Chapter 11 Two Phantom Films

Yellow River and My Nightingale

In the summer of 1942, the train carry ing our film crew was on

its long southward journey from Beijing to Kaifeng in Henan Province. An ancient walled city situated to the west of Xuzhou, Kaifeng prospered along the Yellow River.1 Our location shooting for a semi-documentary fi lm The Yellow River

(Huang’he) was to take place in the city’s suburbs in the war zone of Liuyuan’kou

on the river bank.

Until then, the fi lms in which I had appeared were all sweet love romances

heavily marketing the allure of the Chinese continent, and I was beginning to feel

guilty about how my performances had after all been fantasies far detached from

the realities of the continent and how the Chinese people actually lived. I couldn’t

recall how many times a fi lm like China Nights had been the object of scathing

criticism by my Chinese friends. I also realized that the films dedicated to so-called

“Japanese-Manchurian Friendship” ended up satisfying none other than Japan’s

egotistical needs. Such frustrations prompted me to jump at a chance to play a

rather unprepossessing role (yogore-yaku) in an independent Man’ei production.2

The Yellow River had been the brainchild of the Chinese fi lm director Zhou

Xiaobo for three years; he himself was the scriptwriter for this serious work.3 All

the film staff was exclusively Chinese with the exception of cameraman Tanimoto

Seishi; all the cast except me were also Chinese. As a matter of fact, very few people

in China knew that Li Xianglan was in fact Japanese.

I played the role of a daughter from a farming family that had been living for

generations along the bank of the Yellow River. Declining fortunes had forced the

family to mortgage its wheat field to the landlord. While the story’s drama unfolds

around the struggle between the family and the landlord, this semi-documentary

actually focused on the misery of the rural village, which had been a battleground

in the Sino-Japanese War, and the farmers’ fight against Yellow River’s catastrophic

flooding. The family’s eventual cooperation with the Japanese army had been written into the script, but Director Zhou Xiaobo’s aspiration was to depict, with a

pulsating sense of immediacy and a realistic touch, the war’s horrors and man’s

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precarious existence in the face of nature’s untamed ferocity. His sense of purpose behind this endeavor was exceptional.

The Huang’he, truly “the yellow river,” has fittingly been compared since ancient times to a colossal dragon, tossing and turning its body as it meanders through

the Chinese continent, a river that carries with it nothing less than China’s own

eternal history and culture. I was quite accustomed to the sight of the Yangtze,

having lived for about two years in Shanghai before and right after the war, and

I have been deeply impressed by how remarkably different those two rivers are as

they flow eastward across the Chinese continent. Resembling a scene from a Southern School painting, the Yangtze evokes the image of a sailboat carry ing passengers leisurely cruising downstream against a landscape of lush pasture. On the

other hand, the Yellow River with its loess-filled torrents had the feel of a monochrome ink painting executed with ravaging fury. This was especially true around

the river basin near Kaifeng, where great floods had devastated the area, relentlessly sweeping away trees and human dwellings. Since historic times, the Yellow

River had on many occasions produced colossal floods, thereby instilling fear

among local farmers about the curse from the dragon god. But great floods were

not just natural calamities; sometimes they were the disastrous results of deliberate human actions. The fi lm we were venturing to make during an extended

period of location shooting was one set against the background of such a manmade tragedy.

In 1938, a year after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a flood

had occurred in Huayuan’kuo upstream from Liuyuan’kou in the suburbs of Kaifeng, the location where we were doing the shooting. In an attempt to prevent the

westward advance of Japanese troops after its capture of Xuzhou, the Chinese Nationalist army judged that it had no choice other than to blast the dikes at three

different locations, including Zhaokuo on the south bank.4 Owing to the onset of

the rainy season just then and the subsequent rise in water level, muddy torrents

overwhelmed the plains with ferocious swiftness and caused flooding in the three

provinces of Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The inundated areas measured 54,000

square kilometers; flooded villages, flood victims, and deaths numbered 3,500,

12,000,000, and 900,000, respectively.5 The torrents gushing southward triggered

a chain of additional floods as the Yellow River ended up rushing into the Huai.

By the time we were shooting the fi lm, four years had passed since the great

destruction of the dikes, and construction work on the new embankment walls

had already been completed. The wheat fields had begun to turn golden in harmony with the color of the Yellow River, returning to the scene a pastoral calm.

It was the world of Wheat and Soldiers (Mugi to heitai), the famous work by Hino

Ashihei—“To Xuzhou, to Xuzhou, the troops and the horses, advance!”6 Since the

outbreak of the war, however, the area around the river basin with its wheat fields

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

171

had been reduced to a battleground between the Japanese and Chinese armies.

Already for four years, they had each taken hold of and retreated from their positions time and again with only the river between them. In fact, during our location shootings, we had no idea when or where bullets might fly our way. With the

outbreak of the Pacific War, followed by the deployment of the main Japanese forces

to the southern seas, the local strategy on the Chinese front repeatedly took the

form of punitive expeditions carried out intermittently with incessant troop movements back and forth.

In the area around Kaifeng at the time, a strong Communist resistance was

beginning to develop, replacing Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces and launching attacks on the Japanese in many different areas with formidable effectiveness.

Even though the Japanese army held on to the cities they occupied and communication lines, their inability to maintain control over the areas in between was

becoming a source of anxiety.

*

*

*

Our train had passed Baoding and was making its approach to Zhengzhou. As it

continued south, the suffocating heat became more horrendous, and the glaring

sunlight started to scorch the skin. Under this oppressive heat, my companion,

Atsumi Masako, and I could do hardly anything except to pant in exhaustion inside the compartment. The color of the landscape outside the window began to

turn more monotonous; the grassland and groves gave way to a succession of barren rocky hills. After a while, wide stretches of a bone-dry land painted in a light

yellow were all the eye could see. Once having been flooded, the earth burned under the peculiarly sultry Henan sun, cracked, and was finally reduced to unsalvageable badland. Even the sound from the train’s wheels seemed lifeless.

