About O Sei San

(she died on May 1, 1947 at the age of 80)
Rizal had a Japanese girlfriend osei-san. 
Howerver the romance wasn’t meant to be. 
Heartbroken Rizal wrote the following about about o sei san.

Every student in the Philippines can name all or a few of the women of Rizal, but when pushed a bit further he will admit that he knows little about the person. These women only figure in our history because of their association with Rizal. Surely, they were not mere footnotes in the life of our national hero, but had lives of their own. What were they like before or after their relationship with Rizal? When and where were they born? What happened to them after Rizal’s execution? When and where did they die?

One of the tips passed  by the late Esteban de Ocampo and E. Arsenio Manuel is to work in cemeteries in search of tombstones with dates of birth and death. Josephine Bracken was buried in Happy Valley Cemetery in Hong Kong, but nobody has been able to find her common grave or the record of her internment. When the threat of swine flu is lowered and the weather in Hong Kong becomes more agreeable.

British historian Jim Richardson has been combing census records, now available online, and he has found Gertrude “Tottie” Beckett in the 1911 census, then 42 years old and living with her parents in Southall and not in the townhouse in Chalcot Crescent where Rizal rented a room in the attic. Dr. Richardson has found the year of birth, 1869, and place of birth Ely, Cambridgeshire, but other details about her will require a dedicated and patient search in the census records.

Takefumi Terada showed us the Rizal bust in Hibiya Park, just across the Imperial Hotel, and  Zoshigaya Reien (literally, Zoshigaya spirit garden/cemetery) on the outskirts of Tokyo’s commercial and business district to the grave of the woman all Filipinos know as “O-sei san.”

Rizal’s bust in Hibiya park was ornamented by bird droppings and O-sei san’s grave had weeds growing all over it, making us wonder what happened to her grandson, who was said in the 1950s to be a Japanese diplomat assigned in Switzerland. Maybe she had great-grandchildren, but do they visit her grave? Have they been told that her brief relationship with Rizal is one of the highlights of Philippine-Japan relations.

Terada-sensei came armed with a map of the Zoshigaya cemetery and a photocopy of an obscure newsletter that seems to be dedicated to people buried there. This newsletter had a long and detailed article on O-sei san, complete with pictures. Terada-sensei was kind enough to translate the material, and so far this is as far as we can go on O-sei san.

Her full name was Usui Seiko, her nickname was “O-sei” from Seiko. The Usui family came from Chiba near the present Narita Airport outside downtown Tokyo. Her father was a veteran samurai who turned to business and ran a trading store in Yokohama. Seiko’s older brother was killed in Ueno during the Shogitai revolt against the Meiji. To provide Seiko with a playmate, her parents adopted an orphan from Nagasaki named Yoshi.

Seiko had an upbringing that gave her fluency in English and a bit of French. She was described as shy yet she served as Rizal’s interpreter, and accompanied him on sightseeing trips around Japan. Being a woman of “high culture,” she introduced Rizal to Japanese culture teaching him to write Japanese characters and paint in the Japanese-style.

After Rizal, she married Alfred Charlton (b. 13 August 1859 Liverpool; d. 2 November 1915) who was an English teacher in the First High School, then the Yamaguchi High School in Imaguchi, and later taught chemistry in the prestigious Gakushuin High School. He was decorated with the Japanese Order of Merit, 5th class, indicated on his tombstone.

Charlton and Seiko had a daughter named Yuriko who married the son of a senator named Yoshiharu Takiguchi. They had a son (no name) who was a Japanese diplomat assigned in Geneva.

Seiko never told anyone about her friendship with Rizal, until the 1950s when Filipino researchers tracked down her stepsister Yoshi who said Seiko collected Philippine stamps and cherished those which had Rizal’s picture. Her stamp collection and any mementos left by Rizal were destroyed during the bombing of Tokyo in 1944.

After her home in Shinjuku was destroyed, Seiko moved to Hagi, west of Yamaguchi, where she died on May 1, 1947 at the age of 80.

Seiko’s grave has a large piece of stone that has the initials “A.C” on top. The Japanese text reads “Alfred Charlton, Order of Merit 5th class, and wife Seiko.” There is a small crooked tombstone beside that of Seiko and Alfred’s that marks the grave of Usui Yoshida who was interviewed by the Filipino historians and researchers in the 1950s.

This is where the trail ends. It isn’t much to go on, but it gives us a better idea of who she was, what she was like, and perhaps helps us understand what was in her that Rizal found attractive.

About Leonor Valenzuela

Several months later, during his sophomore year at the University of Sto. Tomas, he boarded in the house of Doña Concha Leyva in Intramuros.  The next door neighbors of Doña Concha were Capitan

Juan and Capitana Sanday Valenzuea
from Pagsanjan, Laguna,
who had a charming daughter named,
Leonor.

