Chapter 10 The Two Yoshikos

Although arrangements for my exclusive affiliation with Man’ei

remained unchanged after 1941, the fi lms in which I appeared from then on were

almost all Japanese; indoor shooting at Man’ei’s Xinjing studio was becoming extremely rare. After I finished the first stage of my location shootings and troop

visits, I was often able to return to my parents’ home in Beijing instead of staying

in Xinjing where Man’ei’s headquarters was located.

Since Yamaga Tōru was still with the Press Division of Beijing’s North China

Area Army, he often came to visit my family. But he was no longer the same “knight

in shining armor” as before. In the past, he would listen to all my troubles and

advise me on all kinds of trivial matters. Before I knew it, however, our roles were

completely reversed. Even though I was younger, it was I who was becoming his

consultant on matters of love.

Yamaga was definitely not the good-looking type, but his style and demeanor

made him a charming man. The smile on his face, displaying a sense of unperturbed composure, brought to mind the dignified manners of a distinguished Chinese gentleman. As I think back on our long friendship, I have almost no recollection of seeing him in military uniform. Perhaps due to his role as an intelligence

officer, he either wore a specially tailored suit or a classy Chinese outfit. He didn’t

trim his hair like a soldier, but wore it long and parted it smartly. Handicapped

from typhoid fever, he often walked with a stick.

Even though he was a Japanese soldier, he never acted with boorish arrogance

or made a noisy fuss or impossible demands. I suppose that was why he was a favorite among women. Every time he sought consultation with me, it was always

about his affairs with the opposite sex. I don’t quite understand why he chose to

consult me on such matters, considering my young age and my lack of experience

in that area. But behind his problems was always a common thread involving

a mutual friend of ours, Kawashima Yoshiko. I suppose that might have been

the explanation.

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He had been a student on consignment from the army at the Tokyo School of

Foreign Languages (present-day Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) and was later

initiated into Chinese by Kawashima Yoshiko while he was with the Matsumoto

Regiment. He went on to pursue further studies in Beijing, polishing his Chinese

language skills in a manner that set him apart from other Japanese. Normally, in

our conversations we used a mixture of Chinese and Japanese, but when we discussed his romantic affairs, we used only Chinese.

He had a habit of saying, “Japanese women have no appeal for me. They are

always fidgeting about this and that, and I’m totally at a loss as to what they may

be thinking.” Indeed, his romantic partners were always Chinese women. In fact,

in both his public and private life, he had more Chinese acquaintances than Japanese; he even seemed to be deliberately avoiding the latter.

He was married once and had a child, but his wife had died a long time ago.

With no apparent desire to remarry, he had a good time being a bachelor and proceeded to earn a scandalous reputation from his affairs with various attractive

ladies. I wonder whether their being exclusively Chinese had anything to do with

the fact that his first love, Kawashima Yoshiko, was a Chinese woman. Apparently,

their love-hate relationship dragged on for a long time. He told me, “There is just

no telling what this woman Yoshiko will do. When I returned home from the command post, it was all empty. She came when I was out and just took everything away

in a car.” It was not just the expensive cameras he was so proud of—his Contax and

Leica—she took everything, from his Western-style clothes to his underwear.

“Well, I guess it’s not too bad as I can buy these things again. Thanks to her, I now

have a new suit and new shoes,” he said with a bitter smile. I heard that similar incidents happened quite often. If he found himself at his wit’s end and ended up

going to Kawashima’s place to get his things back, he would just play right into her

hands; she was not going to let go of his possessions, or his body, so easily.

During my stay in my parents’ home in Beijing, I would meet with friends

from my schoolgirl days and go out shopping with my sisters on Wangfujing and

Qianmen streets, but I almost never went to nightclubs or dance halls. I also rarely

attended parties hosted by local luminaries for fear of meeting Kawashima Yoshiko. She misunderstood my relationship with Yamaga and was spreading rumors about me in nightclubs and parties. Blending truth with fiction, she would

apparently tell stories like these about me:

That bitch Li Xianglan! She has the audacity to betray me after I took such

good loving care of her ever since her schoolgirl days! I bought her a piano,

I even built her a house! And now that she is a star, she doesn’t even look at

me. That woman became an actress only because I asked Yamaga to get her

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into Man’ei. That ungrateful wretch! She knows damn well my relationship

with Yamaga and now she steals him from under me! Biting the hand that

feeds her, that’s what it is!

Town gossips had it that Kawashima was particularly skilled in babbling the

first thing that came into her head in order to patch things up for the moment. In

fact, many rumors had been circulating to the effect that she was utilizing her past

relationship with such top army commanders as Lieutenant General Tada Hayao

to swindle money. It was true that when I spent my summer vacation in Tianjin

as a young student, Kawashima was quite fond of me, calling me her “Yoko-chan.”

But all I had gotten from her, as I mentioned earlier, were two Chinese dresses.

My “relationship” with Yamaga was a total misunderstanding on her part. As I

talked with him about his love affairs time and again, I came to understand the

reason for such a misunderstanding. Yamaga had been having an intimate relationship with the Man’ei actress Li Ming. Upon hearing rumors about a certain

“Man’ei actress named Li,” Kawashima quickly jumped to the mistaken conclusion that that person was Li Xianglan.1

In 1937 when Kawakita Nagamasa of the Tōwa Trading Company was making a fi lm called Path Toward Oriental Peace (Tōyō heiwa no michi, scripted and

directed by Suzuki Jūkichi), he was thinking of using only Chinese actors recruited

in Beijing for its leading roles. Out of three hundred applicants, six were chosen.

Two of them were females—Li Ming and Bai Guang. Because Li was able to speak

the Beijing dialect, she was scouted by Man’ei and came to Xinjing. Standing nearly

at five feet, ten inches, she was a glamorous woman with translucent skin and a

frosty beauty. She walked with slight difficulty, and when shooting running scenes,

we always used a stand-in.

As both Li Ming and Bai Guang lived in Beijing, both of them were regular

guests at the residence of Yamaga, who was responsible for operations with the

local media such as newspapers and films. In time, Li and Yamaga became lovers,

and Kawashima must have heard rumors about them.

When Kawashima became emotionally agitated, there was no telling what she

might contrive to do. Without ascertaining the truth of the matter, she went ahead

and secretly informed the military police that “Major Yamaga and Li Xianglan

are having a scandalous affair.”

One day, after having a little chitchat with Father at our house, Yamaga brought

me out to Wangfujing. Ordinarily, he would have talked fondly about his love affairs while sipping his laojiu,2 but on that day, he looked a bit depressed.

To tell you the truth, the military police called me in today. When I got there,

there was a preposterous secret report saying that Li Xianglan is having an

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intimate relationship with Yamaga to fish out secret information about the

Japanese army and pass it on to Chinese operatives. Just complete nonsense!

The military police also thought it was a prank against me and didn’t take it

seriously. But I was tartly told to be careful as there are all kinds of rumors

about me flying around. Judging from the person’s handwriting, it was from

Yoshiko!