There were several chairs along the passageway outside the compartment, and

there we could see the sweaty back of a Japanese soldier exposed to the sweltering

wind. From the faded colors of his shirt, it was obvious that the smell of his sweat

came from real battle experiences. Atsumi was the first to notice him, murmuring cheerfully how more secure we could feel now that a Japanese soldier was by

our side.

From time to time, a huge cloud of sand dust rising from the other end of the

horizon would come our way and blanket the entire train. Trying to avoid the blowing dust, the soldier took off his military cap and swift ly turned his back. Without thinking, I let out a loud cry, “Aren’t you Mr. Tamura?”

Yes, it was him. The soldier was Tamura Taijirō.

It was a completely fortuitous meeting. Standing before us, the writer with

his long hair and pale skin whom we had known earlier during his debut was now

a soldier with a crew cut and a face sunburned into a reddish brown.

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I couldn’t believe our accidental encounter on a sweltering train, nor could I

find the right words to say by way of exchanging greetings. I was clearly quite emotional when I saw him, and Tamura himself also fell into speechlessness and deep

thought. Perhaps my stirring emotions led me to ramble on without end; I can

hardly remember what I actually talked with him about.

As I recall, Private Tamura didn’t mention anything about the hardships he

had experienced at the battlefront; he simply explained that he was returning from

an assignment to deliver certain orders to the troops at the upper course of the

Yellow River. Then he told me, snapping out his words as he spoke, that his unit

had been holing up deep in the mountains of Zhengzhou for as long as three years.

“What a repulsive war! What a repulsive army!”

The railway coiled through folds of mountains upon mountains on its way

toward the interior. Tamura got off at a small, nameless station and said, “Well,

let’s say goodbye here. I guess nobody in my unit would ever believe that I’ve just

met Li Xianglan. Can you give me something as proof?”

Those were his parting words, uttered half-jokingly as a request for a favor of

me. I gave him several pictures of me that I carried, after putting my signature on

them. As the train started to move, Tamura said, as if the thought had just come to

him, “You asked ‘He’ri jun zai lai’ [When will you return?] in your song. Well, we

did meet again, didn’t we? Zaijian! I hope we’ll see each other again! And I would

love to hear you sing!” As the train was moving away from the station on a vast

open field, his retreating figure in army uniform became smaller and smaller as he

walked toward the hills, and finally the yellow sand dust totally swallowed him.

A truck’s journey from Kaifeng to the Yellow River took twelve hours.

Before our departure, each of us was given a hand grenade for protection in case

of emergency. Just feeling its rough surface made me tense all over. Before departure at six in the morning, the only two women in our party—Atsumi and I—

had already transformed ourselves into coolies by washing off our makeup, rubbing our faces with charcoal, and putting on blue cotton trousers. Once outside

Kaifeng, we’d be entering guerilla territory.

We rode in three separate trucks in the midst of heat and dust. The area didn’t

have the luxury of roads; you might say we simply plunged ahead across the golden

wheat field between tall ridges. We passengers were constantly jolted into the air

from our seats, and if we didn’t hold tightly to the rim of the luggage-holding area,

we could easily be flung out of the truck onto the ground below.

We were wrong to expect any cooling effect once the vehicles started to run.

Traveling against the scorching headwind intensified the heat and burned our skin.

Tiny grains of sand blown by the wind on already sun-burned skin caused a throbbing sting, only to be exacerbated by the relentless heat. After a short time, the

features on all our faces were rendered unrecognizable, like a row of rice cakes

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

173

dusted with yellow soybean flour. Once somebody opened his mouth, the roasting air and sand dust would cling to the throat’s mucous membrane. Both the sky

and the earth were being scorched. The trucks were virtually turning into blast

furnaces, and soon smoke blew out from their overheated engines.

Making haphazard stops of our vehicles would be dangerous. We were told

that no water was available until we reached a village, which in any case was likely

to be a hideout for a tenacious Communist guerilla force that lurked in the area.

After being given thorough instructions that all the farmers we saw should be considered members of the guerilla force, we couldn’t help thinking that the peepholes we saw on the village walls were in fact loopholes through which guns could

be pointed at travelers. Perhaps it was just the way we felt, but the farmers we saw

along the way with hoes and spades on their shoulders seemed to be looking at us

with unusual intensity.

When the big red sun began its incline toward the horizon over the wheat

fields, we finally reached the bank of the Yellow River at Liuyuan’kuo, a Japanese

army garrison. Our schedule was to shoot on location for two months under the

army’s protection, and during the shooting, we would prepare our own meals. A

young platoon leader came out to greet us.

More than anything else, water was what we wanted, and what we got was

tepid and oddly sweet, but I drank it in one gulp. That our request for drinking

water was made with considerable audaciousness only dawned on us when the soldiers were making preparations for our bath. They had to scoop up muddy water

in buckets to fi ll a drum container. We were told that there was no water on location and that the soldiers had to get it from the Yellow River.

Drinking water was stored in a big vat. When the water from the river collected one bucket after another was allowed to sit for a whole day, eighty percent

of its contents would sink to the bottom as mud while the other twenty percent on

top became clear. The latter was then boiled and fi ltered through gauze before it

was used for drinking. When we expressed surprise upon seeing bugs swimming

on the water surface inside the vat, the platoon leader explained that the insects,

by virtue of being alive, served to prove that the water was safe. For the first time,

I realized just how precious even a drop of water was on the frontline.

When Atsumi and I were taking our bath, our bathroom—that is, the drum—

was surrounded by a screen made of towels. The water very quickly turned our

facecloth from white to brown. We couldn’t use soap because of the hard water, but

no one was making any more complaints. After our skin dried from perspiration,

we discovered on its surface particles of yellow dust like grains of golden powder.

Pattering it off briskly was to become our after-bath ritual.

