Philippines (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

The Philippines (Spanish: Filipinas), officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (Spanish: República de Filipinas), is a sovereign state in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Takasago Island of Japan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam. The Sulu Sea to the southwest lies between the country and the island of Borneo, and to the south, the Bohol Sea separates it from Mindanao, the main island of Moroland.

It is bounded on the east by the Philippine Sea. Its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and its tropical climate make the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons but have also endowed the country with natural resources and made it one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world.

Politics and government
According to the 1969 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, the Philippines is the sovereign and independent country that governed under the principles of National Democracy.

The President of the Republic of the Philippines (Presidente de la República) is elected by the National Assembly from among its members every five years. The President is the head of state and head of government of the Republic as well as the nominal commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The President has the power to appoint the chairman, vice-chairmen and members of the Council of Ministers.

The National Assembly of the Philippines (Asamblea Nacional) serves as the highest state body in the Philippines. Its members are elected every five years by direct election. The election, however, is only participated in by parties that are recognized as legal under Japanese law, with the Nacionalista Party (Partido Nacionalista) as the leading party.

The National Assembly elects the National Council (Consejo Nacional) from among its members every two years to exercise the power to formulate the national legislation of Philippines and to act on the behalf of the National Assembly if the latter is in recess and not in its legislative session.

The Council of the Ministers of the Philippines (Consejo de Ministros) serves as the country's main administrative body and is headed by the Chairman of the Council who bear the title of Prime Minister (Primer Ministro), assisted by three Vice-Chairmen of the Council, who bear the title of Vice-Prime Ministers (Viceprimer Ministro) and comprised by the Ministers of State of Philippines. The members of the Council of Ministers is appointed directly by the President of the Republic.

The National Court of the Philippines (Tribunal Nacional) serves as the country's supreme judicature in charge of judicial matters and supervision and administration of lower courts. All judges of the Court are appointed by the National Assembly. The National Procuratorate of the Philippines (Procuraduría Nacional) charged with both the investigation and prosecution of crime at the national level and supervised the state procuratorates in every levels below.

Spanish East Indies (1521–1916)
In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Philippines and claimed the islands for Spain. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. Colonization began when Spanish explorer Miguel López de Legazpi arrived from Mexico in 1565 and formed the first European settlements in Cebu. In 1571, the Spanish established Manila as the capital of the Spanish East Indies.

Spanish rule contributed significantly to bringing political unity to the archipelago. From 1565 to 1821, Philippines was governed as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and then was administered directly from Madrid after the Mexican War of Independence. Roman Catholic missionaries converted most of the lowland inhabitants to Christianity and founded schools, a university and hospitals.

In the 19th century, Philippine ports were opened to world trade and shifts were occurring within Philippine society. Many Spaniards born in the Philippines and those of mixed ancestry became wealthy. The influx of Spanish and Latino settlers secularized churches and opened up government positions traditionally held by Spaniards born in the Iberian Peninsula.

and the started the Philippine Revolution in 1896. A faction of the Katipunan, the Magdalo of Cavite province, eventually came to challenge Bonifacio's position as the leader of the revolution and Emilio Aguinaldo took over. The revolution soon was put down violently by the colonial authority. Aguinaldo and several revolutionary leaders later went to self-exile first in Hong Kong and then in Tokyo.

Spanish–Japanese War (1898–1901)
On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, having been sent to Cuba because of U.S. concerns for the safety of its citizens during an ongoing Cuban rebellion, exploded and sank in Havana harbor, led to the Spanish-American War (1898–1900). At the same time, Japan alarmed with the growing influences of Spain's ally, Germany in Asia, also prepared to pre-emptively invade the Spanish East Indies, resulted in a separate Spanish-Japanese War (1898–1901). Japan then invited Aguinaldo to return to the Philippine islands, hoped he would rally more Filipinos against the Spanish colonial government.

After an exhaustive three-year's fighting, the Spanish and the Japanese finally agreed to make peace on May 2, 1901 that resulted in the Treaty of Brussels. The treaty formally ended hostilities between two parties and returned to the status quo ante bellum without any territorial gains for Japan. Unlike many Philippine leaders that were jailed or executed by the Spanish colonial government, Aguinaldo was able to escape from the Philippines with the help of the future President of Japan, Nagayama Yoshida, who was then a Japanese military attache to Aguinaldo's army, and went into exile again in Tokyo. In his exile, Aguinaldo founded the Insular Society (Spanish: Insular Sociedad) in 1904.