The military police undoubtedly knew that Yamaga was living with Li Ming and

that the secret informant had made a mistake in her smear operation. Furthermore, after investigating the matter, the military police apparently also found out

that the informant was Kawashima Yoshiko. In time, this episode also reached

the ears of Lieutenant General Tada Hayao, Commander in Chief of the North

China Area Army.3

Lieutenant General Tada, Kawashima’s patron, had appointed Jin Bihui as

Commander of the Rehe Pacification Army (Ankoku-gun) and built the House

of the Rising East (Dongxinglou) in Tianjin for her hideout.4 Then, rumors began

to circulate that Kawashima, calling the Lieutenant General “Papa,” had been

using his authority to her own advantage. By this time, as far as Tada was concerned, Kawashima Yoshiko was turning increasingly into an inconvenient irritant in both their personal relationship and in his efforts toward promoting continental strategies for the Japanese army. At last, he gave a top secret order that

Kawashima “be eliminated.”

From around 1940, Kawashima Yoshiko spent her unhappy days going back

and forth between three different locations—Tianjin’s Dongxinglou, her Beijing

residence, and Hakata’s Hotel Seiryūsō. She would ordinarily have someone take

care of Dongxinglou’s management and retire to her Beijing home. The reason she

periodically visited Fukuoka was to meet with right-wing bigwigs such as Tōyama

Mitsuru of the Black Ocean Society (Gen’yōsha). It appeared that this was also

the time that she began her association with Sasakawa Ryōichi, head of the Great

Japan National Essence Mass Party (Dai Nippon Kokusui Taishūtō).5 When I

met Kawashima in Hakata’s Hotel Seiryūsō, she said, “Sasakawa-onii-chan6 and

I are forming a new political organization. Won’t you join us, Yoko-chan?”

According to Yamaoka Sōhachi’s The Unprecedented: Sasakawa Ryōichi the

Man (Hatenkō: Ningen Sasakawa Ryōichi, 1978), a depiction of the dramatic first

half of Sasakawa’s life, Kawashima flew all the way to Kyushu to meet Sasakawa,

the man she adored for having rescued her from Tada’s assassination orders. But

the story I heard directly from Yamaga was a little different:

Yoshiko wrote a letter criticizing the actions of the Japanese army on the Chinese continent and had it disseminated among Japan’s political and military

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big shots such as Tōjō Hideki, Matsuoka Yōsuke, and Tōyama Mitsuru. While

making an appeal for a peaceful engagement with Chiang Kai-shek, she also

spared no efforts in condemning Tada. Part of that was due to her personal

grudge against the Lieutenant General for having turned a cold shoulder on

her, but the letter was also fi lled with her own disenchantment with the Japanese military. In any case, if Tada didn’t act, things would only get thornier

for him—that’s why he decided to ‘dispose of’ Yoshiko. Thereupon, he gave

me the order to do it. He knew about my past with Yoshiko, and I think he

did it half out of spite.

At the time, Kawashima had already been separated from Tada, and gossip

had been swirling about her affair with a certain member of the general staff named

Tamiya. There were also rumors that she was a double agent, making her a source

of headache for the Japanese North China Area Army, and particularly for Lieutenant General Tada. If her direct appeal was taken seriously by army headquarters in Japan, he himself could be directly implicated. I suppose that was why he

thought of taking her out.

Yamaga continued his story:

She was just stirring up too much trouble for the army. Personally, I myself

have suffered quite a bit because of her. But I couldn’t bear to carry out the

order to ‘eliminate’ her. I had known the woman for a long time, and she was,

even if for a short while, the princess from the house of Prince Su of the Qing

Dynasty and a relative of the Manchurian Emperor. So, I took full personal

responsibility by ordering her temporary deportation out of the country to

Japan. Now, I am sure she is resting quietly in Unzen in Kyushu.

That came as a surprise to me: Are we to believe that in order to dispose of a former mistress who had now turned into a nuisance, Lieutenant General Tada was

ordering the man who had been her first love to be her assassin? The ironic twist

in the plot was truly more bizarre than fiction.

According to Yamaoka’s aforementioned book, however, the order to carry

out the assassination was given to Major General Yuri from the military police.7

Then, which version was true? Perhaps both were. Regardless of what channel it

went through, Tada’s order for the assassination of Kawashima came from the top

down. As far as the Lieutenant General was concerned, whoever the executioner

might be, he didn’t care as long as someone removed his obstacle.

According to Yamaoka’s account, in June 1940, Major General Yuri, the commander of the military police, visited his old acquaintance Sasakawa who was

then staying in Beijing. He told Sasakawa that he had been ordered by the Com-

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mander of the North China Army to assassinate Kawashima. Unable to bring

himself to dispose of a woman who already had been exploited to the full by the

military, he asked if something could be done. Sympathetic with Kawashima’s

predicament, Sasakawa met with her, then under house arrest, and ascertained

her desire to flee. He then took her to Dalian’s Hoshigaura Hotel, and there, the

two became intimate. Afterwards, Kawashima allowed her yearnings for Sasakawa

to grow, calling him affectionately her “dear brother” (onii-chan) and following

him everywhere through Kyushu, Osaka, and Tokyo. When the busy Sasakawa

couldn’t pay her sufficient attention, Kawashima would send him a telegram

announcing, “Yoshiko dying.” Once Sasakawa was shocked into returning,

Kawashima would cling to him with tears and thwart any attempt on his part

to leave. When the two got into bed, Sasakawa was not allowed any sleep for the

entire night.

I think it was around this time that I, too, ran into Kawashima at Hotel

Seiryūsō. Having finished shooting in Tokyo, I went to Hakata for a flight to Shanghai. In front of the hotel vestibule was a large gathering of people. From the crowd,

I heard a voice calling me, “Hey, Yoko-chan. I’ve been waiting for you because

they said you’re coming.” She was wearing a kimono made of fine linen fastened

with a heko-obi,8 and her hair was cut short just as before. I was astonished but

pretended to be calm.

Exactly at that moment, without any warning or hesitation, Kawashima rolled

up the skirt of her kimono and exposed her naked thigh, revealing a fresh scar

and injection marks. “See, this is how I’ve suffered,” she said. “See what terrible

things the Japa nese army did to me after what I’ve done for them! Th is scar is

the evidence!”

I was totally taken aback—adding to my surprise of abruptly running into

somebody I didn’t expect to see was the unanticipated sight of a raised kimono in

plain sight of everyone. As I was with my attendant, Ms. Atsumi, and my accompanying staff, I left the scene with a quick goodbye.

Kawashima showed up in my room before dinner. She told me that she had

read a short report in the local paper that I would be taking a flight from Hakata

to Shanghai and took the trouble of coming all the way to Hakata and taking a

room at the same hotel. She also said the following:

The mother of Kawashima [Kawashima’s adopted father] is getting a little

funny in the head and is now resting in Unzen. I am here to look after her.