We were assigned lodging in dwellings vacated by local inhabitants who had

escaped the turmoil of war. The tattered houses had mud walls that threatened to

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collapse at any time, and candles were our only source of light. There were geckos

crawling about on the ceiling, a fact that the platoon leader again used to reassure us that it was a good house. For dinner we had big fish caught from the Yellow

River. The platoon leader muttered that we’d find it tasty once we’d gotten used

to it. “But for those of you coming from big cities, perhaps you’d fi nd the meat of

geckos more to your liking.”

After dinner, I changed into a Chinese dress, washed and combed my hair,

put on some makeup, and visited the soldiers’ quarters with the platoon leader.

Even after sunset, the air was still muggy due to the lingering heat from the day.

Soldiers wearing hardly anything were either reading or writing letters under the

dim candlelight. Then came the announcement: “For the next two months, a film

crew will be shooting on this location. Please assist them by playing the role of

extras. During the fi lm shooting, those who do not take part in enemy raids will

protect the crew as an additional responsibility. Tonight, Ms. Li Xianglan will

sing for us. Now, go and put on your uniforms and assemble at the square in

thirty minutes!”

And so we had a summer-night concert outdoors. Even so, we couldn’t bring

out the candles; the Chinese army was stationed just across the river. But we had

the stars and the moon in the night sky.

I thought of singing “Going Out to Sea” (Umi yukaba) and asked the soldiers

to join me in a chorus. However, in order not to agitate the Chinese army on the

other side, the platoon leader cautioned his men not to sing too loudly. From the

moonlight’s reflection on the Yellow River, we could see golden ripples gently making their way to the shore.

After I sang the first stanza in a low soprano voice, the soldiers joined in with

a chorus, sending their subdued voices rippling across the land. The night air descending upon us brought a cool breeze across the wheat fields. While “Going Out

to Sea” was a favorite navy song,7 it was a fitting choice against the torrential flow

of the Yellow River. Along the banks of this sea of water, fighting men, Japanese

and Chinese alike, died every single day. Come to think of it, since ancient times,

how many hundreds of thousands, or indeed millions of peasants living in its basin had vanished after being swallowed by its floods?

Going out to sea, I die as a water-soaked corpse,

Going out to the hills, I perish as a skeleton among the grass. . . .

[added by Ed: We shall die by the side of our lord,

We shall never look back.]

The only stage illumination in the wild fields was the moon and the stars that filled

the night sky, stars that one could almost reach with outstretched hands. The solemn singing served only to accentuate the hushed silence of the area.

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

175

I went on to sing a few more songs, including “The Moon over the Ruined

Castle” and “The Suzhou Serenade,” followed by folksongs performed with local

pride by the soldiers. We sang the last number together, called “Comrades” (Sen’yū),

which began with “Here, how many hundreds of leagues from home.”8 The male

chorus on the bank of the Yellow River created beautiful music and was in no way

inferior to any large concert chorus. When I close my eyes today, I can still hear

the lingering notes at the end of our songs amidst the silence of the night.

Our filming continued with the protection of the platoon. There were instances

when sunlight alone, striking reflectors, would lead to mortar fire from the other

side of the river. Even fi lm canisters were good targets for enemy fire and could

not be carried around carelessly. As there was no telling when we’d be under sniper

fire from machine guns, a scout was always dispatched to reconnoiter shortly

before filming began. Once both sides started shooting at each other across the

river, we would throw ourselves on the mud, the noise of cannon fi re reverberating heavily against our chests flat on the ground. I wonder what the thoughts of

our Chinese staff were when the sound of cannon fi re came from the other side

of the riverbank.

Every morning, I would see off soldiers on attack missions, and there were

only a few times when they all managed to return. As the days went by, we were

seeing fewer and fewer of those with whom we had grown familiar; they were disappearing as if they had been spirited away. At night, as individual faces began to

float in my mind, geckos made their appearance crawling on the ceiling. Sometimes, a scorpion would fall onto my blanket. Countless stray dogs greeted nightfall with an exchange of howls into the wilderness. But those were not my only

horrifying experiences.

One time, after returning from a day’s fighting, a drunk soldier banged on

the door of our lodging and shouted, “Please open up!” I suppose he was acting

in desperation after having spent so much time on the battlefield and seeing his

comrades die every day. Atsumi and I could only react by holding our breath after

bolting our door tightly shut. Although the platoon leader had told us to report at

all times any offensive acts from the soldiers, we decided to keep quiet about the

incident until the end.

The fi lming involved heavy labor. Playing the role of a poor peasant girl, I

struggled with the Yellow River with water rising all the way to my head. Covered with mud, I crawled about in hot sand. After fi lming the scene where I had

to run around in a wheat field to make my escape, my hands and legs were covered

with cuts. The soldiers were engaged in a desperate fight, and I, too, was determined to outgrow my former self by devoting myself totally to my acting during

the two months of shooting.

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On my way back to Beijing, as if mercilessly pursued by a tenacious enemy,

I was again made aware of the dire suffering on the frontline. From Kaifeng, the

train traveled northward on the Jing-Han Line for a while before it arrived at a

station called Xinxiang, where for an instant, I thought that I saw a profusion of

dark red flowers ahead of me. But my illusion turned into a scene of mountains

upon mountains of injured soldiers and the blood they were shedding. Until Beijing, two trains for carrying the injured were linked up before they were connected

to the rear of our train. When the train stopped at Shimen Station midway between Xinxiang and Beijing, a conductor came and requested that the lower berth

of our sleeper car be used by injured officers. Of course, we agreed.

A young officer with blood-soaked bandages on his head was carried in and

cared for by a private with an injury to his right leg. We were told that the young

officer was a platoon leader with a bullet penetrating his left temple and suffering

from loss of memory.

Inside the compartments carry ing the injured was a picture of hell. Soldiers

without their hands or legs were merely rubbed with iodine as they groaned in

pain in their last moments. Some had wounds infested with maggots. We were

told by the medic that that was caused by germs; maggots would eat away the suppurated tissues and decomposed wounds. We also found a soldier using a soda

bottle as his pillow as whatever remained of his severed leg was hanging from the

ceiling with a straw rope. Whenever the train shook, the compartment would be

fi lled with groans and cries of pain from the heavily injured: “It hurts!” “I can’t

stand it!” “Give me water!” “I want my mother!”