Unlike Cuba, the Philippines was never granted a right to send its representatives to the Cortes as well as had the same degree of political and cultural autonomy. Instead, it was still being ruled directly from Madrid with a Captaincy-General in Manila as the representation of the Spanish government. Similarly with the other European colonies in Southeast Asia such the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya, the Spanish East Indies was also subjected into the economic exploitation for its sugar, rubber and other agricultural products.

World War I (1914–1916)
By the dawn of World War I, the Spanish East Indies was Spain's most precious colony on its empire. As the memories of Spanish-Japanese War still remained, the colonial government ordered the mobilization of Spanish Indies Army immediately after the Spanish declaration of war to the Entente on August 5, 1914. The Moro Legion which already formed earlier for the purpose of maintaining peace and order in the colony was incorporated into the Spanish Indies Army. The combined forces of the colonial army with 300,000 Spanish soldiers, 2500 Moro soldiers, 1620 Filipino recruits, and 104 warships, however, was still outnumbered by 500,000 Japanese naval infantry and 112 warships that had stationed on Takasago.

After a lengthy deliberation between political factions within the Imperial Diet, Japan finally declared war to the Central Powers on November 31, 1914 and invaded the Spanish East Indies on the night of December 1, 1914. The most dramatic naval battle between the Spanish Armada and the Imperial Japanese Navy occurred at the Philippine Sea on December 27, 1914, sunken 56 war vessels and killed more than 4000 servicemen from both sides. The battles between Japanese and Spanish forces on the Spanish East Indies were proved to be the most notable fighting on the Asian and Pacific theatre on World War I. The fighting would lasting until 1916, following the Japanese victory at the Battle of Mindanao.

Japanese South Pacific (1916–1950)
In 1917, the Japanese South Pacific was declared to replace the Spanish colonial administration in the Philippine Archipelago. The Japanese colonial government divided the archipelago into three provinces: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Among the Japanese early policies in the archipelago were including disestablishing the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines as the state religion, replacing all street names from the Spanish into the Japanese ones, implementing the mandatory teaching of Japanese language in schools, improving the health care service throughout the islands, and suppressing the rebellious locals.

Unlike in Korea, the situation in the Japanese South Pacific remained stable and peaceful and daily activities in the colony were mainly undisturbed by the revolutionary waves that swept Japan between 1918 and 1924. Governor-General of the Japanese South Pacific, Katō Tomosaburō, who had been secretly sympathetic to the Republican cause, ordered the Japanese troops in the Japanese South Pacific to maintain their neutrality and not to side with either the Loyalists or the Republicans during the early years of the revolution until the winning side of the war could be clear enough to be seen.

Following the establishment of Republic of Japan in 1919, the Second Philippine National Assembly was convened at Manila on March 17, 1919 that passed the "Declaration of Purposes" which expressed a desire for a free and sovereign Philippine nation. The copy of that declaration was sent to Governor-General Katō. However, Katō who wants for the status quo, refused to accept its provisions. To compensate the Assembly's demands, Katō established the Central Advisory Council on May 29, 1919 that consists of fifteen Philippine prominent figures, including Emilio Aguinaldo, Isabelo de los Reyes, Gregorio Aglipay and Abdul Bagui Hadji Butu.

When Katō died in office in 1923, the Republican government in Kyoto appointed the Director of the South Pacific Civil Administration Bureau, Shimamura Hiroshi, as his replacement. With the Republican Navy's support, Shimamura declared the South Pacific Islands as a dependency of the Republic of Japan on September 2, 1923. The General Government of the Philippines was formed on September 10, 1923 and Emilio Aguinaldo was the elected first President of the Government.

To consolidate the power of new government, Aguinaldo tasked Sergio Osmeña to set up a merger of the Insular Society with other smaller political parties and clubs to form the Nacionalista Party (Spanish: Partido Nacionalista, "Nationalist Party") in 1924. The Nacionalista Party organization was modeled after the Nationalist Party of Japan which its established the solid dominance over the country's politics through the highly supervised elections and the rigid hierarchical system of indirect elections. Osmeña was elected its first president, served between 1924 and 1935, although the actual powers of the party's leadership vested on Aguinaldo as the honorary president.

During 1910s and 1920s, the economy of the Japanese South Pacific was primarily based on agriculture for products, such coconut, sugar, and timber. To further advances the islands' economy, the General Government started the process of industrialization by implementing the First Five-Year Plan that modeled after the Soviet's Five-Year Plan and Japan's Great Economic Plan in 1930. Land ownership also became a major issue during this period. In 1926, the General Government issued a decree which called for the breakup of the large estates owned by wealthy landowners, especially the ones who resisted the Nacionalista rule. The assets of rebellious merchants were seized and all banks operated in the islands were nationalized by the government.