Rizal, the medical student from Calamba, was a welcome visitor in the Valenzuela home, where he was the life of the social parties because of his clever sleight-of-hand tricks.  He courted Leonor Valenzuela, who was a tall girl with a regal bearing.  He sent her love notes written in invisible ink.  The ink consisted of common table salt and water.  It left no trace on the paper.  Riza, who knew his chemistry, taught Orang (pet name of Leonor) the secret of reading any note written in the invisible ink by heating it over a candle of lamp so that the words may appear.  But, as with Segunda, he stopped short of proposing marriage to Orang.

About Segunda Katigbak

Segunda Solis Katigbak

(1863-1943)
Lipa, Batangas
Segunda was born in 1863 (date unknown) 

to Don Norberto Kalaw Katigbak (gobernadorcillo 1862-1863) and Doña Justa Metra Solis. 

She was the second child in a family of seven:

Mariano (Capitan Municipal 1896-1897), 

Norberto Jr., Carmina, ysabel,Ynes and Jose

Rizal saw her during his visit in his maternal grandmother’s place whereas, he claimed that he blushes everytime she sets eyes on him. He made made pencil sketches of her during that time..

Rizal came to know Segunda more intimately during his weekly visit to La Concordia College, where his sister Olimpia was a boarding student.  Olimpia was a close friend of Segunda.  That was apparent that Rizal and Segunda loved each other.  Theirs was indeed “a love at first sight”.  But it was hopeless since the very beginning because Segunda was already engage to be married to her townmate, Manuel Luz.  Segunda had manifested by insulation and deeds, her affection for him, but he timidly failed to propose.

Rizal was going home to Calamba, on her part, told him she was also going home one day later.  She kept quiet after her brief reply, waiting for him to say something which her heart was clamoring to hear.

Segunda, the first girl whom he loved with ardent fervor was lost to him forever.  She married Manuel Luz....

"Manuel Luz" was the son of Jose de San Miguel Luz and Gertrudes Metra (eventually named Mitra). Almost a six footer, he came from an affluent family as his family owned vast tracks of land and coffee plantations in Balete, Lipa. Manuel had eight siblings--Alejandra, Celestino, Simeon and Maria (from his father's marriage to his mother), Conchita and Gertrudes (from the second marriage of his father) and Filomena and Rosario (from the third marriage of his father). Manuel's elder brother Simeon was an intelligent man, having instructed the young Claro M. Recto the English language. It was also Simeon who became the first governor of the province of Batangas. Simeon married four times on account of the deaths of each wife during childbirth. Manuel's youngest sister Rosario married Mariano, Segunda's elder brother.

Segunda married Manuel at the tender age of 14, and 
their marriage produced nine children:
Cristeta (married to Guillermo Africa Katigbak), 
Manuel Jr. (bachelor), 
Flora (married to Edelberto Mendoza), 
Arsenio (married to Amparo Katigbak), 
Paz (married to Pablo Dimayuga), 
Julio (married to Carmen Genato), 
Justa (married to Isabelo Katigbak), 
Valeriano (married to Rosario Dimayuga) and 
Fernando (married to Luz Cabal). 
One notices that in the family tree, 
it is usual to find a Katigbak-Katigbak marriage 
as it was again, an accepted 
arrangement at that time.

Manuel and Segunda built their dream house in the heart of the city. It is a typical bahay-na-bato which follows a Spanish architecture yet is essentially a tropical house. It is known for its dramatic arrangement of space and its unique sense of grandeur and solidity. Here, their children and grandchildren were trained in music as it was common for them to play the piano and sing songs after dinner. In their old age, Manuel was fondly called Lolo Uwel and Segunda was called Lola Unday.

Rizal, a frustrated lover cherishing nostalgic memories of a lost love.

Three years later, Rizal recording his first and tragic romance, said “Ended at an early hour, my first love!  My virgin heart will always mourn the reckless step it took on the flower-decked abyss.  My ilusions return, yes, but indifferent, uncertain, ready for the first betrayal on the path of love”.

His sad experience in his first love made him wiser in the ways of romance. Shortly after losing Segunda Katigbak, he paid court to a young woman in Calamba. In his memoirs, he called her “Miss L”. He described her as a “fair with seductive eyes”. After visiting her several times, he stopped and the romance died a natural death. Two reasons why he changed his heart are: he still loves Segunda Katigbak and his father opposed because the young woman is older then him.

Segunda spent her last days with her nine children in the big house. Lola Unday eventually grew weak, suffering from a stroke and passed away on June 16, 1943, eleven days short of one year that her beloved husband passed away. In 1996, the house that Manuel and Segunda built and which over a thousand descendants call home was renamed Casa Segunda and was declared a heritage house by the National Historical Commission.

About Leonor Rivera

Leonor Rivera–Kipping
(born in Camiling, Tarlac, died August 1893)
was the childhood sweetheart, first cousin, and “lover by correspondence”
of Philippine national hero José Rizal. Rivera was the “greatest influence”
in preventing Rizal from falling in love with other women while Rizal was traveling outside the Philippines.Rivera's romantic relationship with Rizal lasted for eight years.She was immortalized by Rizal as the character
"María Clara" in the Spanish-language novel Noli Me Tangere.
Her original hometown is in Camiling,Tarlac.

