street language eventually diverging as much from school language as the people’s Latin dialects diverged from church Latin around 1000 AD so most people no longer understood the mass even in Latin Europe.
Are INC members generally better in Filipino since AFAIK very classic Tagalog is used there?
A teacher I was in contact with on Twitter mentioned mother tongue based learning of K12 as having failed in Metro Manila.
I also wonder how many other subjects are in Filipino. My brother and sister went to a German-French bilingual school and had two subjects in French always, so it was practiced. Remembering my brother mentioning the capital cities of Africa in French, way back..
01. YouTube
02. TBH labels like panghalip etc confusing kids, also yes teachers teach more formal Filipino
03. YouTubers
re INC services in Ilocano Cebuano etc so still regional in nature with respect to language
Most private schools have an English only except in Filipino subject so….
Re 2) don’t know where that started but some of us in UP Elementary possibly Grade 6 when hormones are starting had associated parts of the human body male and female with the grammatical terms, so at times we laughed in class and that puzzled the teachers..
..turns out some Filipinos in Germany I met later even had naughty rhymes involving otherwise innocent grammar terms so there was viral nonsense even before social media. Goes to show how the educational system failed to make people take Filipino seriously even before.
Yes, my son has been taught in English since preschool, and he knows more Visayan from his mother than “Pilipino” from school. He is prowling the globe for universities. Most top schools teach in English or identify courses that English speaking foreign students can take. Others have local language instruction to help students bridge in.
I saw this myself, Ireneo & gian! it was Ayala mall cebu mid 2000s I was there with a Mango Ave girl who would be in the same ball park as Gigi (natural) in looks from Zamboanga who spoke chavacano cuz i practiced my hs Spanish with her. it was like a grand opening of a boutique store and everyone attending looked white. They all spoke bisaya but i told my Gigi to speak some Spanish with them and she pinched me. but that wasn’t the first time i’ve seen a white Filipino (Spanish blood) only time i saw them in that amount. as to how common Spanish speakers are still around, it would be mind blowing if a bunch of Filipinos do take up the Spanish citizenship over and not just the rich ones but lower class have lots of kids who speak Spanish then return like Fil Am kids return there speaking English with new money. i met a couple of Cebuanos who spoke Gaelic, Ireneo, cuz their parents they bring you in as a family unit in Ireland all were nurses. Filipinos speaking Gaelic, and Irish accented English was wild. I wonder if the Filipino gov’t and Spanish gov’t coordinate who and how many goes to get that citizenship Spain should definitely reach into the bottom rung of society maybe scholarship etc. its only fair 300 years of oppression and such. gian, how many of your generation are taking up the 2yr Spanish citizenship offer?
I personally know 3 families that have dual citizenship. They made use of the some spanish law and were able to find their ancestors from Spain.
Thanks. Robin Padilla did mention that he could make use of that law but doesn’t want to. Lots of Bikolanos actually have Spanish ancestors. Jaime Fabregas is another known visible example. I think he also speaks Spanish.
@LCPL_X, thanks for that interesting view into the still existing mestizo subculture of Cebu.
Filipino fandoms are like extended families or barangays in many ways.
If one looks at how they coalesce and strategize, I feel there is an evolution.
From the early Pacquiao fans and the “Mafia Wars” Filipino players on Facebook around 15 years ago who mainly leveraged strength in numbers to the ones that followed YouTube reactors since around 2017 or so to push their idols to present highly strategic A’tin.
The present A’tin (or SB19 fans) rarely are in attack mode all the time, in fact they are strategic in terms of politics is addition, not committing the mistake of insulting other fandoms like some other older Filipino online fandoms have done, alienating potential allies.
Some fan groups abroad even buy ad space in places similar to Times Square, organize flash mobs, create viral Tiktok videos etc or coordinate streaming from what I have observed so far.
The interrupted nation that became the national village catching up on strategy in a way?
Interesting perspective. If Filipinos are diverging from us vs. them mentality in fandoms what does it mean for politics 2028? becuz with ICC over the Dutertes theres a good chance it’ll solidify support especially if ICC cannot pull the trigger. like Trump over here. all Biden has right now is abortion, but i gotta feeling this Gaza stuff will keep on going thru Nov. with no courts actually imprisoning Trump. so hopefully ICC swoops into Philippines renditions the Dutertes and keep them in Europe til 2028. cuz it can quickly be a 3rd world vs. W. Europe narrative especially since ICC has never prosecuted Western leaders who for sure have more body count. China will totally fund counter narrative. filipinos will feel victimized fandoms will unite.