Only one medic was there to take care of several dozen men. When we offered to help in looking after the wounded, the conductor said, “Much obliged”

with a bow.

Atsumi and I began to devote ourselves to the work. As the medic couldn’t

take care of everything, we helped to change the bandages and wipe away the

sweat—once we started to nurse the wounded, there was no end to it.

Because guerilla forces were active along the tracks at night, the train made

a stop in the middle of the wild fields at around midnight with all electricity turned

off. Then we waited until the coming of dawn. We and the soldiers were able to

restore a bit of our energy by taking naps.

After a while, all the healthier soldiers began to ask me to sing something.

Even the badly wounded begged for Japanese songs. This time, I thought, I’d truly

be singing to bring some comfort to the troops. Jumping down from the train car,

I ran under the moonlight to a spot in the wheat field where the passengers in the

two medical trains could see me. I began by saying, “Please keep up your spirits!

Keep them up, and I hope you’ll all get well soon!” and then proceeded to sing

“The Moon over the Ruined Castle.” But just then, I realized that I had lost my

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

177

voice. My throat must have been completely dry due to fatigue. I quickly drank

some water, practiced my breathing, and started over again, this time with some

success. With the banks of the Yellow River in mind, I also sang “Going Out to

Sea,” followed by “Setting Sail” (Defune) and such Japanese songs as they came

to mind.

The young man with fi ne features who was carried into our compartment

joined the army immediately after his graduation from the Law Faculty of Tokyo

Imperial University. He had just become an officer and was in command of his

men during fighting. He was injured when a skirmish developed into a fierce

full-scale battle. Even though his temple had been perforated, he appeared like a

healthy normal person except for the bandages around his head. The private told

us that the lieutenant had suffered a complete loss of memory. No matter what he

heard, he simply tilted his head. The private frequently asked me to speak to him,

thinking that when spoken to by a young woman, he might be able to remember

something.

When I asked the young man things such as his name, his whereabouts, and

where he came from in Japan, his previously unruffled features became sad, but

he offered no reply.

“Okaasan [your mother] is in Japan, right?”

“O-ka-a?”

“Okaasan, your okaasan!”

The lieutenant responded by uttering, “O-ka-a-sa-n,” one syllable at a time

as if he were carefully meditating on every sound. But eventually, all this young

army officer could say was those syllables. Until he reached Beijing, he was unable to recover his memory.

The reason I’m able to remember my experiences on the medical train so

precisely was that after the war, I had an accidental encounter with that very

private who accompanied the young officer. As a matter of fact, I was embarrassed that I myself had forgotten so much about them, but Mr. Asai Takeshi, the

former private, was able to remember our encounter on the train in great detail.

The aforementioned episode was a reconstruction of events made by pooling

our recollections. Mr. Asai is currently serving as Director of the Asai Academy

in Sapporo.9

The Yellow River became critically acclaimed as an ambitious semidocumentary film, one described as a “masterpiece” by the Man’ei Director Negishi Kan’ichi, a man who in previous years before Man’ei had produced various

celebrated films from Nikkatsu. Thinking that it would be a fine idea to release

the film in Japan as well, Negishi had Japanese subtitles superimposed before he

negotiated with Shōchiku and Tōhō, but to no avail. By that time, Japan’s “continental boom” had receded, and perhaps the depiction of wretched peasant life and

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of the difficulties Japan faced on the battlefield contributed to its apathetic reception as well. In the end, it became a “phantom semi-documentary” with its reputation known only to a segment of the Japanese film world.

*

*

*

One more “phantom film,” likewise produced by Man’ei but never publicly screened

in either China or Japan, was My Nightingale (Watashi no uguisu, 1943).10 Even

though this fi lm may very well have deserved special mention as Japan’s fi rst

authentic musical, regrettably the name of the masterpiece does not even appear

in the annals of Japanese fi lm. Could that be due to the fact that it was produced

in the defunct Japanese empire of Manchuria?

Even though it was designated a Man’ei film, in substance it was a Tōhō production from Japan. While it was produced by Man’ei’s Iwasaki Akira and its principal cast, the Harbin Opera Troupe and Li Xianglan, was supplied by Man’ei, Tōhō

arranged all the other important personnel. The original work by Osaragi Jirō was

called The Songstress of Harbin (Harubin no utahime), the director and scriptwriter

was Shimazu Yasujirō, the photography was by Fukushima Hiroshi, the music was

by Hattori Ryōichi, and the dance choreography was by Shirai Tetsuzō. The origins of the fi lm could be traced to the performance in Japan of the Harbin Ballet,

which so impressed the Director Shimazu that one evening he shared the dream

of making a musical with his close friend, Iwasaki Akira.

Due to the extraordinary circumstances of the time, however, there was little chance that they would be given permission to go ahead. Then a Tōhō production executive named Mori Iwao, who had been acting as their patron, applied

his political influences to lobby both Tōhō and Man’ei. Thereupon, apparently even

the authorities turned a blind eye to their plans so long as the film was made under

Man’ei’s name.

From its planning stage, my esteemed producer, Iwasaki, and the director,

Shimazu, had been thinking of having me play the leading role, a young girl named

Mariko (her Russian name was Mariya).11 I was grateful to them and was fully

prepared to do whatever was necessary to satisfy their expectations of me. I was

also happy to be recognized as a vocalist good enough to perform with the internationally known Harbin Opera Troupe. For my sake, Hattori Ryōichi composed

the music for “My Nightingale” (Solovej moj), a theme song with a Russian flavor.

After practicing the song over and over again, I decided to sing it in the style of a

lyric soprano.