Rivera, a native of Pangasinan, was the daughter of Antonio Rivera. Austin Coates, Rizal’s European biographer, described Rivera in Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr as a “pretty woman” whose physical features included having a “high forehead”, “soft and wavy hair”, a face that supported “almond eyes”, “small and pensive mouth”, and “engaging dimples”. Furthermore, Rivera was a talented, mature, and intelligent lady who played the piano and was gifted with a “charming singing voice”.Rivera studied at La Concordia College in Manila.

Rivera’s family was a resident of Dagupan from 1890 to 1891, a period when the railroad line between Manila and Dagupan was being constructed. Her parents had a clothing merchandise business in Dagupan. The Riveras first lived at a dwelling on Torres Bugallon Avenue, a property belonging to Don Alejandro Venteres and Doña Rosario Laurel Villamil, a couple closely connected to the family. The family later moved to a house belonging to Don Andres Palaganas, a person related to Don Venteres by affinity. The son of Don Palaganas, Ciriaco (a former Dagupan municipal president), was the husband of Don Venteres’s relative Paula Venteres.The second residence of the Riveras was located at a place presently known as Rivera Street.

Rivera and Rizal first met in Manila when Rivera was only 13 years old. When Rizal left for Europe on May 3, 1882, Rivera was 15 years of age. From then, the relationship between Rivera and Rizal became a love by correspondence, a communication by letters with exchanges of photographs without personally seeing each other again. Such correspondence began with the poem Rizal left for Rivera saying farewell. The lovers employed codes in their letters because Rivera’s mother did not favor Rizal as a suitor for Rivera. Being in love for the first time, Rivera was greatly affected by Rizal’s departure. A letter from Mariano Catigbac dated June 27, 1884 described Rivera’s condition to Rizal as Rizal’s “betrothed” who became thin, deteriorated, and preoccupied. Rivera became frequently sick because of insomnia. When Rizal returned to the Philippines on August 5, 1887, Rivera was no longer living in Manila because she and her family had moved back to Dagupan, Pangasinan. Rizal wanted to meet Rivera and Rivera also wanted to see Rizal, but both were prohibited by their fathers. Rizal was forbidden by his father Francisco Mercado in order to avoid putting the Rivera family in danger because at the time Rizal was already labeled by the Spaniards as a filibustero or subversive. Rizal was labeled as such because of the contents of his novel Noli Me Tangere. Rizal wanted to marry Rivera while he was still in the Philippines because of Rivera’s uncomplaining fidelity. Rizal asked permission from his father one more time before his second departure from the Philippines. The meeting never happened. In 1888, Rizal stopped receiving letters from Rivera for a year, although Rizal kept sending letters to Rivera. The reason for Rivera’s year of silence was the connivance between Rivera’s mother and the Englishman named Henry Kipping, a railway engineer who fell in love with Rivera and was favored by Rivera’s mother.

Rivera met Henry Kipping, the British engineer whom she later married, at Doña Carmen Villamil’s house. Villamil was a former classmate at La Concordia College in Manila. Kipping was associated with the engineer named Crisostomo Villamil, the supervising engineer of the Manila-Dagupan railroad line project at the time.

About Josephine Bracken

Marie Josephine Leopoldine Bracken
(August 9, 1876 - March 15, 1902)
was the fiancee of Philippine national hero,
José Rizal. Some believed that she was married to Rizal,
although no proof of a civil or church wedding has ever been found.

A girl with piercing blue eyes. Bracken was born in Hong Kong on August 9, 1876 to Irish parents, James Bracken, a corporal in the British Army, Elizabeth Jane McBride who married on May 3, 1868 in Belfast, Ireland. When her mother died shortly after childbirth, she was adopted by an American named George Taufer.

Bracken met Rizal when the latter spent several months in Hong Kong in 1891-92. She later recommended that her blind adopted father see Rizal, who was a respected ophthalmologist. By this time, he was a political exile in Dapitan, on the Zamboanga Peninsula. Although Taufer's condition was beyond Rizal's help, the physician fell in love with Bracken. They were allegedly wed in a civil union,[1] unable to obtain Catholic Church sanction for the marriage.

They lived together in Dapitan. She bore a stillborn child with Rizal, Francisco Rizal y Bracken, who was buried in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines. The day before his execution on charges of treason, rebellion and sedition by the Spanish colonial government, the Catholic Church claimed that Rizal returned to his Catholic faith and was married to Bracken in a church ceremony, although there has never been proof that this event happened.

After Rizal's death, Bracken joined the revolutionaries for a time. When called before the Spanish Governor-General, she was threatened with torture and imprisonment if she did not leave the Philippines, so she voluntarily returned to Hong Kong.

