It seems providential that Jose Rizal, the Filipino national hero, had a Japanese girlfriend, O-Sei-San, thereby providing the two nations a pair of symbols of close ties.

But it was a love affair that was not meant to be, as Rizal himself laments: "Sayonara, sayonara! You will never come to know that I have thought of you again nor that your image lives in my memory; and nevertheless I always think of you. Your name lives in the sighs of my lips; your image accompanies and animates all my thoughts. When shall another divine afternoon like that in the temple of Megaro return? When will the sweet hours I spent with you return? When shall there be sweeter, more tranquil, more pleasant hours? You have the colors of the Camellia, its freshness, its elegance...Ah! The last descendant of a noble family, true to an unfortunate vengeance, you are beautiful like...everything is finished! Sayonara, sayonara!"

Rizal was delighted with his Japanese paramour, but it did not blind him to the strengths and weaknesses of the theocratic "empire" of the Yamato. In the same year (1889) that Rizal’s farseeing essay ("The Philippines a Century Hence") came out, the Japanese Constitution was promulgated, providing for the emperor as the fountainhead of all authority. A year later, "the first elections were held but only about one per cent of the total population had the right to vote." [Ichiro Kawasaki. Japan Unmasked. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1969]

This was the "kokutai" – Japan’s national system that had for its core an all-powerful emperor who was subject to no one but the gods.

As Rizal correctly foresaw, the imperialist Japanese did invade his country within the prescribed 100 years. Kodo, the Japanese Imperial Way, was not the Filipino way, not the Christian way, not the ways of democracy. The "kunsoku no kan" ("the evil ones close to the throne") plotted to subjugate Asia-Pacific in the name of Showa (Emperor Hirohito).

According to Japanese Imperial Army General Sadao Araki, "the true mission of Japan is to spread the Imperial Way to the Four Corners." [Sidney C. Moody, Jr. and the Photographers of the Associated Press. War against Japan. Novato, California: The Associated Press, 1994]

Kodo, the Japanese Imperial Way, begot the Rape of Nanking, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and the Lipa Massacre, among other brutalities.

Then there was the Rape of Manila that occurred in February 1945. How many Filipinos, how many Japanese are aware of this horrible event?

Those who want to know are urged to watch "Manila 1945," a Filipino-American production that showcases files and film footages from the United States National Archives, captured Japanese documents and interviews of survivors. This painstaking documentary, which was released on DVD to memorialize the 60th anniversary of the "forgotten atrocities," attempts to remedy the collective amnesia of the adults and to inform the post-war generations.

Narrated by Cesar Montano, the documentary identifies the Japanese High Command as the fountainhead of the massacre of Manilans. Residents of the capital city, more than 100,000 non-combatants, were killed, even as their homes and livelihood were devastated.

The enormity of the Japanese war crime, only a smidgen of which could be encapsulated on film by the Spyron AV Manila production, is aggravated by the non-stop campaign of Japanese rightists today to deny its validity. The 1945 Japanese Rape of Manila is ignored in Japanese schools, expunged from Japanese textbooks, overshadowed by Japanese anime and comic books.

"Manila 1945: The Forgotten Atrocities" is a cautionary tale for the Filipinos who work for, negotiate against and fall in love with Japanese. Take heed and secure DVD copies of the documentary at the Ayala Museum in Makati and the Solidaridad Bookshop in Ermita, Manila. Or log on www.chickparsons.com. You can also email the producers: luckyg@ciphercom.net and cynthia_dyram@yahoo.com. This is the same outfit that produced "Secret War in the Pacific."

The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines and Tokyo’s unceasing drive for a global power status has spawned other unresolved issues and more irritants between the nations of Rizal and O-Sei-San.

The tied loans spun as official development assistance, the continuing injustice to the surviving comfort women, the japayuki phenomenon, and the colonial pattern of trade redden "Philippine-Japan Friendship" as a power relationship.