Here’s a brief description of the story. In 1917, the October Revolution drives

a group of White Russian opera singers from the Russian Imperial Theater to flee

from Siberia to Manchuria. While in exile, they are saved by the family of the

branch manager of a Japanese trading company named Sumida, a role played by

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

179

Kuroi Jun.12 When fighting spreads to their town and the singers and the Sumida

family escape in several horse-drawn carriages, Sumida’s carriage falls behind,

leading eventually to his separation from his wife and their young daughter, Mariko,

played by Chiba Sachiko and Li Xianglan, respectively.13 Fifteen years pass, with

Sumida searching in vain for his family in different parts of China. As it turns

out, his wife has died, and their daughter, living in Harbin, has been adopted by

an opera singer named Dmitrii,14 played by Grigorii Saiapin. While performing

at the Harbin Opera, Dmitrii gives Mariya singing lessons, and the young woman

soon makes a successful debut in a Russian concert singing “My Nightingale.”

Just then, the Manchurian Incident breaks out, and the city of Harbin falls

into chaos.

When the situation calms down, Dmitrii falls ill and loses his job. To support the family, Mariya entertains in nightclubs with such songs as “Ochi chyornye” (Kuroi hitomi).15 A friend of Sumida’s, an entrepreneur (Shindō Eitarō), discovers Mariya and helps to arrange a meeting between father and daughter. Yet

in consideration of Dmitrii’s feelings, Sumida decides not to take Mariya away

from him. After Dmitrii decides to return to the opera, Mariya falls in love with

a young Japanese painter by the name of Ueno (Matsumoto Mitsuo). Just as the

family is beginning to regain their happiness, Dmitrii collapses on stage after

giving a passionate performance of the last scene of Faust. As Mariya visits Dmitrii’s grave at the Russian cemetery with Sumida, Ueno, and others, she sings “My

Nightingale” and earnestly prays for the soul of her adopted father.

To the extent that this film could be seen as a Russian production, both its

form and content reminded one of a European fi lm. Not only did the story take

place in Harbin, an international city built by Imperial Russia, but all the actors

sang in Russian. The music running through the entire fi lm was Russian, and all

the dialogue was given in Russian as well. Japanese appeared only in the subtitles. Outsiders would most likely have thought that it was a European fi lm imported into Japan. Naturally, Shimazu’s screenplay was first written in Japanese,

but it was immediately translated. Man’ei’s Ikeda Tadasu served as one of the assistant directors, but Li Yushi, a man who could speak Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, was also chosen for that role. In addition, two White Russians were employed

as expert interpreters.

Grigorii Saiapin, an internationally known baritone who played my adopted

father, was head of the Harbin Saiapin Opera. Nina Engelhardt, in the role of Madame Anna Stepanova Mirskaya, was the troupe leader of the Harbin Engelhardt

Opera. V. I. Tomskii, playing Count Razumovskii, headed the Harbin Tomskii Theater. Also participating in the film were the Harbin White Russian Artists League

and the Harbin Ballet. The music was performed by the Harbin Symphonic Orchestra, said to be the best in Manchuria.16

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The metropolis of Harbin was built by Imperial Russia in 1898. After the RussoJapanese War, this so-called “Little Paris of the Orient,” reminiscent of an authentic European city, was the gathering place of White Russians fleeing the Russian

Revolution. Given those assets, the top performing talents from old Imperial Russia had converged in the city, all of which were channeled into the making of

My Nightingale.

While I had the good fortune of working among such distinguished company,

I had no idea how I, a Japanese woman, should go about playing the role of a Russian man’s adopted daughter. After a while, the thought came to me to model my

role after Liuba, the Russian girl who was my close friend during my Fengtian days.

Liuba was good in Japanese, and her predicaments were similar to those of Mariko.

Once the decision was made to fashion my demeanor, movements, and thinking

process thoroughly after Liuba, all my uncertainties vanished. I recalled her everyday mannerisms and incorporated them in my acting: how she held the teapot as she poured tea from the samovar, how she crossed her legs in her unique

style of skating, how she winked as she whispered something to me in confidence,

and how she put her finger to her lips to give a shh. . . . I even patterned my hairstyle after hers, wearing it in three long braids with small ribbons on each end.

The film shooting spanned two calendar years and totaled sixteen months.

Our location shootings in Harbin continued intermittently throughout the four

seasons, but I think the majority of our shots were winter scenes.

“Harbin” in the Manchu language apparently means “a place for drying fish

nets.” It began as a small fishing village on the Songari, or Songhua, River before

it gradually prospered into a large metropolis in conjunction with Imperial Russia’s southward advance. Most of its architectural and decorative designs were

Russian-inspired, as could be seen in the city’s shops, offices, temples, hospitals,

hotels, schools, parking lots, parks, and graveyards. In addition, there were influences from the Greek, Renaissance, Gothic, and Art Nouveau styles, along with

Chinese and Japanese designs, all contributing to the city’s unique flavor as an

international metropolis. The liveliest downtown area was along the cobblestoned

Kitaiskaya Boulevard on the north side of Harbin Station, with rows of upscale

restaurants and boutiques advertizing in three languages, Russian, Chinese,

and Japanese.17

Harbin had much more severe winters than Fengtian or Xinjing. Snowfall began toward the end of October, and drift ice began to float along the Songhua River

in the suburbs in November. Predictably, for five months from around November

10 until April 10, the river was completely frozen. For this reason, the paddlewheeler, Harbin’s special attraction, could navigate on the river only from April

for six months during the year. When the river was frozen, the typical winter scene

was of a maqiao, or horse-drawn sleigh, running swift ly on the icy snowy plain.

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

181

Until the temperature reached forty degrees below freezing, we could still cover

the camera with a cloak, but when it got down to minus forty-five degrees, the

camera would no longer run. Even when that happened, filming could not be suspended; the staff simply took the camera next to a stove to warm it up before it

was brought back into ser vice.

On an occasional holiday, we would go riding in sleighs. Kuroi Jun was famous for his equestrian skills and would always enjoy himself by taking longdistance rides with Shindō Eitarō, Ikeda Tadasu, and others.