(Not aware that I knew that she had received her deportation order in Beijing

and was secretly hiding in Unzen, she was making up the story at the spur of

the moment.)

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Look at you, you’ve become a really popu lar star! There are plans to make a

fi lm called The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko (Kawashima Yoshiko den), and I

want you to play me in the leading role.

(That was the first time I heard about such a plan.)

Right now, I am making plans for a great national enterprise that will become

a legacy for future generations. I, Kawashima Yoshiko, will join hands with

Chiang Kai-shek. Sasakawa Ryōichi and I have formed a new political organization, and Matsuoka Yōsuke and Tōyama Mitsuru will offer their cooperation. Now, I am asking you to join us!

(I declined on the excuse of being too busy.)

I’ve done something bad to you, Yoko-chan, like suspecting you were with

Yamaga. The other woman was apparently Li Ming. Even so, Yamaga was unforgivable! Yamaga, Tanaka [Takayoshi], Tada [Hayao]. . . . Shame on all Japanese military men!

That was the only explanation and apology she gave for smearing me.

At that point, Atsumi came in to let me know about a staff meeting. After

telling me only what she wanted to say, Kawashima left the scene. That was the

last time I saw her.

It might have been around three o’clock in the morning. I was awakened by

a rustling sound outside the mosquito net. There seemed to be someone out there,

and the net was trembling. I jumped out of bed and looked around but found not

a soul. At my bedside was a thick envelope. Inside was a letter containing probably thirty or so pages densely written with purple ink. I remember that the handwriting was good, although the crudely composed prose differed little from colloquial Japanese. “Yoko-chan, I was happy to see you after such a long while. From

now on, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Th is may be the last time we

see each other.” The tone of the letter was subdued.

Come to think of it, what does my life mean after all? I feel very empty inside.

Let me tell you, as long as people praise you to the skies, those are the best

days. But at a time like that, people who want to use you just come swarming

around. Don’t let those guys drag you by the nose. Do what you think is right.

The best time is right now, a time to say what’s really on your mind. Do what

you really want to do. If you want a good example of someone who was used

and dumped like a piece of garbage, look closely at me. I’m offering you this

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155

advice from my own bitter experiences. Now, I feel like I’m standing in the

vast wilderness and staring at the sun going down. I feel all alone. Tell me where

I should go by myself!

I was stunned. This was a letter from someone who had been at the center of so

much fanfare, a woman looked upon with as much admiration as disdain as

the Mata Hari of the Orient and the Joan of Arc of Manchuria. Th is was the

fi rst time that I was impressed with Kawashima’s human qualities to this degree.

She continued:

Although you and I were born in different countries, we have many things in

common. We even have the same name, and you’re always on my mind. I

often listen to your records, particularly songs like “China Nights,” which

I’ve heard hundreds of times to the point where the surface of the record has

turned white.

It was true that I sang “China Nights” in the film itself, but the recording was done

by Watanabe Hamako. Even when Kawashima was expressing her deep emotions,

it was quite characteristic of her to somehow make things up for the moment.

Kawashima Yoshiko witnessed the end of the war in her home in Beijing. I

have heard that she had approached Mrs. Tōjō Hideki, by whose good offices she

was allowed to return from Kyushu to Beijing, but I am not sure if that was true.

But if Lieutenant General Tada had known that General Tōjō was behind her, it

would most likely have been impossible even for him to impose his will and carry

out his assassination plan. Together with her beloved monkey, Kawashima seemed

able to enjoy a transient moment of peace in her Beijing home.

On October 10, 1945, Kawashima was arrested in her own home and incarcerated in the First Beijing Prison to await trial under the charge of treason to China.

On October 22, 1947, she received a death sentence, and on March 25, 1948, she

was executed before a firing squad on the execution ground of the same prison.

Details of her life, including circumstances of her trial and her execution, can be

found in such books as [Watanabe Ryūsaku’s] Kawashima Yoshiko: Truths and Mysteries in Her Life (Kawashima Yoshiko: Sono shōgai no shinsō to nazo) and Kamisaka Fuyuko’s The Beauty in Male Costume: A Biography of Kawashima Yoshiko

(Dansō no reijin: Kawashima Yoshiko den, 1984).

The Rinzai Sect priest Furukawa Taikō from the Myōshin Temple had the dead

body cremated.9 A week later on March 31, the remains were placed in Guanyin

Temple in Beijing’s Dongdan region. A small funeral was held with the attendance

of fourteen to fifteen concerned Japanese whom he had invited. Priest Furukawa

had wished to have as many Japanese attendants as possible, but the confusion

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associated with the postwar period, along with perhaps a fear of future repercussions, led to the participation of only a small number of Japanese.

My sisters Etsuko and Kiyoko happened to visit the temple right after the funeral and heard from the priest a detailed account of the ceremony. Placed before

the memorial tablet with Kawashima’s posthumous Buddhist name, Aishin

Hekitaimyōhō-daishi,10 were her Chinese dress and trousers worn in prison and

such items as her hot water bottle. Especially eye-catching was an apparently unworn white formal habutae kimono, her best dress. When asked before her execution if she had any final wish, she reportedly implored that she be allowed to

die “not in a prisoner’s uniform but in a kimono”—referring to the white habutae; her wish was not granted.

Since the corpse’s face was completely shattered beyond recognition by bullets, there came into being a popu lar story according to which a switch had taken

place between Kawashima and the deceased body of another female prisoner, a

pickpocket. It was said that the real Kawashima had bribed the prison chief with

gold bars to secure her secret escape and that she was still alive. Hushed ghostly

rumors were told that night after night a Japanese woman in an elegant white silk

kimono was haunting the vicinity of her Beijing home.11

Born on May 24, 1906, Kawashima was exactly forty-one years and ten months

old at the time of her execution. That her age was alternatively given as thirty or

thirty-one in certain foreign-language reports was the result of her own bogus

claims. She also reportedly lied to Sasakawa that she was ten years younger, an

act emanating, I suppose, from her woman’s heart. But declaring an age younger

than her own before a court was Kawashima’s last desperate strategy for getting

a verdict of innocence or a reduced sentence. Realizing that she would be treated

as a person under age if she had been under sixteen at the time of the 1931 Manchurian Incident, she proceeded to make herself younger by counting backward

and stated her birth year as 1916. She was prosecuted as a traitor to China, but it

must have occurred to her that if her acts had been committed while under age,

she would be eligible for considerations of extenuating circumstances.

Furthermore, if she could prove on the family register that she was the adopted daughter of Kawashima Naniwa, thereby establishing her Japanese status,

she could perhaps be absolved of her crime as a traitor to China itself. Being a

hanjian meant having committed a treasonous act against one’s own country,

as in a Chinese betraying China. In China, that crime was inapplicable to a Japanese person.

With that in mind, she attempted to obtain a copy of the family register that

could provide proof from the village office in the suburbs of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, the legal address of Kawashima Naniwa on the register. During

her trial and while in prison, she repeatedly requested her adopted father to

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send her such a copy, with due revision made about her age to make her ten

years younger.

