Written report - Philippine Lit

English (Central Mindanao University)

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 DEPARTMENT OF
LIBERAL ARTS AND
BEHAVIRAL SCIENCES
Visca, Baybay City, Leyte,
PHILIPPINES
Telephone:: (053) 565 0600
loc. 1028
Email: dlabs@vsu.edu.ph
Website: www.vsu.edu.ph

SURVEY OF PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

LIFE AND WORKS OF SINAI C. HAMADA

(A WRITTEN REPORT)

Prepared by:

Erica B. Barro
BSED-2

Submitted to:

J Annie Ebit
Course Instructor

April 2023

Downloaded by Rose Jane Morales (22-1-00023@vsu.edu.ph)

 DEPARTMENT OF
LIBERAL ARTS AND
BEHAVIRAL SCIENCES
Visca, Baybay City, Leyte,
PHILIPPINES
Telephone:: (053) 565 0600
loc. 1028
Email: dlabs@vsu.edu.ph
Website: www.vsu.edu.ph

I. EARLY LIFE OF SINAI CARINO HAMADA

Sinai Hamada is a writer not a lot of people are aware of, but his existence represents
an oft-underlooked history of Japanese immigrants who settled in the Philippines long
before the imperial reign of World War 2.
He was born in Baguio, Philippines and is the son of Ryukichi Hamada, a Japanese
mechanical foreman of Heald Lumber Company, Baguio City, who die d in an accident
while Sinai was only an infant. His mother is Josefa Carino, an Ibaloi woman who
belonged to the prominent Carino family of Benguet.

II. SINAI HAMADA’S WRITING STYLE

Most of his stories and poems operates on cross-cultural currents. If culture is a
means of adaptation to communicate and cooperate with fellow man for societal
survival, cross-culture is the comparison of cultures for the integration of these
cultures.
In Sinai’s writing style, he tends to be literal. Like he describes the characters’
actions in his stories literally. Unlike most of the authors, Hamada was not into
figurative language and symbolism. In contrast to the intense and flowery writing
style of Filipino writers like Nick Joaquin, Hamada’s prose is short and precise, using
simple and sparse language in his descriptions of people and places. When a
character does something, he describes it as it is and adds little subtext on what the
character is thinking or feeling.

III. WORKS
Some short stories of Sinai C. Hamada:


The Woman Who Came Alive – A Benguet Legend
 The Punishment of Kutnon
 Kintana and Her Man
 The Fall of Irisan Bridge
 Tabanata’s Wife – “Finest Filipino Love Story Ever Written”

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 DEPARTMENT OF
LIBERAL ARTS AND
BEHAVIRAL SCIENCES
Visca, Baybay City, Leyte,
PHILIPPINES
Telephone:: (053) 565 0600
loc. 1028
Email: dlabs@vsu.edu.ph
Website: www.vsu.edu.ph

TANABATA’S WIFE
By: Sinai C. Hamada
Tanabata’s Wife is an intimate and moving story of love amidst conflicting cultures
and hailed by the poet and writer, Francisco Arcellana as “The Finest Love Story Ever
Written by a Filipino”. This story is a seemingly mundane but poetic portrait of the
married life of a Japanese immigrant named Tanabata and his native Igorot wife, Fas-ang
set in rural Baguio. Hamada himself is half-Japanese, born to a Japanese father and a
Cordilleran mother from the Ibaloi tribe. So in many ways, this story is deeply personal
for Hamada.

Written in the year 1932, Tanabata’s Wife is also significant for capturing an almost
forgotten chapter of Philippine history when Japanese migrant workers moved to rural
places like Baguio during the American Colonial Period to work on major construction
projects like Kennon Road, and who would later settle down as farmers and intermarry
with native woman.

SUMMARY

Tanabata-san is a successful Japanese immigrant farmer in La Trinidad Valley in

Benguet, where the Japanese have been known to pioneer the planting of salad greens.
Middle-aged and lonely, he hires a young feisty Bontoc woman, Fas-ang, as farmhand,
and falls in love with her. They get married and have a son named Kato (in accordance
to Japanese calendar). In their married life, many challenges occur such as their age gap,
conflicting cultures, and traditions that was forcefully practiced by Fas-ang which are
completely unknown to her. Fas-ang was a foreign in her own household but later on,
she found a temporary escape which is her time in cinema watching movies. Eventually,
these activity of Fas-ang leads to infidelity where she leaves Tanabata-san devastated in
his home while she walked away with another Bontoc man and their son, Kato. Tanabata-
san being left alone was devastated and was believed to be crazy as he was a lonely man
and did not care about his plants anymore. Later on, Fas-ang was informed about the
sad news and comes home again with their son and Tanabata accepts both of them with
arms open wide.