Street scenes were mostly taken from Kitaiskaya Boulevard, and theater and

nightclub scenes were exclusively shot inside Modern Hotel Harbin.18 After the

shooting, the fi lm crew and cast members would patronize a tearoom on Kitaiskaya called Victoria; I myself loved the lemon tea and Russian cakes there. In 1943,

food had become scarce in Manchuria. But wherever the fi lm crew went, we were

always greeted with hospitality, and fans would also send us various food or drink

items. Even such sweets as chocolate and jelly were quite readily available.

The film cost about 250,000 yen, about five times the production cost of an

ordinary film. The length of the film was 11,000 feet with a screening time of about

two hours. On a page of assistant director Ikeda’s pocketbook dated March 24,

1944, were the following words written in large characters: “Filming ended for My

Nightingale. All completed.”

With the Russians, the Japanese, and the Chinese showing no racial prejudice, all the actors sang and danced and gave the best performance they could. In

broken Russian, the former Shingeki actors Kuroi Jun and Shindō Eitarō enthusiastically exchanged views on performance with such renowned actors as Tomskii.

There was also something extraordinary about Director Shimazu’s passion for the

film; he and Iwasaki and others often spoke of making “an art film the whole world

can appreciate.” There were also times when the unusual sternness with which he

directed my acting caused me to burst into tears in spite of myself.

This film turned out to be a truly incredible cosmopolitan musical. Since prewar Japan had no such word or concept for a “musical,” it was called an ongaku

eiga, a “music fi lm.” By whatever name, it could be described as the first authentic

expression of that genre in the history of Japanese fi lm. It was inconceivable that

a Japanese studio at that time could have made a fi lm that managed to incorporate such an extravagant display of “the enemy’s music” from the West. I suppose

that was precisely the reason Shimazu and Iwasaki made it in Manchuria, away

from the watchful eyes of the Japanese authorities.

The White Russians were among the ethnic groups that made up the people

of Manchukuo, supposedly a land of “harmony among the five races,” and they gave

Harbin the city they created its European ambience. Meanwhile, Shimazu and

Iwasaki were admirers of such Austrian and German musicals as Der Kongress

182

Chapter 11

tanzt (The Congress Dances [1932]),19 and I suppose their appreciation for such films

coincided with what they saw in the manners and customs of Harbin, a piece of

Europe within Asia. Iwasaki’s enduring emotional bonds with My Nightingale

were to fi nd expression in his postwar Shōchiku production Here Is the Fountain (Koko ni izumi ari [1955]), a masterpiece Japanese musical directed by Imai

Tadashi.20

According to the critic Satō Tadao, the very act of making such films as My

Nightingale could be interpreted as a desperate act of resistance against the currents of the time. While pointing out problems with the plot, Satō focused his attention on the fi lm’s production crew, men whose work manifested the precariousness with which liberals in war time Japan lived their lives:

Along with the original author Osaragi Jirō, these men, to my knowledge, were

the most liberal individuals within the world of Japanese fi lm and literature

during the war. As a left-wing fi lm critic, Iwasaki Akira opposed the militarization of Japanese fi lm until the very end before he was thrown into prison.

When he found himself with absolutely nothing with which to fight his battles, he sought a Man’ei position for the sake of his livelihood. On the other

hand, while Shimazu Yasujirō had the reputation as a workmanlike director

who would jump at making what appeared to be a commercially successful

fi lm, he never did make even a single belligerent war fi lm. In Osaragi Jirō’s

case, in pointing out the mistakes of the French military by publishing such

historical books as The Dreyfus Affair (Dorefyusu jiken) and The Tragedy of

General Boulanger (Būranje shōgun no higeki), he was by implication condemning the failings of the Japanese military.21

Liberals represented not only the film staff but included Kuroi Jun and Shindō

Eitarō in the cast. Both stage actors, Kuroi was affi liated with the Tsukiji Theater

Troupe (Gekidan Tsukiji-za) and Shindō with the Comrades’ Theater Group (Gekidan Dōshi-za). It was after the war that they both became active as screen actors.

Changing his stage name to Nihonyanagi Hiroshi, Kuroi played heroic roles in

Dai’ei’s gangster films, holding a Colt in one hand and wearing his porkpie hat

pulled low to the level of his eyes. Shindō Eitarō appeared in Tō’ei’s period fi lms

playing the behind-the-scenes villain in internal feuds among samurai. His halfcovered face revealing only his large, angry eyes, he was always finished off at the

end by the mighty sword of justice. I heard that both of them were Shingeki actors

with very progressive thinking. Come to think of it, they were also quite good

in Russian.

During the fi lming, we had two White Russians working as our interpreters.

It became known recently that one of them, a bearded young man called Alek-

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

183

sandr, was a spy dispatched by the Soviet government to Harbin. He had an accidental meeting with Takeuchi Rinji, a Man’ei employee in its music department,

who had been interned in a Siberian detention camp after the war. At the time,

Aleksandr was wearing the uniform of the military police when he came to

interrogate Japa nese prisoners-of-war. Th is was what he purportedly revealed

to Takeuchi:

I was working as a spy with the mission to investigate the background and

actions of Li Xianglan. I knew everything about her, that she was a true-bred

Japanese called Yamaguchi Yoshiko, and that she had learned Russian from

Liuba and Madame Podlesov. I hopped from Beijing and Shanghai to Xinjing

just to cover her tracks. When I worked as the interpreter for the fi lm, she was

my target.

I was stunned to learn, albeit belatedly, that I had been the target of Soviet spying

activity. Later, another stunning fact was revealed, that I was also being spied on

by Japanese intelligence.

In June 1986, My Nightingale was screened for the first time in Shinjuku’s

Yasuda Seimei Hall in Tokyo. On that occasion, Endō Homare of Hitotsubashi

University, a woman who had written Qiazi, her memoirs about her flight from

Xinjing,22 introduced me to Takenaka Shigetoshi, formerly associated with Japanese intelligence.