Don’t know about what that means for politics, it is to early to say. These are more like subliminal developments that might take time to surface into more.
Though PPop is exactly where the Philippines uses its being between East and West. One of the DJs SB19 is collaborating with on Moonlight is Chinese, and the other is Asian-American BTW. Two huge markets are accessed.
The “nation’s girl group” BINI recently performing in China might be a milestone as well, just as important as the Gigi de Lana tour of USA (finished), Canada (ongoing) and Australia (to come). TBH, I don’t see most Filipinos become anti-Western anytime soon.
Just more aware of the rest of Asia as they migrate there too and find out how their neighbors are like whether it is Thais, Japanese, grumpy Singaporeans like chemrock 😉 or pushy Hongkongers or sophisticated Taiwanese.
With a lot of exchange of informative going via vlog, just like the West learned about the East via the likes of Marco Polo and Pigafetta and tons of writers. Collective knowledge rules. Could be the Philippines is on a good way or it is another false start or I am seeing stuff wrongly..
I don’t think chemp’s grumpy he’s actually very gentlemanly in arguments. but he’s just got a bad reading of America imho based on social media than anything i think. theres a recent Economist article behind a pay wall though that says Philippines is getting richer and not necessarily cuz of the US. so automically i thought join the SCO. lol. but seriously maybe the Economist article is about the Philippines being more aware of the rest of Asia, Ireneo. I agree also the Philippines greatest strength is being East and West, I do hope more Filipinos go to Spain. while at the same time join the SCO. leverage as many levers and don’t go all in with America. that should be the wider strategy here.
I have no idea where things are actually going, just trying to find indicators.
Here is BTW an American Youtube reactor couple welcoming Gigi de Lana in Toronto after traveling all the way from Tennessee..
https://yopablo.itch.io/la-desbanda-english
definitely right up my alley of interest, Ireneo. how genes and memes spread. for example when Marvel Studios bought 20th Century Fox thus the X-men franchise they reached into Marvel Comics to revive the X-men since its popularity in the early 90s then the X-men movies that didn’t all do too well, the X-MEN have been in a rut. so in comes Jonathan Hickman who pitches a wider more expansive purpose for this franchise. 1). that they live forever via scientific reincarnation 2). the stories leave earth and into the cosmos— into pure speculative science fiction category. so gone are the Holocaust and humanity vs. mutants ho-hum storylines that plagued this franchise. it may have been popular in the 70s and then as nostalgia in the 90s but people wanna move on from all that. so if you’re interested in genes and memes looks like the X-men are the furthest along in this exploration. kinda like gian’s friends who still speak Spanish at home, your Bicol chavacano and my Mango Ave. girl’s Zamboanga of the same. then Joe Jr.’s future Barcelona foray its like full circle of genes and memes, Spain-Philippines-America.
What I found interesting is that a Pinoy joke about the ending ballad of the Voltes V anime series we told each other in the early 1980s was to be found in a Pugad Baboy comic decades later, now that is a continuing comic..
The joke is that it sounded like “tumae sa kubeta” to many of us. It was all over schools etc. then enough for Pol Medina to remember it.. not that we didn’t love Voltes V.
The generation of our parents often hated it, though, and had Marcos Sr. ban it. My father said damn Voltes V kills the monsters like a samurai with a sword. Turns out, my mother told me much later, that Filipinos in the provinces were forced to watch beheadings on Sunday after church.. men with baskets on their heads, the Makapili snitches, would point at people and they would be beheaded by an officer of the Japanese Imperial army – a generation formed by such experiences couldn’t take their kids starting to love anime, at least not that easily..
i’ve always wondered what the generation of comfort women and secret police victims would thing about anime and manga. but in a way the manga anime export was in a sense Japans way of contrition eg. most of it are about monsters kaijus and man’s attempt to defeat. I met a dude whose mom was one of these comfort women in Cebu serviced a lot of Japanese during the war cuz she was like around 13 yrs old. after the war their mamasan just gathered her flock and went to Olongapo to set up shop there same work but now with more money to earn, maybe mamasan vision was like Gin’s. it wasn’t ideal as we saw in the first scenes of An Officer and a Gentleman of course but better than Japanese treatment. ps Mango Ave. girls loved their Japanese client but hated their Korean ones. Chinese weren’t plentiful then.
