The mark of a good edited volume lies in the seamless transformation of the different contributions into de facto well-connected chapters. The critical glue is the editorial introduction, and Kiichi Fujiwara's failure to provide the theoretical grounding for this book's theme, contextualise the 12 disparate essays, and explain their connections to one another is its basic flaw. Save for restating the obvious (the United States and Japan as late-colonisers), Fujiwara adds very little that is original. His central argument — that strong states underwrote these ventures — may apply to Japan but definitely not to the turn-of-the-twentieth-century US federal regime. In fact, the US empire is peculiarly de-historicised in this collection, as if machine politicians of the Gilded Age like Howard Taft were no different from New Deal Progressivist administrators who reconstructed Japan under Douglas MacArthur.

This cavalier treatment of American imperialism finds itself being contradicted by the historical essays of Julian Go, Temario Rivera and Floro Quibuyen that show a weak colonial state repeatedly undermined or looted by political families. Other incongruities also soon become apparent. Reynaldo Ileto and Quibuyen complain that Filipinos forget the brutalities of the Filipino–American War and recall more the violence of the more recent Japanese Occupation. However, this is a condemnation that has no basis in fact: in many history classes in the country's top schools, in daily opinion pieces and media reportage, and student-led politico-propaganda campaigns, it is American ‘imperialist machinations’ that get top billing, while hardly anything is said of the United States' ‘Japanese junior partners’. Moreover, a closer look at their essays shows that Ileto is more forgiving of the oligarchs, contending that they too were honourable nationalists like their radical peers, while Quibuyen keeps close to an anti-imperialist and anti-class perspective that is the hallmark of Filipino nationalist historiography.

Yoshiko Nagano's comparison of the American re-casting of José Rizal and Emperor Hirohito to fit colonial goals cannot account for why the Philippine national hero remains an inspiration for Filipino radicals while the God-King has always been a strictly conservative asset. A more appropriate comparison for the Tenno would have been the Archbishop of Manila, a fellow reactionary who was fighting a rearguard action against nationalist Filipino priests and was saved only by American intervention into Church affairs. But Nagano prefers the easy comparison (while distracting readers' attention with needless nitpicking over John Dower's choice of adjective to describe a defeated Japan under American occupation). One spots a similar problem with Satoshi Nakano's contrasting of a peasant and anti-state protest (the Lapiang Malaya) and post-war Japanese pilgrimages to recover the bones of soldier fathers and brothers in the Philippines. Nakano offers no explanation to why these two discrepant actions — one state-led, the other popular, anti-state and millenarian — are comparable and, more importantly, will yield insights as to how Filipinos and Japanese position themselves under ‘America's shadow’.

With a flawed introduction unable to provide the necessary coherence, one regretfully ends up treating the essays as separate pieces. Apart from Go, Quibuyen and Rivera, the others worth checking are Oscar Campomanes' seminal jargon-laden deconstruction of the puzzled American reception to Filipino diplomat Felipe Agoncillo's visit to the United States; Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes' fascinating look at two ‘traditional’ Japanese songs engaging modernity; Nobue Suzuki's amusing piece on Filipina–Japanese marriages; and Hiromu Shimizu's funny yet fraught field encounters with the remarkable Filipino film-maker Kidlat Tahimik and his initial attempt at autobiography.

Taken as a whole, however, the book falls short in its attempt to generate scholarly curiosity on comparing an underdeveloped Southeast Asian neo-colony and the world's third largest economy, both purportedly labouring under shadows of a supposedly no-good American empire.