She subsequently married Vicente Abad, a Cebuano mestizo, who represented his father's Tabacalera Company in Hong Kong. A daughter, Dolores, was born to them on April 17, 1900. On March 15, 1902, Bracken died of tuberculosis.

Jose Rizal's Execution

Moments before his execution by a firing squad of native infantry of the Spanish Army, backed by an insurance force of Spanish troops, the Spanish surgeon general requested to take his pulse; it was normal. Aware of this, the Spanish sergeant in charge of the backup force hushed his men to silence when they began raising '¡vivas!' with the partisan crowd. His last words were those of Jesus Christ: "consummatum est",--it is finished.

He was secretly buried in Pacò Cemetery in Manila with no identification on his grave. His sister Narcisa toured all possible gravesites and found freshly turned earth at the cemetery with guards posted at the gate. Assuming this could be the most likely spot, there never having any ground burials, she made a gift to the caretaker to mark the site "RPJ", Rizal's initials in reverse.

Rizal's tomb in Paco Park (formerly Paco Cemetery).A national monument

Main article: Rizal Park

A monument, with his remains, now stands near the place where he fell, designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling of the famed William Tell sculpture. The statue carries the inscription "I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him."

Last days

By 1896, the rebellion fomented by the Katipunan, a militant secret society, had become a full-blown revolution, proving to be a nationwide uprising and leading to the first proclamation of a democratic republic in Asia. To dissociate himself, Rizal volunteered and was given leave by the Governor-General, Ramón Blanco, to serve in Cuba to minister to victims of yellow fever. Blanco later was to present his sash and sword to the Rizal family as an apology.

About two weeks before he left Dapitan, Rizal met Dr. Pio Valenzuela an emissary from the Katipunan, to whom Rizal expressed his doubts of an insufficiently armed revolution. Rizal argued that the revolution cannot succeed until sufficient arms can be assured and the support of the wealthy Filipinos had been won over.

Rizal was arrested en route to Cuba, imprisoned in Barcelona, and sent back to Manila to stand trial. He was implicated in the revolution through his association with members of the Katipunan. During the entire passage, he was unchained, no Spaniard laid a hand on him, and had many opportunities to escape but refused to do so. While imprisoned in Fort Santiago, he issued a manifesto disavowing the revolution and declaring that the education of Filipinos and their achievement of a national identity were prerequisites to freedom; he was to be tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy. Rizal was convicted on all three charges and sentenced to death. Blanco, who was sympathetic to Rizal, had been forced out of office, and the friars, led by then Archbishop of Manila Bernardino Nozaleda, had 'intercalated' Camilo de Polavieja in his stead, as the new Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines after pressuring Queen-Regent Maria Cristina of Spain, thus sealing Rizal's fate.

His poem, undated and believed to be written on the day before his execution, was hidden in an alcohol stove and later handed to his family with his few remaining possessions, including the final letters and his last bequests. Within hearing of the Spanish guards he reminded his sisters in English, "There is something inside it," referring to the alcohol stove given by the Pardo de Taveras which was to be returned after his execution, thereby emphasizing the importance of the poem. This instruction was followed by another, "Look in my shoes," in which another item was secreted. Exhumation of his remains in August 1898, under American rule, revealed he had been uncoffined, his burial not on sanctified ground granted the 'confessed' faithful, and whatever was in his shoes had disintegrated.

In his letter to his family he wrote: "Treat our aged parents as you would wish to be treated...Love them greatly in memory of me...December 30, 1896."

In his final letter, to Blumentritt – Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience. He had to reassure him that he had not turned revolutionary as he once considered being, and that he shared his ideals to the very end. He also bequeathed a book personally bound by him in Dapitan to his 'best and dearest friend.' When Blumentritt received it in his hometown Litoměřice (Leitmeritz) he broke down and wept.

Jose Rizal Exile in Dapitan

Rizal was implicated in the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July 1892, was deported to Dapitan in the province of Zamboanga, a peninsula of Mindanao. There he built a school, a hospital and a water supply system, and taught and engaged in farming and horticulture.Abaca, then the vital raw material for cordage and which Rizal and his students planted in the thousands, was a memorial.

The boys' school, in which they learned English, considered a prescient if unusual option then, was conceived by Rizal and antedated Gordonstoun with its aims of inculcating resourcefulness and self sufficiency in young men. They would later enjoy successful lives as farmers and honest government officials. One, a Muslim, became a datu, and another, José Aseniero, who was with Rizal throughout the life of the school, became Governor of Zamboanga.

In Dapitan, the Jesuits mounted a great effort to secure his return to the fold led by Fray Sánchez, his former professor, who failed in his mission. The task was resumed by Fray Pastells, a prominent member of the Order. In a letter to Pastells, Rizal sails close to the ecumenism familiar to us today.