Immediately after his graduation from Manchuria National University’s Harbin Academy, Takenaka’s potential usefulness with his proficiency in Russian was

recognized before he was conscripted into the Harbin army’s spy apparatus, a unit

within the Kwantung Army’s main intelligence establishment. He was assigned

to the “Conspiracy Planning Group” staffed by many graduates from the army’s

Nakano School (Rikugun Nakano Gakkō), a place for the training of future spies.23

His first mission after this assignment was to investigate the conduct and actions of the cast members of My Nightingale. Under orders from his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Yamashita, a high-level staff officer, Takenaka began working with

another spy who had set himself up as a member of the Harbin Tomskii Theater

Troupe. Their duty was to put a tail on the main cast members, Saiapin, the baritone, and Li Xianglan. Starting with Iwasaki and Director Shimazu, Japanese

intelligence had apparently marked virtually everyone associated with the fi lm.

Now a professor at Daitō Bunka University, Takenaka nostalgically said,

after watching the first screening of My Nightingale, that he could vividly remember every single location shooting of the fi lm. He also briskly added that

neither Saiapin nor Li Xianglan spoke or behaved in any suspicious way while

under his watch.

184

Chapter 11

While on the subject, I wonder if the Soviet and Japanese spies knew one another as such, and whether some weren’t double agents. In any case, what had the

world come to when agents from both Japanese and Russian intelligence had me

under surveillance? To be sure, Harbin was an international metropolis where a

bewildering profusion of ideologies and ethnicities—Japanese, Russian, Chinese,

Korean, and Mongolian—coexisted, a place well-suited for clandestine operations.

Such activities and tactics of international spies are described in detail in Flower

in the Wilderness (Kōya no hana, 1978) by Ishimitsu Makiyo, the pioneer Meiji

spy active in Manchuria and Mongolia.24

In the end, My Nightingale was never publicly screened in either Manchuria

or Japan proper. According to Nishikubo Mitsuo, Editor-in-Chief of Monthly Musical, which published in 1985 a special edition on this “phantom-like musical,”

the Kwantung Army’s Press Division decided against public release on the assessment that the fi lm “had neither enlightenment nor entertainment value for the

people of Manchuria” and that “it did not follow the directions of our national

policy.” Likewise, from its coproducer Tōhō’s point of view, even if an attempt was

made to screen it in Japan, the fi lm’s content could hardly qualify it as a cinematic

exaltation of Japan’s fighting spirit, making it virtually impossible to pass the

censors at the Interior Ministry. For these reasons, it was not released. The war

situation had become increasingly difficult, and with people suffering from food

shortages, it was certainly no time for a musical.

Why then did Iwasaki and Shimazu venture at this critical juncture to make

an elegant musical epic after the European model? Their spirit of resistance as liberals did not fully explain the extraordinary discrepancy between the fi lm’s content and the actual political situation at the time. For a long while, this question

never left my mind.

On December 7, 1984, NHK’s News Center at Nine reported that the “famous

phantom fi lm” My Nightingale had been discovered in Osaka. The broadcast reporter, Date Munekatsu (currently a professor at Chūkyō Women’s University),

was kind enough to make arrangements for me to see the film’s videotapes. The

fi lm was discovered by Osaka’s Planet Film Resources Center (Puranetto Eiga

Shiryōkan), headed by Yasui Yoshio. In June 1986, the Alumni Association of the

Harbin Academy released the fi lm for public screening for two days at Tokyo’s

Yasuda Seimei Hall, an initiative funded privately by Asada Heisō, a Harbin Academy graduate and the public-spirited owner of a Russian restaurant called Cha’ika

in Shinjuku.

Even for me in the leading role, it was my first time watching the film. It was

unfortunate that the title was changed to The Fate of a Songtress (Unmei no utahime) and that the original, an elaborate two-hour production, had been cut to

one hour and ten minutes. But the discovery of the fi lm provided the opportu-

Two Phantom Films: Yellow River and My Nightingale

185

nity for me to be reunited with the assistant director Ikeda Tadasu, and it was he

who provided the answer to my long-held question.

I learned from him that one night, in a room in Hotel New Harbin, Shimazu

told him the following. “I can’t really make a loud pronouncement for everybody

to hear,” he began before making a very loud pronouncement. “Japan will certainly

be defeated in the war. Precisely because of this, I must leave behind a good art

fi lm. By the time the American army comes to occupy Japan, which will happen

soon, I wish to leave behind evidence that the Japanese haven’t made just war films,

but also superb art fi lms, ones that are in no way inferior to those produced in

Europe and the United States.”

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Chapter 11: Two Phantom Films

1. Kaifeng, now a prefecture-level city with a population of approximately 4.6

million (2010 census) and situated on the Yellow River’s south bank, was once the

glorious capital of the North Song Dynasty when it was known famously as Bianjing

or Dongjing. In the eleventh century, it was believed to be the largest city in the world.

The cultural richness and prosperous economic life of the city were vividly portrayed

in the renowned Qingming Scroll (Qingming shanghe-tu), attributed to the Song artist

Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145) and The Eastern Capital: Reminiscences of Dreamy Splendor

(Dongjing meng hua lu, first printed 1187), a ten-volume memoir by Meng Yuanlao (circa

1090–1150).

2. Yogore-yaku refers to a movie part requiring the actor to wear dirty clothes

or play a role not considered respectable by conventional standards.

3. For background information, see Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema,

pp. 84–85. Among Zhou Xiaobo’s other fi lms for Man’ei were Fengchao and Doushi

de hongliu (1940), Tianshang renjian (1941), and Dade fengchun (1945).

4. Man-made flooding of the Yellow River as a military strategy was employed as early as 1642 by Kaifeng’s governor during the siege of the city against Li

Zicheng’s rebel forces during the last breaths of the Ming Dynasty, producing one of

the most horrendous human casualties—an estimated death of over 300,000—in

Chinese and world history.

5. These were apparently estimates that have yet to be established. Another

source gives the death toll as 500,000 and lists the flood as the third worst in history. See

http://www.armageddononline.org/worst-floods.html.