What she did receive by mail from Japan, however, was simply one statement

from Kawashima Naniwa, first explaining that his copy of the family register was

lost in the fire following the Kantō Earthquake and was no longer in existence. It

went on to state in effect that Kawashima Yoshiko was born as the fourteenth

daughter to Prince Su of the Qing Dynasty and that Kawashima Naniwa, himself

childless, adopted her as his daughter in October 1913 at the age of seven, thereby

making her Japa nese. The declaration ended with an authentication from the

village head under his hand and seal.

In reality, “Kawashima Yoshiko,” who everyone thought was Kawashima Naniwa’s adopted daughter and Japanese, hadn’t had her name entered into the Kawashima family register. In other words, from the legal point of view, she had been

Chinese since birth, and China was, in name and in fact, her own country. She

herself was ignorant of this fact until death. She had been expecting her release

as a foreigner, but if one applied the definition of a hanjian as “a Chinese who has

betrayed her country,” she fully qualified. A copy of a family register, a mere scrap

of paper, indeed determined life or death.

*

*

*

At the end of January 1950, two years after the death of Kawashima Yoshiko, Yamaga Tōru killed himself in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture. Both had

been involved in intelligence and conspiracy operations on the Chinese continent

while maintaining their love-hate relationship. One died by execution and the other

committed suicide; nothing could have anticipated such violent ends.

Yamaga Tōru’s family house is in the city of Shizuoka. According to his niece,

Yamaga Chika, who is currently working for the Education Committee for Shizuoka City, Yamaga’s family could be traced to a hatamoto lineage in the direct

ser vice of the Tokugawa government, in a post that had been transferred to Suruga (present-day Shizuoka) from Kōfu.12 His father, Kenjirō, worked in the production and export of tea, the traditional local industry. Since he had also lived

in the United States, he was regarded as a yōkō-gaeri, a returnee from the West

and someone who was in the vanguard of his time. After his return to Japan, he

taught English in Shizuoka Secondary School under the old system while serving

as a Christian minister. Even though certain biographical accounts describe him

as a diplomat and Tōru a product of a mixed marriage between Kenjirō and an

American woman, that is incorrect.

Tōru was the oldest son, and had a younger brother and two sisters. After graduating from the old Shizuoka Secondary School, he entered the Army Academy

and graduated as a low-ranking officer (rikushi) from the Thirty-Third Class. A

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few years later, he entered the Tokyo School for Foreign Languages as a student

on consignment. Since he said he was studying Chinese and Mongolian there, it

was likely that he had already decided that the Chinese continent was to be the

arena of his activity as a military man. That he met Kawashima Yoshiko while

serving as a lieutenant in the Machine Gun Division of the Fift ieth Matsumoto

Regiment was a result of his connections with Kawashima Naniwa’s ManchurianMongolian lobby group.13

Yamaga served as the standard-bearer for the Matsumoto Regiment, a highly

regarded position. In 1927, after his ser vice ended, he went to Beijing to become a

research student in languages and flawlessly mastered Mandarin in just about two

years. Calling himself by his Chinese name of Wang Jiaheng, he became active in

intelligence, propaganda, and pacification operations as a member of the Press

Division.

It was during this time, in 1930, that he fell passionately in love with Kiyoko,

the only daughter of a Japanese newspaperman whom he befriended in Beijing.

Despite the birth of their daughter, Hiroko, in 1933, he left his wife in his parents’

home in Shizuoka and went to work in Fengtian by himself. It was in those days

that Yamaga became a frequent visitor to our house.

His married life ended in five short years; indeed, his days together with his

wife totaled no more than just a few months. In 1938, his wife, already in delicate

health, passed away; his life as a widower began the year I was scouted as a Man’ei

actress. His chaotic sexual liaisons and his downfall induced by alcohol and opium

were probably not unrelated to the resumption of his “relationship” with Kawashima Yoshiko immediately after the untimely death of Kiyoko.

After his transfer from Manchukuo’s Fengtian Press Division to Beijing’s Press

Division for the Japanese North China Army, he was engaged in cultural operations in northern China from his base, the “Yamaga Residence” in the Nanchizi

area.14 His main mission was the publication of a Chinese language paper called

Report on Martial Virtues (Wudebao), along with the organization of a new-style

drama troupe and the supervision of the production, distribution, and screening

of fi lms. He was soon promoted from major to lieutenant colonel.

One tendency arising from his many work-related acquaintances with Chinese journalists, intellectuals, and those in the drama and fi lm circles was the increasing flamboyance of his lifestyle. There were always beautiful women around

him, and there was alcohol, and then narcotics. I wonder whether his glitzy romantic liaisons were a result of Yamaga’s exploitation of the actresses for the purpose of intelligence gathering, or whether it was the actresses themselves who

sought fame or more desirable movie roles by prostituting themselves to the top

operative in the game of cultural propaganda. I suppose both dynamics were at

work. People currying favor with the powerful often stirred up ugly competitions

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159

and slander. Naturally, scandalous rumors were flying wildly all over town.

For example:

—Yamaga Tōru was the man behind the founding of the all-Chinese New People’s Drama Guild (Xinmin-hui), and there wasn’t a single female performer in the group with whom he hadn’t taken liberties.

—In order to receive a special allotment of printing paper, a certain Chinese

newspaper organized a beauty contest around the Qianmen Street area

(Qianmen Dajie).15 The Chinese girl chosen as Miss Qianmen Dajie was

duly presented to Yamaga as a human sacrifice.

—A picture published in propaganda leaflets to inspire enemy surrender with

its depiction of outrageous epicurean and sexual abandon was an exact

replica of a night scene at the “Yamaga Residence.”

—After making the Beijing actress Li Ming his mistress, Yamaga exerted pressure on film producers to have her star in leading roles. At the same time,

he had sexual liaisons with Li’s rival, Bai Guang, in order to fan competition between the two for his favor.

Naturally, those rumors were exaggerations, and yet they were not entirely baseless. For instance, his relationships with Li Ming and Bai Guang were true.

In 1942, Yamaga was transferred to the army’s Nanjing’s Press Division. Thereupon, it was rumored that Li Ming promptly followed him all the way there while

trying to break into Shanghai fi lm circles by using Yamaga’s behind-the-scenes

influence. When I was traveling from Beijing to Shanghai for the shooting of Glory

to Eternity,16 I stopped over in Nanjing to pay Yamaga a courtesy call. Not having

seen him for quite a while, I thought he looked a little gaunt.

While we were driving toward the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in the city suburbs, Yamaga led off by saying, “You know the actress Bai Guang, don’t you?”

I thought to myself, “Ha-ha! This must be a continuing chapter in the series

of his love troubles.” Yamaga went on: “Just a while ago, Bai Guang came to tell

me that Li Ming had a young Chinese boyfriend. She said that Li’s willingness to

be my mistress even though she had her own lover was due to her desire to exploit the Press Division’s influence to get herself introduced to famous directors

in the Shanghai fi lm industry, that Li simply wanted to use me for that purpose.