- "We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God. How can I doubt his when I am convinced of mine. Who so recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for? Now then, my faith in God, if the result of a ratiocination may be called faith, is blind, blind in the sense of knowing nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities which many attribute to him; before theologians' and philosophers' definitions and lucubrations of this ineffable and inscrutable being I find myself smiling. Faced with the conviction of seeing myself confronting the supreme Problem, which confused voices seek to explain to me, I cannot but reply: 'It could be; but the God that I foreknow is far more grand, far more good: Plus Supra!...I believe in (revelation); but not in revelation or revelations which each religion or religions claim to possess. Examining them impartially, comparing them and scrutinizing them, one cannot avoid discerning the human 'fingernail' and the stamp of the time in which they were written... No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However, brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light. I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, his love, his providence, his eternity, his glory, his wisdom? 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork'."

Bust in clay, by RizalAs a gift to his mother on her birth anniversary he wrote the other of his poems of maturity, "Mi Retiro," with a description of a calm night overlaid with a million stars. The poem, with its concept of a spontaneous creation and speaking of God as Plus Supra, is considered his accommodation of evolution.

...the breeze idly cools, the firmament glows,

the waves tell in sighs to the docile wind

timeless stories beneath the shroud of night.

Say that they tell of the world, the first dawn

of the sun, the first kiss that his bosom inflamed,

when thousands of beings surged out of nothing,

and peopled the depths, and to the heights mounted,

to wherever his fecund kiss was implanted.

Rizal's pencil sketch of Blumentritt His best friend, professor Ferdinand Blumentritt, kept him in touch with European friends and fellow-scientists who wrote a stream of letters which arrived in Dutch, French, German and English and which baffled the censors, delaying their transmittal. Those four years of his exile coincided with the development of the Philippine Revolution from inception and to its final breakout, which, from the viewpoint of the court which was to try him, suggested his complicity in it. He condemned the uprising, although all the members of the Katipunan had made him their honorary president and had used his name as a cry for war, unity, and liberty.

Near the end of his exile he met and courted the stepdaughter of a patient, an Irishwoman named Josephine Bracken. He was unable to obtain an ecclesiastical marriage because he would not return to Catholicism and was not known to be clearly against revolution.He nonetheless considered Josephine to be his wife and the only person mentioned in the poem, Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy...

Jose Rizal's Persecutions

Upon his return to Manila in 1892, he formed a civic movement called La Liga Filipina. The league advocated these moderate social reforms through legal means, but was disbanded by the governor. At that time, he had already been declared an enemy of the state by the Spanish authorities because of the publication of his novel.

Wenceslao Retana, a political commentator in Spain, had slighted Rizal by a reference to his parents and promptly apologized after being challenged to a duel. Aware that Rizal was a better swordsman, he issued an apology, became an admirer, and wrote Rizal's first European biography.The painful memories of his mother's treatment (when he was ten) at the hands of the civil authorities explain his reaction to Retana. The incident stemmed from an accusation that Rizal's mother, Teodora, tried to poison the wife of a cousin when she claimed she only intervened to help. With the approval of the Church prelates, and without a hearing, she was ordered to prison in Santa Cruz in 1871. She was made to walk the ten miles (16 km) from Calamba. She was released after two-and-a-half years of appeals to the highest court.

In 1887 Rizal wrote a petition on behalf of the tenants of Calamba, and later that year led them to speak out against the friars' attempts to raise rent. They initiated a litigation which resulted in the Dominicans evicting them from their homes, including the Rizal family. General Valeriano Weyler had the buildings on the farm torn down.

Jose Rizal's other works

   Rizal's sculpture 
The Triumph of Science over Death

Rizal also tried his hand at painting and sculpture. His most famous sculptural work was "The Triumph of Science over Death", a clay sculpture composed of a naked, young woman standing on a skull bearing a torch upheld high. The woman symbolized the ignorance of humankind during the Dark Ages, while the torch she bore symbolized the enlightenment science brings over the whole world. He sent the sculpture to his dear friend Blumentritt, together with another one named "The Triumph of Death over Life".

Jose Rizal Writings

José Rizal was a very prolific author from a young age. Among his earliest writings are El Canto de los Dioses, A la juventud filipina, Canto del viajero, Canto de María Clara, Me piden versos, Por la educación, Junto al Pasig, etc. On his early writings he frequently depicted renowned Spanish explorers, kings and generals, and pictured Education (the Philippines enjoyed a free public system of education established by the Spaniards) as "the breath of life instilling charming virtue". He had even written of one of his Spanish teachers as having brought "the light of the eternal splendor".

The content of Rizal's writings changed considerably in his two most famous novels, Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. These writings angered both the Spaniards colonial elite and some of the hispanized Filipinos due to their insulting symbolism. They are highly critical of Spanish friars and the atrocities committed in the name of the Church. Rizal's first critic was Ferdinand Blumentritt, a Czech professor and historian whose first reaction was of misgiving. Blumentritt was the grandson of the Imperial Treasurer at Vienna in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and a staunch defender of the Catholic faith. This did not dissuade him however from writing the preface of El filibusterismo after he had translated Noli me Tangere into German. Noli was published in Berlin (1887) and Fili in Ghent (1891) with funds borrowed largely from Rizal's friends. As Blumentritt had warned, these led to Rizal's prosecution as the inciter of revolution and eventually, to a military trial and execution. The intended consequence of teaching the natives where they stood brought about an adverse reaction, as the Philippine Revolution of 1896 took off virulently thereafter.

