More useless information

In April 1886 the Japanese consul in Hong Kong arrived in Manila to look into commercial conditions in the Spanish Philippines and assess the necessity of opening a consulate there. Minami Taisuke met with the governor-general, an assortment of Spanish officials, and notable businessmen and citizens. He communicated through a Spanish interpreter, but with the consuls of foreign countries in Manila he spoke in English.

His report was comprehensive and it seems he did not take official figures at face value. For example, he was told that the total population of the Philippines was 6,500,000: Of these, 5,500,000 were “civilized” and “uncivilized” natives accounted for 700,000. Then he added up: 2,000 priests, 5,500 officials, 12,000 mestizos, 33,000 Chinese, 400 foreigners, 14,000 in the Army and 3,000 in the Navy of whom 800 were Spaniards. The total was 6,270,000, so he asked officials regarding the difference and was told nobody knew the exact count because the last census was taken a decade earlier in 1876!

The figures for the population of Manila did not match either. The total population given, or an estimate, was placed officially at 250,000, broken down into: 5,000 Spaniards; 300 foreigners; 18,000 Chinese; 46,000 mestizos (Chinese mixed with native); 165,000 natives. Summing up, the total came to 229,800. There is yet another discrepancy of over 200,000.

Reading the Japanese consul’s report on the problematic population figures in 1886 reminded me of the number of islands in the Philippines. Depending on the book you are reading, the count is: 7,100 islands, 7,107 islands, “more or less” 7,000 islands. Then there was the beauty contestant who answered the question “How many islands are there in the Philippines?” with another question: “High tide or low tide?” If it is true that some of our islands and islets disappear during high tide, shouldn’t we be supplied with numbers for both high tide and low tide? To complicate matters, the number of islands in the Philippines changes if we factor in areas that we claim with other countries, like Sabah and the Spratlys. Are these even included in our official count? How do we claim what is not even reflected on our maps?

Last year I sent an e-mail to Namria, the national mapping agency, to get the source for the 7,100-islands count and was surprised that it is still using the 1941 Census Atlas of the Philippines (vol. 5)! After seven decades our maps should be updated, with more accurate topographical and nautical charts, and sonar and even satellite images that are accessible on Google Earth. If the official figure changes from 7,100 or 7,107, can you imagine the millions of textbooks and teaching material that have to be corrected?

Minami Taisuke stayed in the Lala Hotel, which he described as the only hotel in Manila, or at least the only one that wasn’t noisy and crowded. Lala Hotel is mentioned in Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” (1887) and its full name is given as “Fonda Francesca de Lala Ary.” He described the streets as narrow, uneven, and without trees.

Descriptions of houses are provided, as well as notes on rentals. High-class houses for officials were found along the banks of the Pasig and inside Intramuros. (Spanish governors-general lived in a palace in Intramuros that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1863, resulting in a permanent relocation to the casa de campo or riverside country house known as Malacañang, now the seat of power in the country.) High-class merchants had their homes in classy suburbs four kilometers from Intramuros. Middle-class houses were located outside the walled city, where rent was cheaper and life better. House owners feared frequent earthquakes and fire. (This fear was architecturally displayed in the changes of roof material: from thatch that caught fire, to ceramic roof tiles that came crashing down during earthquakes, to galvanized iron (or GI) sheets that flew off during typhoons.)

The richest native Taisuke met was a certain “Henry Banto of Arayat, Pampanga, who bought a sugarcane pressing machine from England for (Mexican) $15,000 [and whose] property is not below $200,000.” The main Philippine products were given as: hemp, sugar, coffee, tobacco leaf, cigarettes, dyes (indigo and “sogi”), hardwood, banana cloth and cotton cloth. Probable Japanese exports to the Philippines could be: cotton woven cloth with wide stripes; crepe from awa; kishu-mome (cotton from Kishu) with bright colors; silk cloth of medium quality; glossy cloth like kaiki with wide stripes and bright colors; low-quality crockery and glassware; medium-quality lacquer and chinaware because those used in Manila are of low quality; gold and silver ornaments and fancy goods; umbrellas and umbrella paper; low-quality “minogami” and “hanshi” paper.

Norman Owen, the eminent historian of Bikol, said of the last column that while this Japanese report on trade and commerce in the Philippines seems detailed and complete, we should always look beyond the text, to see what is missing or left out. He cited the example of the export and trafficking of Japanese prostitutes (karayuki-san) to the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia as a topic that that is well worth a separate column. We can reconstruct a picture of the late-19th-century Philippines through stale economic data.

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