The Japanese learning the Filipino language

Columnist's note: Since it is Philippine Independence Day on June 12, I am taking a break from my series of columns on migration linguistics and invited a scholar I respect to write on the Filipino language: Kenichiro Kurusu. He is not Filipino but, undoubtedly, a Filipino at heart, sometimes more Filipino than I am. He also happens to be one of my most admired students, one I am truly proud of. He worked on the phonology of Tagalog for his master's thesis at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, which I co-supervised, and he holds lectureships in Japanese and Philippine universities as he completes his PhD in Filipino. I have featured senior academics in my column before, and I am now delighted to feature this early-career scholar as my third guest columnist because he is certainly one of the rising stars in Philippine linguistics.

I am a Japanese linguist who studies and speaks the Filipino language. I have been learning Filipino for almost 10 years now, and one of the most frequently asked questions I am asked is, "Why do you study Filipino?" That is probably because many Filipinos do not expect foreigners to learn Filipino. Although I had multiple reasons to learn Filipino, the simplest answer to this question would be: "Because it is offered as a major in Japanese universities." Then, why do Japanese universities offer Filipino language courses? What are the reasons the Japanese learn Filipino? Let us trace the history of Filipino language education in Japan.