Leaders of the reform movement in Spain: Left to Right: Rizal, del Pilar, and PonceAs leader of the reform movement of Filipino students in Spain, he contributed essays, allegories, poems, and editorials to the Spanish newspaper La Solidaridad in Barcelona. The core of his writings centers on liberal and progressive ideas of individual rights and freedom; specifically, rights for the Filipino people. He shared the same sentiments with members of the movement: that the Philippines is battling, in Rizal's own words, "a double-faced Goliath"--corrupt friars and bad government. His commentaries reiterate the following agenda:

That the Philippines be a province of Spain

Representation in the Cortes

Filipino priests instead of Spanish friars--Augustinians, Dominicans, and Franciscans--in parishes and remote sitios

Freedom of assembly and speech

Equal rights before the law (for both Filipino and Spanish plaintiffs)

The colonial authorities in the Philippines did not favor these reforms even if they were more openly endorsed by Spanish intellectuals like Morayta, Unamuno, Pi y Margall, and others.

Jose Rizal Romantic Side

José Rizal's life is one of the most documented of the 19th century due to the vast and extensive records written by and about him. Most everything in his short life is recorded somewhere, being himself a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, much of these material having survived. His biographers, however, have faced the difficulty of translating his writings because of Rizal's habit of switching from one language to another. They drew largely from his travel diaries with their insights of a young Asian encountering the west for the first time. They included his later trips, home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States, and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong. During December 1891 to June 1892, Rizal lived with his family in Number 2 of Rednaxela Terrace, 5 D'Aguilar Street, Central district, Hong Kong island, this house was also used as his ophthalmologist clinic from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.. This period of his education and his frenetic pursuit of life included his recorded affections. Historians write of Rizal's "dozen women", even if only nine were identified. They were Gertrude Becket of Chalcot Crescent (London), wealthy and high-minded Nelly Boustead of the English and Iberian merchant family, last descendant of a noble Japanese family ( O Sei San )Usui Seiko(Japanese), his earlier friendship with Segunda Katigbak and eight-year romantic relationship with his first cousin, Leonor Rivera.

Leonor Rivera is the one who kept Rizal focused on his studies and kept him from falling in – love with other women. The news of Leonor Rivera's marriage to an Englishman Henry Kipping (her mother's choice) devastated Rizal. She was then immortalized by Rizal in the character of "Maria Clara" in his novel Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

The others were: Leonor Valenzuela (Filipina), Consuelo Ortiga y Rey (Spanish),Suzanna Jacoby (Belgian),and Josephine Bracken (Irish).

His European friends kept almost everything he gave them, including doodlings on pieces of paper. In the home of a Spanish liberal, Pedro Ortiga y Pérez, he left an impression that was to be remembered by his daughter, Consuelo. In her diary, she wrote of a day Rizal spent there and regaled them with his wit, social graces, and sleight-of-hand tricks. In London, during his research on Morga's writings, he became a regular guest in the home of Dr. Reinhold Rost of the British Museum who referred to him as "a gem of a man. The family of Karl Ullmer, pastor of Wilhelmsfeld, and the Blumentritts saved even buttonholes and napkins with sketches and notes. They were ultimately bequeathed to the Rizal family to form a treasure trove of memorabilia.

In 1890, Rizal, 29, left Paris for Brussels as he was preparing for the publication of his annotations of Antonio de Morga’s “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.” There, he lived in the boarding house of the two Jacoby sisters, Catherina and Suzanna who had a niece also named Suzanna ("Thill"), 16. Historian Gregorio F. Zaide states that Rizal had “his romance with Suzanne Jacoby, 45, the petite niece of his landladies.” Belgian Pros Slachmuylders, however, believed that Rizal had a romance with the niece, Suzanna Thill, in 1890. Rizal's Brussels' stay was short-lived, as he moved to Madrid, leaving the young Suzanna a box of chocolates. Suzanne replied in French: “After your departure, I did not take the chocolate. The box is still intact as on the day of your parting. Don’t delay too long writing us because I wear out the soles of my shoes for running to the mailbox to see if there is a letter from you. There will never be any home in which you are so loved as in that in Brussels, so, you little bad boy, hurry up and come back…” (Oct. 1, 1890 letter). Slachmuylders’ group in 2007 unveiled a historical marker commemorating Rizal’s stay in Brusells in 1890.

Jose Rizal Education

Rizal first studied under the tutelage of Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna. He was sent to Manila and enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree, and at the same time at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Arts and Letters where he studied Philosophy and Letters. Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to study medicine specializing in ophthalmology at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery but did not complete the program claiming discrimination made by the Spanish Dominican friars against the native students.