Apparently, the monthly allowance Li Ming got from me all went to her loverboy. Now, Yoko-chan, what do you think about this matter?”

I wasn’t quite sure what I could possibly say by way of a response. I knew Bai

Guang well; she was a luscious type of actress. Just as rumors had it, it was probably

true that she was trying to edge out Li Ming so that she herself could stand in Yamaga’s favor. The story that Li Ming had a young lover was probably also accurate.

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“What do you think of Bai Guang?” I asked.

“I suppose you could say she’s a little more honest than Li Ming. She said that

she felt sorry for me after seeing what Li Ming had done—getting pretty angry

herself! For goodness sake, those two had been good friends and made their debut at the same time! Now they don’t even speak to each other. Just can’t figure

out women!”17

While I could understand Yamaga’s bewilderment, it was a luxury few could

afford. In the end, he was just telling me about another one of his amorous conquests. Yet from the way he narrated the story, I could tell that he was beginning

to shift his affection from Li Ming to Bai Guang.

Yamaga’s ser vice in Nanjing lasted for only a few short months, after which

he began working in Shanghai. I continued to hear stories about his romantic

adventures there. When he came for a visit to my room in Broadway Mansion right

after his transfer, he showed up as quite a dandy. Smartly dressed in a stunning

pure-white sharkskin jacket, he had a vivacity of spirit a world apart from his former self in Nanjing.

Wasting no time, he proceeded to relay his new story: “Let me tell you, I finally left Li Ming. Oh, it was a big, miserable mess! There was crying, shouting,

yelling, and pleading. And at last, in a rage, she said that she’s going to kill Bai

Guang.” After giving his full report on his breakup as if it had nothing to do with

him, he simply said, “I’m now living with Bai Guang.”

That night, I was invited to a party held at his room at the Cathay Hotel. It

was thrown for those associated with China’s new theater movement, and I was

told that it would be to my advantage to meet the scores of invited guests affiliated with the fi lm industry. But the real purpose, it seemed, was for me to meet

Bai Guang so that I could have a chance to “get acquainted” with her.

Bai Guang was her usual glamorous self. Her demeanor clearly revealed her

adoration and love for Yamaga. In contrast to Li Ming, she was unreservedly goodnatured and cheerful in spirit.

The party was quite a gathering. Despite recurrent anti-Japanese terrorist acts,

I was impressed by what Yamaga had accomplished; he was perhaps the only one

capable of throwing a party with exclusively Chinese guests. As could be expected

from those associated with the new theater movement, many of whom held radical ideas, much of their conversation was about the anti-Japanese movement. I was

stunned by the fact that nobody seemed to have any reservations as to what the

authorities might do to them as they self-assuredly leveled their bold criticism

against Japan. While the host himself was the top man in the Press Division of

the Japanese army, he looked more becoming in his Chinese dress than his Chinese guests themselves as he weaved his way around a wave of people with his walk-

The Two Yoshikos

161

ing stick in hand and a constant smile on his face. At times, he would stop to join

in a little chitchat and laughter.

“The only good thing that has happened to Shanghai after the Japanese occupation is the presence of a powerful military police here. Now, the city’s law and

order have much improved,” a young stage director named Cao commented to

Yamaga. While the sentiment was halfheartedly felt by Shanghai residents, the

statement was also a sharp sarcasm directed against the Japanese. To this Yamaga

casually responded, “Much obliged for your kind words.”

After the party ended, Yamaga took me to a well-known gambling spot at

the edge of the French Concession. Once we stepped inside the vestibule where

patrolling guards walked back and forth with pistols in their hands, there was a

sweet, soporific smell in the air. Having once served opium smokers in the Pan

household, I realized immediately that there were opium dens at the far end of the

premises. Yamaga, too, had been an opium addict, and his house was fi lled with

a similar scent.

In the saloon with a high ceiling adorned by a glittering chandelier, all eyes

were transfixed on the rotating roulette wheel and the movement of the dice. There

were white, black, and yellow-skinned people—the place resembled an exhibition

of the world’s races. The night atmosphere befittingly reminded one that we were

in the international metropolis of Shanghai, the so-called “city of evil.”18 What

was surprising to me was just how amazingly well-connected Yamaga was in that

gambling spot. People whom he met and people who just walked past all nodded

in recognition of him. Holding a vodka cocktail and looking outside the window,

Yamaga surveyed the night scene below where boats were moored along the river

banks. Then, he turned to me—or rather he turned to himself—and muttered:

The Japa nese have no idea how much they are loathed when they try to act

big and holler at people with all their military talk. For the time being, the

Chinese under the occupation just play along by following orders from the

conquering Japa nese, but nobody believes in any of the stuff about JapaneseManchurian or Japanese-Chinese friendship which the Japa nese military

has been talking about. Now I am beginning to be repulsed by the Japanese myself.

Then one day in 1943, Yamaga was suddenly summoned to return to Japan. He

immediately departed for Tokyo, but it was not a simple arraignment or a temporary recall. When he appeared before the Ichigaya command post, he was arrested

on the spot, taken into custody, and interrogated. He was then indicted for more

than ten offenses, including treason, divulgence of national secrets, infringement

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Chapter 10

of military discipline, and use of narcotics. Next, he was to be court-martialed. The

most convincing theory for his recall was that Kawashima Yoshiko had directly

informed against him to Tōjō Hideki and Tōjō’s wife.

According to his niece, Chika, Yamaga always maintained his silence over

this matter, but his mother, Yama, did say that Kawashima Yoshiko had secretly

informed on him. Earlier, Yamaga’s misconduct had already become a matter of

contention within Shanghai’s Press Division, and after Kawashima’s report on his

“enemy connections,” it appeared that plainclothes military police began digging

into both his public and private lives. It was at this point in time that Kawashima

again secretly informed against him, charging that he was a spy and reporting

his relationship with Bai Guang. Furthermore, she didn’t deal with the local military police, but directly with Army Minister Tōjō. I wonder if Kawashima was

aware that Yamaga had been her savior from Lieutenant General Tada’s order for

her assassination, or whether her hatred for him prevailed even though she knew.

At the time, I had returned to Tokyo for my fi lm shooting, and one day, quite

without anticipation, Bai Guang came to visit me at Nogizaka’s Imperial Apartments, carrying with her a letter from Yamaga asking me to “Take care of Bai Guang

in case something should happen.” Bai Guang told me that she and Yamaga flew

to Japan together after he had been summoned from Shanghai and that she was

currently living with Yamaga’s parents in Shizuoka. She also said that she wished

to testify as a witness to Yamaga’s innocence. The two of us visited the army

prison several times, though we were not given permission to meet with Yamaga

even once.

