| Abstract | This paper explores engagements with cultural memory in selected short fiction by the prominent Filipino-Japanese mestizo writer in English, Sinai C. Hamada (1912–1991). Hamada's earliest exposure to literature took the form of oral narratives, which ranged from folktales to community events told to him by his Igorot (Ibaloi) mother and maternal grandmother. In as much as his source is the heard narrative rather than the western notion of fiction as an assemblage of elements, his fiction emphasizes the social dimension of creative writing and underscores the link between literature and history. Hamada's fiction depicts Igorot–Japanese encounters and negotiations. These are small chapters of history that are often taken for granted but offer new avenues of intervention by challenging hegemonic American discourse and highlighting a strategy of resistance in managing the everyday. Drawing on postcolonial discourse and semiotic analysis, the essay sets Hamada's images of Igorot–Japanese relations against archive photographs and other popular media forms to assert and re-semanticize the cultural and everyday fas-ang (crossing over) between the Igorots and Japanese at a particular point in history.
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