Rizal, 11 years old, a student at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila.Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Europe: Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid where he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. His education continued at the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg where he earned a second doctorate. In Berlin he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April 1887 before the anthropological society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language. He left Heidelberg a poem, "A las flores del Heidelberg," which was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West.

At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal, completed in 1887 his eye specialization under the renowned professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann von Helmholtz) to later operate on his own mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: “I spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends.” He lived in a Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld, where he wrote the last few chapters of "Noli Me Tangere".

A plaque marks the Heidelberg building where he trained with Professor Becker, while in Wilhemsfeld, a smaller version of the Rizal Park with his bronze statue stands and the street where he lived was also renamed after him. A sandstone fountain in Pastor Ullmer’s house garden where Rizal lived in Wilhelmsfeld, stands.

Rizal's multifacetedness was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Meyer, as "stupendous. Documented studies show him to be a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects. He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright and journalist. Besides poetry and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying degrees of expertise, in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting. He was also a Freemason, joining Acacia Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain and becoming a Master Mason in 1884.

Jose Rizal Ancestry

 Family

Father:
Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado y Alejandro
(1818–1898)

Mother:
Teodora Morales Alonso Realonda y Quintos
(1826–1911)

(They were prosperous farmers who were granted lease of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm by the Dominicans. Rizal was the seventh child of their eleven children )

SIBLINGS:

Saturnina (Neneng) (1850–1913),Paciano (1851–1930),Narcisa (Sisa) (1852–1939),Olympia (Ypia) (1855–1887),Lucia (1857–1919),María (Biang) (1859–1945),José Protasio (1861–1896),Concepción (Concha) (1862–1865),Josefa (Panggoy) (1865–1945),Trinidad (1868–1951),Soledad (Choleng)(1870–1929).

Rizal was a 5th-generation patrilineal descendant of Domingo Lam-co (traditional Chinese: 柯儀南; simplified Chinese: 柯仪南; pinyin: Kē Yínán), a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who sailed to the Philippines from Jinjiang, Quanzhou in the mid-17th century.Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley of Luzon. To free his descendants from the Sinophobic animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the surname to the Spanish "Mercado" (market) to indicate their Chinese merchant roots. In 1849, Governor-General Narciso Claveria ordered all native families in the Philippines to choose new surnames from a list of Spanish family names. José's father Francisco adopted the surname "Rizal" (originally Ricial, the green of young growth or green fields), which was suggested to him by a provincial governor, or as José had described him, "a friend of the family". However, the name change caused confusion in the business affairs of Francisco, most of which were begun under the old name. After a few years, he settled on the name "Rizal Mercado" as a compromise, but usually just used the original surname "Mercado". Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, José dropped the last three names that make up his full name, at the advice of his brother, Paciano Rizal Mercado, and the Rizal Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, Rizal writes: "My family never paid much attention [to our second surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving me the appearance of an illegitimate child!This was to enable him to travel freely and disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with his earlier links with native priests who were sentenced to death as subversives. From early childhood, José and Paciano were already advancing unheard-of political ideas of freedom and individual rights which infuriated the authorities.Despite the name change, José, as "Rizal" soon distinguishes himself in poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that are critical of the Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies. Indeed, by 1891, the year he finished his sunset, this second surname had become so well known that, as he writes to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal instead of Mercado because the name Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and be worthy of this family name... José became the focal point by which the family became known, at least from the point of view of colonial authorities.

Aside from Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that José had traces of Spanish. His maternal great-great-grandfather (Teodora's great-grandfather) was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, who married a native named Benigna (surname unknown). They gave birth to Regina Ursua who married a Tagalog Sangley mestizo from Pangasinán named Manuel de Quintos, Teodora's grandfather. Their daughter Brígida de Quintos married a Spanish mestizo named Lorenzo Alberto Alonso, the father of Teodora. Austin Craig mentions Lakandula, Rajah of Tondo at the time of the Spanish incursion, as an ancestor.

About Dr.Jose Rizal

José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines.


Born June 19, 1861


Calamba, Laguna, Philippines


Died December 30, 1896(1896-12-30) (aged 35)


Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park), Manila, Philippines


Monuments Rizal Park, Manila



Calamba,Laguna


Alma mater Ateneo Municipal de Manila, University of Santo Tomas, Universidad Central de Madrid, University of Paris, Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg


Organization La Solidaridad, La Liga Filipina

                José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda
                                  (Jose Rizal)
        (June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896, Bagumbayan)

was a Filipino polymath, patriot and the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. He is considered a national hero of the Philippines, and the anniversary of Rizal's death is commemorated as a Philippine holiday called Rizal Day. Rizal's 1896 military trial and execution made him a martyr of the Philippine Revolution.