Hmm, re Koreans, there is trouble brewing in Angeles with some, and Raffy Tulfo is on the scene..
ay, lasing pala yong koreyano, kaya poco loko. and no one had the sense to put him under citizens’s arrest and detain him for good measure. marami yata ang mga pinoy vs koreyano, nanuod lang at hindi lang naman binayagan ang loco. kung sa amin yan, koreyano would have found himself with a knife in the gullet, that’s how friendly we are here in our little neck of the woods, lol! and he would have found himself naked, his manhood tattoed, his possessions gone, cellphone included. if he is lucky, he’d find himself made new tiktok sensation, his plight recorded.
anyhow, not all koreyanos ay loco, though they loved their drinks and can stand up to the best drinkers in europe, namely the fins from finland.
incidentally, ryan bang is one koreyano who made it big, sa palagay ko. apparently, he came from korea with nothing but got in cahoots with vice ganda and become vice ganda’s t.v. sidekick for a while. now, ryan bang owns a chain of korean restos and wants filipinos to experience fine korean dining. if you call bibimbap fine korean dining!
The Korean in Angeles was the owner or manager of a bar and came with Filipino bodyguards, so he was definitely trouble, though not smart. A bar owner with true business sense will be low key, avoid any scandals.
Re Koreans in the Philippines, Jessica Lee is my clear favorite. Many Koreans who grow up in the Philippines even speak Filipino. Here is Jessica interviewing Bini.
thanks. music is tough business to get into, but jessica lee’s girly interview make it sound fun and easy going. bini presumably suffer for their art, but success and crowd adulation make it all worth their while.
Jessica Lee has a certain style of interviewing while Karen Davila has another:
Of course, showbiz is not easy, and it took a while for BINI to get recognized. But now the momentum of PPop is growing, and they’re just after SB19 now.
methink, the members of sb19 are more than just pretty faces, they are also hard core academics and certainly no pushovers. they fought hard to own their brand, manage their own contract and got a bigger slice of the pay pie. their business acumen has gotten finely tuned, and it shows! their music out there with the best. their money is where their mouths are.
I’m more interested in what bini is not saying, namely their allegedly slimmer bank accounts. maybe their management takes most of the cake, them having high overheads.
Well, there is this series of short videos by Magandang Buhay which tries to emphasize what each Bini member already has achieved – “Colet has already franchised a food business” below, “Gwen has already bought land” etc. – but that is, of course, by the network they work for.
SB19 is a totally different story, as different as the story of startup founders with all the hardships and successes as opposed to talented corporate employees of consulting firms. BINI are talented, but they aren’t types like SB19 whose story and struggles are unique.
The dance practice video shown above is in 1Z Entertainment’s own studio, the agency SB19 founded by themselves. Finally, those who dare more can win more but also lose everything while those who aren’t cut out for it or are more segurista will earn salaries.
Maybe the presence of more players in the Philippine music industry is healthy as it decreases the leverage of the big established players like Star Magic and Viva, formerly Vicor.
Still, it remains a tough business, but every business is tough, and no job is truly easy.
thanks, at the moment, I’m watching eurovision song contest. my friends in australia are not happy, their indigent entry got eliminated early on. nag-virtue signaling yata. kaso, europe has concentration of colonialists, the brits, the french, spanniards, portuguese, belgians, etc. it’s super doubtful if they want to be reminded of the sins of their father. and they’re all singing to win.
I think that you have two chances of winning at Eurovision:
1) English-language generic pop music which the Scandinavians (and by default also the Australians) are good at.
2) popular music with a local flavor, ideally similar to what your neighbors in Europe have, a lot of Balkan or Baltic music went by that formula
Germany rarely wins. The last time was with a Baltic-German young woman who looked like a modern Snow-White and sang almost with an Amy Winehouse accent, so a bit of 1) and 2)..