After a short while, the verdict came: Yamaga was given a ten-year prison sentence. Thereupon, Bai Guang, her body trembling, yelled frenziedly in tears in my

apartment. She believed that Li Ming was behind Yamaga’s current predicament

and that it was she who had secretly informed on him. Perhaps Yamaga was the

common object for both Kawashima’s as well as Li’s acts of vengeance. Like a

woman possessed, Bai Guang gritted her teeth in furious rage as she unleashed

her curses at Li. “I’ll kill that bitch! Oh yes, I’ll kill her! But just killing her will

not be enough for me! I’ll torture her to death slowly, inch by inch, a piece at a

time. See if anybody can recognize her when I’m through! Ah yes! I’ll tie her up,

put her on a railroad track, and have her legs sliced off first. Then, it’ll be her arms.

I won’t let her die, but make her live on like a caterpillar!” The seething words she

delivered like a madwoman reminded me of what the late Qing Empress Dowager

Cixi had done to an imperial concubine of the fift h rank: she had had her rival’s

body immersed in a water-filled vat while keeping her alive in that state.19 I can remember how horrified I was at the extraordinary intensity of her vindictiveness.

Yamaga served his sentence in an army prison in Nagoya. While living in Shizuoka with his parents’ family, Bai Guang went to Nagoya from time to time with

The Two Yoshikos

163

Yamaga’s daughter, Hiroko, and his niece, Chika, but permission to see him was

never granted, not even to his blood relatives. Disappointed, Bai Guang ended up

returning to Shanghai.

I think the first and final time I saw Yamaga after the war was in November

1949. The last time I had seen him in China was in 1943, and so six long years had

come and gone. One day, he suddenly showed up at my Tokyo home in Asagaya.

By chance, I was at home at the time, and when I went to the vestibule to meet my

guest, I had no idea at first who the man standing before me was. His cheeks, once

tautly stretched out, had sagged to the point where the profi le of his face seemed

to have disappeared. He had a receding hairline; his once lengthy and smartlyparted hair had been cut short. He had a stubble of beard, and the clothes he was

wearing looked worn-out. Then he told me his story:

Well, many things have happened to me since we last met. Life’s been tough.

It’s frightening how vindictive Chinese women can be! On the other hand, I

haven’t been a paragon of good behavior myself. As an army man, I was too

friendly with the Chinese, and apparently they wanted to send a message to

the China lobby with me as an example. Punish one and let a hundred take

notice—that was the message. And so I was made into a big criminal, courtmartialed, and thrown into the slammer. Then the jail was bombed in the air

raids. I escaped during the confusion and lay low until the war ended.

To be sure, he wasn’t just hiding from the Japanese army; his fear that he could be

sent back to China for trial as an accused war criminal also explained his temporary “evaporation” from public sight. He told me that he had been working in the

publishing business, but that this had failed and now he found himself in a terrible bind. “Won’t you be good enough to lend me two million yen? If I don’t pay

it off by tomorrow, I might have to go back to jail.” This was a time when the monthly

salary for the Japanese Prime Minister was fift y thousand yen, and he was asking

for two million.

The following is a February 26, 1950, report from the journal Weekly Asahi

on how Yamaga’s business failure totally sapped him of life before driving him

to suicide:

After resting at his hometown of Shizuoka, Yamaga came to Tokyo in 1946.

With his former subordinates from the Press Division, he formed a publishing company in the basement of the Maru Building and brought out a gravure journal called Massezu on the trade union movement. Next, he published

Screen Digest, but both ventures failed after a few issues. Then, he started a

publishing firm called Daihōsha in Kayaba-chō. The payments he received,

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Chapter 10

however, turned out to be nothing but dishonored checks, thus driving him

into immediate debt for several million yen. He had already borrowed as much

as he could from his relatives and former classmates, and by then he had nowhere to turn. . . . Driven into a corner, he concocted a bogus company called

Japan Labor Supplies, and this time he himself began to issue bad checks. The

police at Nogata Station began chasing him down on suspicions of fraud. He

conducted his businesses in the old, incompetent ways reminiscent of the postRestoration samurai entrepreneurs, and his former subordinates were no

longer willing to sacrifice themselves for him as they had done in the past;

the postwar zeitgeist had completely altered their sense of devotion. Every

one of his endeavors ended in failure, and he had lost all hope.

This was the man who had once commanded such a dignified presence in his

elegant Chinese attire, the same man who once frequented posh nightclubs in

his tailor-made sharkskin jacket. And now with only shabby clothes on his back,

he had to bow his head to ask for a loan. This was the time when I was making a

comeback into Japanese movies, starring in a series of fi lms such as The Shining

Day of My Life, The Passionate Mermaid (Jōnetsu no ningyo [1948]), The Shooting

Star (Nagareboshi [1949]), The Human Condition (Ningen moyō [1949]), and Homecoming (Kikoku [1949]). Yamaga said he saw me in the fi lm posters and thought

of coming to me for a loan.

Since I owed him a heavy debt of gratitude, I wanted to help him financially

in some way. But in those days, even the source of immediate living expenses for

my family was by no means guaranteed. I had to take out a loan before I could

purchase my home in Asagaya, and paying the school expenses of my brothers

and sisters was about as much as I could manage. The burden of supporting eight

family members, including my parents, had fallen entirely on my shoulders.

When I frankly told him my situation, he said, “I understand. It’s difficult

for me to say this, but, instead of a loan, may I ask you to take temporary care of

my daughter Hiroko? There is just some business I have to take care of far away.”

“I wish I could take care of her, but at her age I think she herself should take

some responsibility, considering how my family now lives from day to day.”

“She is a pretty stubborn girl, and won’t listen to what her mother says. She

has admired you since she was quite young, and I hope you can take care of her

for me.”

Yamaga had a second marriage with a distant relative immediately after the

war. Hiroko, at the susceptible age of sixteen, didn’t seem to be able to get along

very well with her stepmother. Yamaga didn’t go into any more details about this

matter before he left. I looked at him from behind, noticing his drooping shoulders and how lonely a figure he had become.

The Two Yoshikos

165

Two or three days passed. When I returned home one day, I found in front of

my house a two-wheeled cart packed with things like chests of drawers and bedding. Sitting in the living room was a young girl in a middy blouse and skirt. She

had a lovely round face, but something about her features betrayed an air of loneliness. “My name is Yamaga Hiroko. It is very nice meeting you,” she said, greeting me calmly with good grace.

Seeing her with her happy face convinced that she would be allowed to stay

made it impossible for me to return her to her family. When she told me that she

was sixteen, I was reminded of the days when I, at about her same age, took up

residence with the Pan family in Beijing, away from my parents. Fortunately, she

was the same age as my sister Seiko to whom she seemed to have taken a liking.

So, I decided to put an extra bed for her in Seiko’s room. From our Asagaya house,

Hiroko began to go to the Tōyō Eiwa Girls’ Academy in Roppongi.

Two months later on January 28, 1950, I was shooting a Kurosawa Akira fi lm

called The Scandal (Shūbun) at the Shōchiku Ōfuna Studio with Mifune Toshirō.

