It's a mystery. My own successful config.log snippet with latest jdk8u is below. Why didn't your config.log contain "checking for FREETYPE"? Maybe a pkg-config problem? Are you doing something crazy like defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH? Someone will need to debug configure, perhaps using bash -x configure...
configure:31477: checking for cups/ppd.h configure:31477: result: yes configure:32103: checking for FREETYPE configure:32110: $PKG_CONFIG --exists --print-errors "freetype2" configure:32113: $? = 0 configure:32126: $PKG_CONFIG --exists --print-errors "freetype2" configure:32129: $? = 0 configure:32164: result: yes configure:32181: checking for freetype configure:32183: result: yes (using pkg-config) configure:34567: checking if we can compile and link with freetype configure:34592: /usr/bin/g++-4.8 -o conftest -I/usr/include/freetype2 conftest.cpp -lfreetype >&5 configure:34592: $? = 0 configure:34594: result: yes configure:34653: checking if we should bundle freetype configure:34658: result: no