6. The original authors have chosen here to paint a sanitized view of the Chinese countryside as represented in Hino Ashihei’s 1938 documentary novel. In fact, the

foremost wartime bestseller, Mugi to heitai, depicts muddy battle skirmishes, Japanese

soldiers encroaching on desolate Chinese villages, Hino’s own invasion of the bedroom of a young Chinese couple with his dirty military boots, and, most disturbingly, the brutal beheading of captured Chinese resistance fighters before an open

wheat field, a scene that inspires the novel’s name. The quotation “To Xuzhou . . .” in

the original text refers to the first line of the lyrics of the theme song when Mugi to

heitai was put on screen in 1938. Composed by Ōmura Nōshō with Fujita Masato’s

lyrics, the song was popu larized by the singer Shōji Tarō.

7. Based on a Man’yō poem by Ōtomo no Yakamochi and set to music in 1880

and again in 1937, the song was sung before fighting men were sent off to the front. It

also became a favorite before the takeoff of kamikaze suicide pilots.

328

Notes to Pages 175–182

8. For a short discussion of the revival of this old Russo-Japanese war song in

the Manchurian context, see Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the

Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 91.

The translation of the first line is Young’s.

9. First established as Hokkai Dressmaking Academy (Hokkai Doresu-mēkā

Jogakuen) in 1939, the school was renamed Asai Academy (Asai Gakuen) in 1957 before it turned into Hokkaido Women’s Junior College (Hokkaido Joshi Tanki Daigaku)

in 1963. The school site was moved to Ebetsu in 1966. After a series of name changes

and curricular expansions, the institution is now called Hokushō University (Hokushō

Daigaku).

10. While the Japanese uguisu is commonly rendered in English as “Japanese

bush warbler,” here the bird does not seem to be related to any native Japanese setting.

11. The Chinese characters for Mariko allude to “a child from Manchuria.”

12. Beginning in 1948, Kuroi continued his acting career using the stage name

Nihonyanagi Kan (Hiroshi) and appeared in the works of directors such as Ozu Yasujirō

and Naruse Mikio.

13. Making her debut in Uchida Tomu’s Sakebu Ajia (1933), Chiba Sachiko

appeared in such fi lms as Tsuma wa bara no yō ni (1935) and Wagahai wa neko de

aru (1936). Watashi no uguisu marked her fi nal fi lm appearance before leaving

Tōhō in 1943.

14. His full name is given as Dmitrii Panin. See Thomas Lahusen, “Dr. Fu

Manchu in Harbin: Cinema and Moviegoers of the 1930s,” South Atlantic Quarterly

99, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 155–158, which has a brief discussion of the fi lm.

15. The English translation is “Dark Eyes.”

16. Formerly the Harbin Eastern Railway Symphony Orchestra formed in 1908

with mostly Russian players, the Harbin Symphonic Orchestra is now one of China’s

most renowned orchestras with occasional overseas performances, such as in 2009.

17. The 1.4 kilometer Central Boulevard, or Zhongyang Dajie, leading to the

south shore of Songhua River continues today as the most famous showpiece of

Harbin’s international heritage. For a collection of essays on the history, émigré identity, cinema, architecture, the Korean and Japanese presence, and other subjects in

connection with Harbin, see Thomas Lahusen, et al., “Harbin and Manchuria: Place,

Space, and Identity,” South Atlantic Quarterly 99, no. 1 (2001).

18. Built in 1906 in a classic French Renaissance style with its exterior painted

in pink, the establishment was purportedly patronized by such guests as Edgar Snow,

Puyi, and Guo Morou. Still in business today, it elegantly stands at the northern end

of Zhongyang Dajie.

19. Regarded as one of the best early European musicals, it was directed by

Erik Charell in 1931.

20. A 1955 film starring Kishi Keiko and Okada Eiji about the Gunma Symphonic Orchestra. From 2013 through 2014, thanks to the work of Tokyo’s Dokuritsu

Puro Meiga Hozonkai (Society for the Preservation of Independent Film Productions), twenty-six of postwar Japan’s independent fi lms have been or are scheduled to

Notes to Pages 182–186

329

be redistributed in DVD format and made commercially available through Kinokuniya

Shoten. The list includes Imai Tadashi’s masterpiece, along with Yamamoto Satsuo’s

Shinkū chitai, Kamei Fumio’s Onna hitori daichi o yuku, Imai Tadashi’s Nigorie and

Hashi no nai kawa, Sekigawa Hideo’s Hiroshima, Ieki Miyoji’s Ibo kyōdai, Tomoshibi,

and many others. This endeavor represents a major undertaking in the preservation of

one of postwar Japan’s most significant cinematic legacies.

21. The original text identifies the source as Satō Tadao’s Kinema to hōsei

(Tokyo: Ripuropōto, 1985).

22. Qiazi, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1990) describes the struggles between

the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist forces in the suburbs of Changchun

and the accompanying human tragedy in the aftermath of War World II. Qiazi refers

to the buffer zone between the two opposing forces outside Changchun.

23. The Army Nakano School (Rikugun Nakano Gakkō) started in 1938 before

it was put under the administration of Lieutenant Colonel Ueda Masao in 1940. It

provided training in military intelligence and counterintelligence, covert operations,

propaganda, and sabotage. Its over 2,500 graduates were variously involved in capturing oil facilities in southern Sumatra, forming the Indian National Army, and flooding forged Chinese currency into the fi nancial system of the Nationalist government. See Stephen C. Mercado, The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the

Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2002),

Hatakeyama Kiyoyuki, Rikugun Nakano Gakkō, 6 vols. (Tokyo: Banchō Shobō, 1974),

Katō Masao, Rikugun Nakano Gakkō no zenbō (Tokyo: Tendensha, 1998). Dai’ei

made a series of five fi lms on the Nakano School from 1966 to 1968, with Ichikawa

Raizō in the leading role.

24. First published in Tokyo in 1958, Kōya no hana was edited by Ishimitsu’s

son Mahito based on his father’s diaries and notes. For a brief study of Ishimitsu in

English, see Ian Nish, “A Spy in Manchuria—Ishimitsu Makiyo,” Collected Writings

of Ian Nishi (Surrey and Tokyo: Japan Library and Edition Synapse, 2001), 2:133–38.