It was already past ten at night. I was staying at the Osaragi Ryokan in front of

Ōfuna train station and was told that a telephone call had come for me from the

society desk at the Mainichi Shimbun.

“Do you know a man named Yamaga Tōru?” the voice on the other end

abruptly asked.

“Yes, I know him very well.”

“He just killed himself in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture.”

“What?”

“A double suicide with his wife. It seems that the two of them tied themselves

around a pine tree before each taking a whole bottle’s worth of crushed sleeping

pills. They had mixed them with juice before they drank the whole thing.” The

voice went on, “Six suicide notes have been found. Five of them are for the police

and their creditors expressing their apologies. One other note was addressed to

you, asking you to take good care of their daughter, Hiroko.”

The reporter continued with his questions on the telephone. “What was the

nature of your relationship with Yamaga?”

“Well, he was a helping friend when I was in China.”

“A helping friend?”

“He knew my father, and I, too, was a recipient of his many kindnesses.”

“A recipient of his kindnesses. Hmm, would you mind giving me a little more

detail about your relationship with him?”

When it came to that point, it occurred to me that the reporter had misunderstood our relationship as one of a romantic nature.

Soon, the reporter arrived in person. Just as I thought, he suspected that while in

China, I had had a relationship with Yamaga and that Hiroko was my illegitimate

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child. After I explained the situation in detail, he said, “Oh! It was my fault. If

that were true, it would mean you’d given birth at the age of thirteen!” Thereupon, he called his paper’s society desk and shouted, “Kill the morning edition

headline ‘Suicide after Entrusting Child to Yamaguchi Yoshiko!’ ”

The next day, a short accompanying piece “Laudable Story about Yamaguchi

Yoshiko” appeared in the paper. Yet, due to the rather shocking nature of the main

story—which was the important part—I made sure that for the next few days Hiroko did not have a chance to look at any newspapers. The shock came from the

extraordinary conditions of the two bodies. The aforementioned Weekly Asahi had

the following to say:

Fourteen-year-old Misa-chan from next door came running with a frightened

look on her face, crying, “It’s terrible! A dog is eating a human head!” The time

was eight o’clock in the morning on January 25, when the charcoal inspector

Onsen Hideo was about to leave home. Surprised, he followed Misa and found

a reddish-colored wild dog chewing on a man’s head in the compost inside a

pigpen. There was only a speckling of three-and-a-half-inch-long hairs at the

back of the head. The area around the face and the neck had been devoured

by the animal, leaving no trace of what could properly be called human flesh.

To the small isolated mountain village of Nishiyama in Minami-koma

County in Yamanashi Prefecture, that was a big incident.

A search was quickly launched to find the missing body, but initial efforts were unsuccessful. Finally, on the morning of the third day, a headless

corpse reduced to white bones and tied to a tree trunk with a hemp rope was

found in the pine forest at the entrance to the village’s irrigation pond. The

location was atop a bluff with a swift-flowing stream, the kind of place where

ordinarily nobody would go. Near the vicinity of the body were a black-leather

briefcase and a handbag. Inside were six suicide notes, and other items such

as sleeping pills and documents.

According to the suicide notes, the man’s name was Yamaga Tōru (53)

who lived at 836 Yoyogi-honchō, in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. Since one end of

the hemp rope extended to the edge of the bluff at a fast-flowing stream nearby,

it was determined that the deceased female body found late last December

about ten miles downstream was his wife, Kazue (44), mentioned in the suicide notes. She must have taken the sleeping pills, writhed in pain, and fallen

into the stream.

When I was spending time in the United States in 1950, I met a sculptor in

New York and married him the next year. As we lived in a rental teahouse in Ōfuna

owned by Kitaōji Rosanjin,20 I seldom returned to my own home in Asagaya.

The Two Yoshikos

167

I was, however, glad that Hiroko had successfully graduated from the girls’ academy and had started working. When I returned home after making the film House

of Bamboo for Twentieth Century Fox,21 I discovered that Hiroko had left home

and was working as a hostess in the Mandarin Club in Roppongi, which was

patronized by American military officers. The manger of that classy club was Bai

Guang, Yamaga’s last lover. After the war, Bai went to Hong Kong where she married an American officer. After she became a successful nightclub manager there,

she brought her business to Tokyo. I had no idea where or under what circumstance Bai and Hiroko met again, but of course what they had in common was

their relationship with Yamaga.

Bai Guang had come to Tokyo with Yamaga when he was recalled in 1943 to

report to the army headquarters of the military police. As she had no acquaintances in Japan, for a time she stayed with the Yamaga family in Shizuoka. It was

then a five-member household, with Yama, Yamaga’s mother; Sue, the widow of

his younger brother, Chū; their children, Chika and Kōichi; and Hiroko. The men

in the Yamaga household had died young, leaving it a matriarchal family. They

were then joined by Bai Guang; the six of them lived together and communicated

with each other in broken Chinese and Japanese. I heard that Yamaga’s family was

quite fond of Bai, affectionately calling her “Hakkō-san.”22 It was at that time that

Hiroko first got to know her father’s mistress.

Eventually, Hiroko became a Mandarin Club hostess. She was popular among

U.S. military men because of her ability to speak English. Then, for some minor

reason, she quit her job there and took another at the Ginza’s Odette.23 In the early

1950s, Japan was still a poor country, but life at the posh nightclub in the Ginza,

patronized by U.S. military personnel and people on company business, was a different world from that of ordinary citizens who often had to sell their personal

belongings to eke out a living.

Before long at Odette, Hiroko met and fell in love with a drummer of a jazz

band, and the two got married. While they did have a marriage ceremony, the man’s

former wife never consented to a divorce, rendering Hiroko unable to put her name

on the man’s family register. As the situation remained unresolved, the two split

up, and then a new lover appeared.

For a time, Hiroko found a patron in the head director of a major credit association. Shortly afterwards, she fell in love with a broadcast reporter from

Radio Kantō and was seriously thinking of marrying him. Thereupon, she ended

her life as the banker’s mistress before becoming engaged to the reporter. At the

time, I was living in the United States, but according to the reminiscences of my

younger sister, Seiko, Hiroko’s roommate, Hiroko was prepared, this time round,

to settle down to lead an ordinary life. She even happily showed off to Seiko her

engagement ring made of Mexican opal.

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A few days after the meeting between the two, however, Hiroko committed

suicide in her apartment in Aoyama’s Takakichō; she had discovered that the reporter to whom she was engaged already had a fiancée. When Seiko rushed to the

scene after receiving a telephone call from someone identifying herself as Hiroko’s distant relative, she found that many Ginza hostesses were already gathered

around Hiroko’s dead body, lamenting Hiroko’s passing in a farewell drinking

party.