The seventh of eleven children born to a wealthy family in the town of Calamba, Laguna, Rizal attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, earning a Bachelor of Arts. He enrolled in Medicine and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas and then traveled alone to Madrid, Spain, where he continued his studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid, earning the degree of Licentiate in Medicine. He attended the University of Paris and earned a second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg. Rizal was a polyglot conversant in at least ten languages.He was a prolific poet, essayist, diarist, correspondent, and novelist whose most famous works were his two novels, Noli me Tangere and El filibusterismo. These are social commentaries on the Philippines that formed the nucleus of literature that inspired dissent among peaceful reformists and spurred the militancy of armed revolutionaries against the Spanish colonial authorities.

As a political figure, Jose Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led by Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo. He was a proponent of institutional reforms by peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. The general consensus among Rizal scholars, however, attributed his martyred death as the catalyst that precipitated the Philippine Revolution…

The history of the Philippines

The history of the Philippines is believed to have begun with thearrival of the first humans via land bridges at least 30,000 years ago.

The first
recorded visit from the West is the arrival of Ferdinand
Magellan on Homonhon Island, southeast of Samar on March 17, 1521.

Prior to Magellan's arrival, there were Negrito tribes who roamed the isles but they were later
supplanted by Austronesians. These groups then stratified into:
hunter-gatherer tribes, warrior-societies, petty plutocracies and maritime
oriented harbor principalities which eventually grew into kingdoms, rajahnates,
principalities, confederations and sultanates. States such as the Indianized Rajahnate of Butuan and Cebu, the dynasty of Tondo, the august
kingdoms of Maysapan and Maynila, the Confederation of Madyaas, the sinified Country of
Mai, as well as the Muslim Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao. These small states flourished from as
early as the 10th century AD, Despite these kingdoms attaining complex political
and social orders, as well as enjoying trade with areas now called China, India,
Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, none encompassed the whole archipelago
which was to become the unified Philippines of the twentieth century. The
remainder of the settlements were independent Barangays allied with one of the larger nations.
Spanish colonization and settlement began
with the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi's
expedition in 1565 who established the first permanent settlement of San Miguel
on the island of Cebu.

The expedition continued northward reaching the bay of Manila on the island of Luzon in 1571,

where they established a new town and thus began an era of Spanish colonization that
lasted for more than three centuries.

Spanish rule achieved the political unification of almost the whole
archipelago, that previously had been composed by independent kingdoms and
communities, pushing back south the advancing Islamic forces and creating the first draft of the nation
that was to be known as the Philippines. Spain also introduced Christianity,
the code of
law, the oldest Universities and the first public education system in Asia,
the western European version of printing, the Gregorian calendar and invested heavily on
all kinds of modern infrastructures, such as train networks and modern
bridges.
The Spanish
East Indies were ruled as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and
administered from Mexico
City, Mexico from 1565 to 1821, and
administered directly from Madrid, Spain from 1821 until the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898,
except for the brief British occupation of the
Philippines from 1762 to 1764. During the Spanish period, numerous towns
were founded, infrastructures built, new crops and livestock introduced. The
Chinese, British, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and indigenous traders,
complained that the Spanish reduced trade by attempting to enforce a Spanish monopoly. Spanish missionaries
attempted to convert the population to Christianity and were eventually generally
successful in the northern and central lowlands. They founded schools, a
university, and some hospitals, principally in Manila and the largest Spanish
fort settlements. Universal education was made free for all Filipino subjects in
1863 and remained so until the end of the Spanish colonial era. This measure was
at the vanguard of contemporary Asian countries, and led to an important class
of educated natives, like Jose Rizal. Ironically, it was during the initial
years of American occupation in the early 20th century, that Spanish literature
and press flourished.

The Philippine Revolution against Spain began
in April 1896, but it was largely unsuccessful until it received support from
the United States, culminating two years later with a proclamation of
independence and the establishment of the First Philippine Republic. However,
the Treaty
of Paris, at the end of the Spanish–American War, transferred control of the
Philippines to the United
States. This agreement was not recognized by the Philippine Government
which, on June 2, 1899, proclaimed a Declaration of
War against the United States.

The Philippine-American War which ensued
resulted in massive casualties.

Philippine president
Emilio Aguinaldo
was captured in 1901 and the U.S. government declared the conflict officially
over in 1902. The Filipino leaders, for the most part, accepted that the
Americans had won, but hostilities continued and only began to decline in 1913,
leaving a total number of casualties on the Filipino side of more than one
million dead, many of them civilians.

U.S. colonial rule of the Philippines started in 1905 with very limited local
rule. Partial autonomy (commonwealth status) was granted in 1935, preparatory to
a planned full independence from the United States in 1946. Preparation for a

fully sovereign state was interrupted by the Japanese occupation of the islands during World War II.With a promising economy in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philippines in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rise of student activism and civil unrest against the corrupt dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos who declared martial law in 1972.Because of close ties between United States and President Marcos, the U.S. government continued to support Marcos even though his administration was well-known for massive corruption and extensive human rights abuse. The peaceful and bloodless People Power Revolution of 1986, however, brought about the ousting of Marcos and a return to democracy for the country. The period since then, however, has been marked by political instability and hampered economic productivity.