My current research project expands on my previous research on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines focusing on non-elite actors from the perspective of marginalized Filipino society to determine the processes by which individuals who accumulated wealth in various informal business activities and acted beyond resistance or collaboration with the Japanese military in wartime Philippine society survived and how they affected postwar Filipino society. It is a study of the rise of the masses in lower strata of the Philippine society during the Japanese occupation and the extent to which this has transformed the society.

At the core of this year's research activities, it aims at the history of the periphery from the wartime period to the postwar reconstruction period, taking as a clue the role of informal economic activities during the Japanese occupation, especially the role of gangs that played a dark role in the chaotic period from the prewar period to postwar period. Although this kind of peripheral history has been fragmentarily discussed in Philippine historiography, there have been few concrete research outcomes. Through field interviews with the descendants of various gangs that were active in Tondo, Manila immediately after the war, I am currently pursuing the historical continuity between the violence of the past and the violence that is still prevalent in Philippine society to this day.