Cmon Europe barely accepts KPop. True, there isn’t much wokeness over here either. It has advantages and disadvantages as excessive woke gets annoying. I would like to use the pronoun it and identify as a wild animal. Is that possible?
anything is possible! switzerland won the 2024 eurovision song contest! germany’s entry looked like the younger version of meatloaf the singer. there were some drama. the dutch entry, a rapper, was barred from rehearsal, may nangyari daw kasi sa back room. you know what rappers are like, and titigas ulo!
at voting time, the audience turn their backs at the israeli judge. nagvirtue signaling yata. kaso, israel was fave of the general european home voters and was voted one of the top five.
apparently, eurovision song contest states that songs must not be over 3minutes in song time and must be sung live. no lipsync. contestants must not be over 40yrs old and must be able to speak english or french. song must be original composition and no older than two years. the elimination round is quite tougher.
my pen friends in malmo said that sweden won eurovision song contest seven times, and lost 55 times!
@irineo was this based on history?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0104570/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl
In the seventeenth century, Japan is divided between two forces. The Eastern Army, lead by the Warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the Western Army, which fights for Toyotomi’s clan. Despite wining a recent battle, things look grim for the Eastern Army. Toyotomi’s Army has a supply of modern firearms, a weapon which might turn the tides of war. Tokugawa Ieyasu sends his trusted samurai Mayeda, and his son Yourimune, to Spain. There, they are to purchase five thousand muskets. But it’s a dangerous journey, and there are many who plot against them, and when they finally arrive in Spain, nothing goes the way they expected.
Definitely not. There were no Japanese that reached Spain at that time.
AND the Japanese very quickly manufactured their own muskets (“teppo”) based on Portuguese models. They were already good at that back then.
So no need for anyone to get muskets from Spain of all places, and as the scene with Buntaro showed scarily, an excellent archer could hit targets also.
In fact, with reloading and all muskets were less efficient than even crossbows and inferior to European archery even as they meant more men with less skill could be deployed in the end.
Finally, Tokugawa only directly confronted the others at Sekigahara. He chose his battles.
Actually there were Japanese in Europe including Spain in that era, it turns out.
But sent by Christian daimyo (warlords) and not by Tokugawa by any stretch..
After all, in the end, the Tokugawa Shogunate made Lorenzo Ruiz a martyr..
‐————-
Another important fact I nearly forgot – it took almost two years to travel one-way then.
Even in Rizal’s time, it still took a month or two, with Suez canal and steamships.
The two first Japanese “Embassies” to Europe were abroad 8 and 7 years, respectively.
————–
Some say there are two reasons why Spanish friars often had Filipina mistresses.
One was that Rome and Spain could barely reach them, half a year, even from Mexico.
The other was that they knew they might never come home alive, so why not live well.
The third reason mentioned in many histories is that mistresses of Spanish priests actually had high status in colonial Philippine society, basically the time-honored principle of being kumakapit sa malakas, having pull with the powerful.
Ninotchka Rosca’s novel State of War has Mayang, the known mistress of a Spanish priest with several kids, wielding her power in the village until the point that the priest dies and people chase her out.
That he dies falling from the church tower while being a peeping Tom checking out naked native women along the river where he ravished Maya, the first Filipina he had a child with who left the village, because he sees his son by Mayang jerking off behind a coconut tree also peeping at women in the river and loses balance, is not only a supremely comedic moment of Filipino fiction, it is also a direct reference to a scene in the Noli where Padre Salvi peeks at Maria Clara and her friends bathing in the river and comes out of the bush sweaty and flushed.
That those who were malakas and no longer are are hated the most is also something that has always been the way of the Philippines as well.. Well Mayang does find her way in Manila but that is another story altogether and TBH I would have to reread it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_Tsunenaga?wprov=sfla1
The movie about Shogun Mayeda has fake Spanish priests highlighted I believe this was prevalent in PH. Padre Salvi was fake? Or was there a fake priest in Noli or Fili?
VERY unlikely as a priest has to learn Latin and many learned texts. Especially in the 1600s, the education a priest received was unparalleled and not easy to fake. Padre Salvi wasn’t fake for sure, even as Rizal considered their form of education antiquated.
The only ones whose form of education Rizal admired were the Jesuits. He was a known BFF of Padre Faura himself, the meteorologist. He also stayed with a Lutheran pastor when he lived near Heidelberg, one wonders what influences he got from Pastor Ullmer. Or for that matter from Rudolf Virchow, the famous scientist from Berlin he got to know. Virchow was a major proponent of the Prussian Kulturkampf, literally culture war, a very anti-Catholic movement.
