Rizal impersonating a Japanese man
July 4 is US Independence or National Day worldwide, but in our country it is designated as Philippine-US Friendship Day, when some Pinoys show their affection by holding protest demonstrations in front of the US Embassy on Roxas Boulevard.
We also mark June 30 as Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day to commemorate the Siege of Baler, when Spanish soldiers holed up in the town church surrendered to Filipino forces. When the Spaniards barricaded themselves in Baler Church in July 1898, the Philippines was still a Spanish colony; when they surrendered in June 1899, the Philippines had seen the triumph of the First Republic at Malolos that later fell into American hands. The islands had by then gone through the Philippine Revolution against Spain and, later, the Philippine-American War. Emilio Aguinaldo decreed that the Spanish soldiers of Baler be accepted as brothers rather than prisoners of war. It’s another twist in our history that explains the famous description of the Philippines as having spent “300 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood.”
What many Filipinos do not remember is the short time the Philippines was British—from 1762 to 1764. Then there is the brutal Japanese Occupation from 1942 to 1945 that many people would like to forget. We do have Philippines-Japan Friendship Day on July 24 (sometimes even declared a Friendship Month) that was formerly celebrated each Feb. 28 to commemorate the 1888 arrival of Jose Rizal in Yokohama, Japan. The date was changed as a result of protests from people who lost family and friends during the Battle for Manila in February 1945, when Japanese soldiers vented their frustration on noncombatants, sparing no one—women, children, the elderly—in an orgy of rape, pillage and murder.
History is like a long, flowing river: Depending on where you draw water, you may find something good or bad.
Yesterday, Philippine Ambassador to Japan Manuel M. Lopez commemorated Jose Rizal’s 151st birthday with a simple floral offering at the Rizal monument in Hibiya Park, Tokyo. Rizal continues to be a boon in our public diplomacy because he provides an immediate personal link of friendship between the Philippines and all the countries he visited. While the flowers last, people passing the park on their way to work or strolling for leisure will give Rizal a second look and learn about the long friendship between the Philippines and Japan.
Rizal’s interest in Japanese culture is evident in a small pocket notebook he carried around in 1888 where he drew in the Japanese style and even tried his hand at calligraphy. In Paris some years earlier, Rizal and his friends were mistaken for Japanese in a hospital they were visiting. Rizal cleared up the mistake, proudly identifying his friends and himself as Filipinos. Another time, in a Paris museum, he was mistaken for Japanese and he pretended to be one. He narrated his experience to his family thus:
“The Palace of Industry is a very big building constructed in 1855 and designed for diverse exhibitions of arts and trades. Admission usually costs 2 francs or 50 centimes on Sundays and Thursdays. There I saw an exhibition of Japanese paintings and many men and women, principally foreign artists, mistook me for a Japanese, and they approached me and asked me for information about the art works. I explained and told them all that I knew, and when I could, I escaped through the history of Japan and her old and modern constitution.
“I spoke a little about the Japanese artists, whose biographies I knew, like Totsugueu, Senko, Nampo, and others. They asked me about their methods and they were enchanted.
“But then it occurred to one of the young ladies to ask me about the meaning of those characters written below the paintings, and I found myself in a tight spot, fearing that there might be someone among those various visitors who understood Japanese characters, [and] they would catch me in the very act of telling a lie. Then I told them that the Mikado, having set up Japan in European style, had sent us to Europe since we were very young and we have become Europeanized, which added to the difficulty of Japanese writing, which was not as simple as the European. [T]his explained why we have not studied our native tongue.
“In Europe, or rather in France, all those who are of our type and are dressed like them are Japanese (Chinese in Spain); likewise, all who wear a beard are called Castilas (Spaniards). In this exhibition I saw also very beautiful paintings and sculptures by European artists, precious stones, antiquities, furniture belonging to different epochs, weapons, Indians, Muslim, and Hebrew books, tiles, jars, and others. I spent there about three hours, although I went around running, I admired above all a painting of a nymph asleep in moonlight among clouds and mist.”
The anecdote above is trivial in the ocean of Philippine history, but it is an antidote to the Rizal fossilized in bronze, marble, and textbook history. Rizal wrote a lot for a nation that does not read him, and if people can read beyond the “Noli” and “Fili” to explore his letters and diaries, they will discover a playful human side to the hero that makes him relevant to our life and our times.
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