Even today, Minobe Ayako, the madame at Odette, still remembers Hiroko

as a gentle, beautiful girl whose popularity was unsurpassed, but also as someone

with a strong melancholy streak. “Especially after the death of her grandmother,

Yama, who had taken care of her since she was a child, she blurted out that she

didn’t want to go on living anymore. She attempted suicide every time she was

betrayed by a man. She finally succeeded the fourth time.”

After taking sleeping pills, Hiroko turned on the gas in an airtight room. She

had crushed a bottle’s worth of sleeping pills, mixed them with juice, and drank

up the whole thing, the same way her father had killed himself in the mountains

of Yamanashi Prefecture.

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Chapter 10: The Two Yoshikos

1. The Chinese character for their family name, “Li,” is the same.

2. Yellowish-brown Chinese rice wine particularly treasured when aged;

hence the name, literally meaning “old wine.” Some of the varieties produced at Shaoxing in the Greater Yangtze delta are especially cherished by connoisseurs.

Notes to Pages 151–156

325

3. A former instructor at the Beijing Military Academy in 1926–1927 and in

1931–1932, Tada Hayao (1882–1948) served as Manchukuo’s chief military advisor

in 1932–1934 before attaining the position of Vice Chief of the Army General Staff in

1937. His initiatives at rapprochement with Chiang Kai-shek led to differences between him and Tōjō Hideki, who favored expanding the Chinese theater of war. Arrested as a Class-A war criminal in December 1945, Tada died in prison three years

later before his trial was concluded.

4. Jin Bihui was Kawashima Yoshiko’s Chinese name. For details on Kawashima and her activities in Dongxinglou, see chapter 4.

5. The prewar activities of Sasakawa Ryōichi (1899–1995) were punctuated by

his ties to the Japa nese army, his role as head of the small right-wing orga nization

Kokusui Taishūtō from 1931, his admiration for Benito Mussolini, his arrest, trial,

and subsequent exoneration on charges of blackmailing such establishments as Takashimaya (1935–1941), and his 1942 success in winning a Diet seat. After the war, he

“volunteered to be arrested as a Class A war criminal” even though he was not tried

at the Military Tribunal for the Far East and was subsequently released in 1948.

See Satō Seizaburō, Sasakawa Ryōichi: A Life (Norwalk, Connecticut: East Bridge,

2006), p. 78.

6. Meaning something like “my dear older brother Sasakawa.”

7. The original text has the following note: “At the time, there was no Major

General called Yuri. The name was thought to be an alias as [Yamaoka’s work] was

crafted as fiction.”

8. A type of obi worn by men and children.

9. Situated in Kyoto’s Ukyō-ku, the Myōshin Temple is the head temple of

the Myōshinji School of the Rinzai Sect.

10. The name incorporates her Manchu family name and one character each from

her personal Chinese and Japanese names. Its rendering is here given in Japanese.

11. Li Gang and He Jingfang, in their Chuandao Fangzi shengsi zhi mi xinsheng

(Jilin Wenshi Chubanshe, 2009), have attempted to resolve lingering controversies surrounding the circumstances of Kawashima Yoshiko’s real or alleged execution in March

1948. Based on their assessments of material evidence and personal interviews, Li and

He assert that Kawashima had in fact made good her escape before her impending

execution and continued to live after 1948 in the suburbs of Changchun under an assumed name until her death in early 1978. I wish to thank Fujiwara Sakuya for giving

me a copy of this book. For another more recent entry into this continuing debate,

this time providing evidence that Kawashima was indeed executed by the Kuomintang, see “Tōyō no Mata Hari yahari shokei? Taiwan de kōbunsho hakken,” Asahi Shimbun (January 22, 2010), online at http://www.asahi.com /international /update/0119

/TKY201001190482.html. One demonstration of the continuing public interest in the

life of Kawashima in China was the release of a documentary film on her life in January 2011; see http://v.ifeng.com/documentary/figure/201101/bfc5ade8–0315–456b-8bb3

-ca1cbc2f0aab.shtml.

326

Notes to Pages 157–166

12. Suruga, also known as Sunshū, was an old name for the central and eastern

part of present-day Shizuoka Prefecture. Kōfu in the central part of Yamanashi Prefecture is currently the seat of the prefectural government. The position of Kōfu kinban, previously occupied by the Yamaga family, was responsible for the defense of Kōfu

castle.

13. Kawashima Naniwa (1866–1949), a native of Nagano Prefecture and a socalled “continental adventurer” (tairiku rōnin) who had studied Chinese and served as a

translator for the Japanese army in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) before becoming an official in colonial Taiwan and an instructor of Chinese in the Army Academy.

During the Boxer Rebellion, he came to Beijing and became in due course the head of

the Beijing Police Affairs Academy. His close friendship with Prince Su of the Qing

Dynasty at least partly provided the impetus for his adoption of the latter’s daughter

in 1913.

14. An old district southeast of the Forbidden City, Nanchizi in the Republican

period became the residential area for descendants of the old imperial family, political figures, and other celebrities.

15. The original identifies the area as “a bustling shopping district in Beijing

comparable to Wangfujing Street.” Today, it is still a tourist spot fi lled with all sorts

of commercial activities and restaurants.

16. See chapter 12.

17. Bai Guang (1920–1999), a Beijing native, was one of the most celebrated

singers in Shanghai in the 1940s, rivaling Zhou Xuan, Yao Li, Wu Yingyin, and Zhang

Lu. Performed inimitably with tantalizing seductiveness, some of her songs, such as

“Ruguo meiyou ni” and “Hunying jiumeng,” are still cherished in China. Like Yamaguchi, she was a pupil of the Japanese vocalist Miura Tamaki. She also appeared in

more than twenty films, including Taoli zhengchun (1943), Shisanhao xiongzhai (1948),

and an adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection under the name Dangfuxin (1949). After

her business ventures in the Ginza in 1953 (mentioned later in the text), she returned

to Hong Kong before immigrating to Malaysia where she died at the age of seventyeight in Kuala Lumpur.

18. The Japanese original mato also conveys a dark allure of grotesque decadence

and macabre charm. For a study of the city and its connection with modern Japanese

intellectuals, see Ryū Kenki, Mato Shanhai: Nihon chishikijin no ‘kindai’ taiken

(Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000). See also Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing

Modernism in Semicolonial China 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2001), especially pp. 231–301.

19. No reliable evidence exists to authenticate this ghastly tale of palace power

struggle between Cixi and Emperor Xianfeng’s consort Li Fei, but the fictional account

was at least partly channeled into popular imagination through such media as Li Hanhsiang’s fi lm Chui-lian ting-zheng (Reign behind a Curtain, 1983).

20. Kitaōji Rosanjin (1883–1959), a calligrapher in his early career and an innovative ceramic artist inspired by the aesthetics of the Momoyama period before

acquiring an international reputation after the end of the war.

Notes to Pages 167–174

327

21. For details, see addendum.

22. “Hakkō” is the Japanese pronunciation of Bai Guang.

23. A name perhaps inspired by Princess Odette from Swan Lake, but it is difficult to tell.