Many many thanks
Many thanks for that Irineo
Am trying to connect dots on these:Heidelberg 1386 (oldest university in Germany)John Alden (1598 – 1687) – Mayflower passengerTokugawa Ieyasu (1543 – 1616)James VI and I (1566 – 1625)King James Bible 1611Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)Rudolf Virchow (1821 – 1902)Pastor Karl Ullmer (with Rizal in 1886, three months)Jose Rizal (1861 – 1896)
I learned of this just now (minutes ago):https://the-past.com/news/rare-suits-of-japanese-samurai-armour-go-on-display-together-for-the-first-time/
“The oldest of the suits to go on display, which arrived in England in 1613, was also the first diplomatic gift from Japan to Britain. It was sent to King James I by Sho¯gun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was ruler of Japan at the time, as part of an invitation to the British to expand their trading networks in the country.”
The crossing was by letter. And there is no mention in an extensive Wiki biograph of any passage by Ieyasu on the Mayflower.
He didn’t trust Europeans much. But there is a tie-in between him and Christianity, and the Philippines.
“However, in 1614, Ieyasu was sufficiently concerned about Spanish territorial ambitions that he signed a Christian Expulsion Edict. The edict banned the practice of Christianity and led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. Although some smaller Dutch trading operations remained in Nagasaki, this edict dramatically curtailed foreign trade and marked the end of open Christian witness in Japan until the 1870s.[36] The immediate cause of the prohibition was the Okamoto Daihachi incident, a case of fraud involving Ieyasu’s Catholic vavasour, but the shogunate was also concerned about a possible invasion by the Iberian colonial powers, which had previously occurred in the New World and the Philippines.”
Interesting project. But huge. Lotsa luck.
This dropped a few days ago: the history of the Majapahit empire.
KB, this is something you waited for.. BINI Maloi admits that her main inspiration is the high bills she has to pay..
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/TjbJgn4eG9bJxDP7/
thanks, few years ago, I once watched a docu of the kpop boyband. the boys kahit koreano sila complained that their korean handlers take a lot from them, and leave them with the barest essentials. it’s like no work, no pay. if bini’s handlers are also koreans, the girls are probly treated the same.
KB, I thought all Pinoys knew that BINI is under Star Magic, which is part of ABS-CBN, and of course, in that context, Gwen and Maloi making that joke to Karen Davila herself is almost like asking the Lopez family for a raise.. but then again, they invested in them for two years of training, they lived in the BINI house during training and after as well due to the pandemic, all paid for by ABS-CBN, and before BINI went viral due to two Filipinas and one half-Filipina in UNIS a KPop group covering Pantropiko, they probably hardly earned from them or possibly just broke even, but with BINI going through the roof and even to China they might deserve more.. this bulletin below has some recent news about the PPop business, including BINI..
Well, SB19 were under Korean management and bought their clothes in Divisoria, which is true. Meanwhile, the pre-debut song of BINI, The Coconut Nut, is from Maestro Ryan Cayabyab. Clearly, a choir is allowed to perform it for free, but for commercial stuff, I am sure even a UP Professor like Cayabyab will ask for his royalties. For their debut Born to Win, BINI had clothes by a Filipino fashion designer. Look at the dance practices of BINI, and you will see a well equipped studio. Contrast the Go Up practice of SB19 with the modern studio 1Z has now, somewhere near Kamuning is the speculation. Well, SB19 took the business risk and won. They do have to pay a percentage of their earnings to SBTown, their original Korean management, for their name, but they will say hey they invested in them. Welcome to capitalism.
In fact, if you go through the names of the groups mentioned just in the news item above, come in the group Versus that disbanded I never heard of. PLUUS and YGIG, OK, heard of them, that is all. Alamat, great that BBC interviewed them recently, they are good, but they don’t have their own composer like Pablo, so they rely on Thyro whom is the topnotch composer of their company which is none other than Viva records. Hey, Vicor records once upon a time, Boss Vic, still in charge of the company even in old age, the firm that has Regine Velasquez, Sarah G, Katrina Velarde and now Jona signed up. Star Magic, the other big label used to have Morissette under contract. She went independent but struggled with her own marketing INSPITE of a voice at her level. Meanwhile, Star Magic signed up Gigi De Lana when her band went viral during the pandemic. Possibly, Gigi got a better deal as she built a house quickly, or maybe she just was street-smarter than Morissette? Or has the Internet given artists more leverage than before, so the labels have to be fairer? Now this is where I really don’t know.
I believe most artist who have sizeable youtube followings negotiate that their Youtube earnings remain theirs.