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 DEPARTMENT OF
LIBERAL ARTS AND
BEHAVIRAL SCIENCES
Visca, Baybay City, Leyte,
PHILIPPINES
Telephone:: (053) 565 0600
loc. 1028
Email: dlabs@vsu.edu.ph
Website: www.vsu.edu.ph

ANALYSIS OF TANABATA’S WIFE

SIMPLE PROSE, COMPLEX MEANING

Hamada’s prose is short and precise, using simple and sparse language in his
descriptions of people and places.
SPOKEN LOVE, UNSPOKEN BARRIERS
The language and cultural barrier as well as age difference between Fas-ang and
Tanabata-san serves as the main conflict in the story. This makes it extremely difficult
for them to connect in any way other than what can be seen or shown.
Tanabata, though a caring and kindhearted husband and provider, has nothing in
common with Fas-ang outside of farm work. Fas-ang is young, adventurous, and deeply
connected to her large extended family and the rapidly changing world around her.
Tanabata-san, on the other hand, is an old and introverted homebody with little interest
or understanding of the alien world of Baguio outside of a few Japanese friends and his
distinctly Japanese home. It does not help either that Fas-ang does not speak Japanese
and that Tanabata’s knowledge of the Bontoc language is so limited that he could not
even properly tell his wife that he loves her.
There also exists the cultural barriers that exist between the two. Whereas Filipino culture
is very vibrant and expressive, Japanese culture is more defined by conformity and
adherence to strict tradition. In Tanabata’s Japanese household, Fas Ang had no choice
but to conform an alien culture in her own home, doing things like pickling radishes,
naming her son based on the Japanese calendar, and being forced to stay home for one
month after giving birth to her son. In one instance, Tanabata invites his Japanese friends
together for Kato’s baptism party and Fas-ang is hopelessly out of place in her own
son’s celebration. According to Hamada: “She did not understand the chattering of her
guests. So she stayed very quiet, holding the baby in her arms.” Although Fas-ang
loves her husband dearly, she tells her visiting cousin that “she is often homesick.” Her
escape is the movie theater of houses of Baguio City, something her husband is too old to
understand in spite of her “garrulous chatter”. She then regularly goes out to the city
on her own, bringing her son to meet family members and fellow Igorots in the theater
houses. Soon, she sees her husband only when she comes to bed after midnight.

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 DEPARTMENT OF
LIBERAL ARTS AND
BEHAVIRAL SCIENCES
Visca, Baybay City, Leyte,
PHILIPPINES
Telephone:: (053) 565 0600
loc. 1028
Email: dlabs@vsu.edu.ph
Website: www.vsu.edu.ph

LOVE IS SHOWN NOT SAID

If communication is the key to a loving relationship, how can a couple truly love each
other if they do not even have language or culture as common ground? Especially when
a couple has a language barrier, it puts one or both parties in a situation where they have
to constantly translate their soul for the person they love the most.
So how does love persist amidst such adversity? Through Tanabata’s and Fas-ang’s
lives, Hamada shows that in spite of the misunderstandings and unspoken tensions
between them, the two share a love that transcends color and culture. Lacking a common
language, they share this love through their actions: their work, the compromises and
the unspoken sacrifices that they make for each other. The message conveyed by each
character may be lost in translation, but Tanabata and Fas-ang never lost the loving
intent they had in everything that they did.

CONCLUSION
Sinai Hamada’s work “Tanabata’s Wife” may lack the high-stakes drama or allure of a
popular soap opera, but I agree that it is the finest Filipino love story because it perfectly
depicts the universality of love. That at its core, love is not a feeling, but rather a bond
that is so powerful that it can bring people together in ways that words cannot express.
By stripping away their stark differences, Hamada shows that no matter where you come
from, love will always be fundamentally built on sacrifice, compromise, and forgiveness.

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