I belive Ivana Alawi is like that. Thus Gigi probably had a deal wherein she keeps youtube earnings which is sizeable given that the music she sings has a wide appeal due to being covers.
I heard that there is one per cent withholding tax payable by online sellers. there is also talk of influencers being taxed since they sometimes make an insane amount of money on their online activities like spruiking products, various services, etc.
if clause was conditional, I was speculating and did not point the finger at any proper noun in particular.
Back to politics, East and West..
Germany is sending two warships to the Indo-Pacific region
Weird probably pressured by the US?
This isn’t the first time that Germany is sending warships out.
Haven’t kept exact track, but there was the Red Sea presence recently.
There was also one warship that a year or two ago went to the Indo-Pacific.
Pressured or not, the official statement is always helping the alliance or similar.
Chancellor Scholz said in this report it was helping uphold the rule of international law.
There also was a German ship that maybe 5 (?) years ago took part in military exercises at sea as part of an American aircraft carrier group, so there is the practical capability to take part in a potential war, with the allies clearly determined.
What happens behind closed doors is Tom Clancy type speculation. Scholz himself isn’t easy to read, and what influence (ex-Chancellor) Schröder still has on him, don’t know.
What I do know is that the German navy has been upgrading for a decade or more.
I started reading up when I saw a New Gen German warship in its Hamburg docks more than a decade ago, not systematic reading just occasional curiosity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg-class_frigate
“Major design goals are reduced radar, infrared and acoustic signatures (stealth technology), something that was introduced to the German Navy with the Brandenburg-class frigates and was further developed with the Sachsen-class frigates and Braunschweig-class corvettes.
Other important requirements are long maintenance periods: It should be possible to deploy Baden-Württemberg-class frigates for up to two years away from homeports with an average sea operation time of more than 5,000 hours per year (nearly 60%) which includes operation under tropical conditions. For this reason, a combined diesel-electric and gas arrangement has been chosen for the machinery. This allows the substitution of large and powerful diesel engines for propulsion and sets of smaller diesel generators for electric power generation with a pool of med-sized diesel generators, reducing the number of different engines.”
Weapons tests for the New Gen frigates (which aren’t being sent out to far places yet) took place seven years ago, the video below probably captures the way the German Navy is these days, more quiet technical people than Das Boot (the famous movie about a wartime U-Boot):
POSSIBLY (again I am not Tom Clancy what do I know) there are long-term strategic scenarios including Red Sea piracy and who knows the greatest threat the West and its allies might see, as in China blocking 60% of global trade and the oil supplies of Japan and Sokor. There might be both political and military groups over here – like in the Philippines BTW but less openly – that go 1) The USA is our long-term ally and closest to us in values 2) We shouldn’t be too close anymore to the USA and 3) we should stick to commitments but prioritize EU defense – and if I had a bookie he might speculate that Group 1 are 56%, 2 are 15% and 3 are 29%, who knows?
Makes sense. In every business deal, the leverage (and smarts but these have limitations if you have little leverage) that you have counts and an own YT following means you bring something to the table yourself.
Gigi Vibes celebrated 2 million followers late last year or early this year, and Gigi built her following BEFORE she joined Star Music, and after years of her career not going forward. Streaming during the pandemic was her big break.
By comparison, SB19 has 3.54 million followers, BINI has a mere 3/4 of a million while Morissette (who signed up with Star Music after she was on The Voice Philippines and was just 18 then, who knows how her deal was, often deals very young performers sign up for aren’t good, that is a worldwide known thing) has just barely half a million followers and her Wish Bus performances are streamed most, dunno if Wish Bus even gives a share of royalties from its YT revenue, maybe even that is negotiable depending on your leverage who knows.
Ivana Alawi is to be highly recommended to the horniest American on this blog, especially as she is I think half-Lebanese? LCPL_X might forget that Maui Taylor ever existed.
Re Filipino music industry I do believe the new small players put pressure on the big ones..
BINI might never have been a big thing without SB19 preparing the public for Filipino music. Though one could say every trailblazer played a role – Pilita Corrales in Vegas, Freddy Aguilar with Anak going international in the 1970s, Eraserheads going international in the 1990s..
“LCPL_X might forget that Maui Taylor ever existed.” becuz of Mango Ave girls at one point i learned all the popular Filipina actresses they emulated but i forget now i use to remember the names of the female hosts of wowowee and some dancers lol. I need an iPad.