As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in Fushun and Fengtian in
214
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Manchuria before continuing my studies in the old Chinese
capital of Beijing.
After I became a Man’ei actress, my work was based in
Xinjing, where its main
office and studio were situated. During that time, my family
moved from Fengtian to Beijing, and the last place of my residence in China was
Shanghai.
Shanghai—how might one succinctly describe the largest
metropolis in China
and one of the largest in the world? One could come up with
such labels as “international city,” “modern metropolis,” “a city without
nationality,” “a city of darkness and epicurean abandon,” “a city of trade and
commerce,” or maybe “a city of
music.” As far as prewar Shanghai is concerned, I think the
two most appropriate
descriptions are “the city of evil” and “the city of trendy
elegance.” Shanghai had
the dual personality of decadent vice and chic modernity. At
the city center were
rows of gorgeous hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, theaters,
and emporiums housed
in Gothic or art deco structures built of granite. Even
during daytime, just a few
steps into the alleyways, light gave way to shadowy dimness
in which the mold of
crime, intrigue, drugs, gambling, and prostitution festered.
In the area around the French Concession and the
International Settlement,
on the other hand, one would find attractive streets and
parks, splendidly built
high-rises, and expansive upscale residential
districts—neighborhoods resembling
in miniature the modern cities of Europe or the United
States. When evening came,
the lights of Broadway Mansion (now Shanghai Mansion) cast
its reflections on
the banks of the Bund along the Huangpu River beyond Garden
Bridge (Waibaiduqiao).1 The Huangpu feeds into the estuary of the Yangtze
River, and the image of
a nineteenth-century European city emerging from the water
surface like a mirage were Shanghai’s international concessions. One easy way
to grasp the geopolitics of this international melting pot of Shanghai is to
imagine its map from
the south toward the north with successive territorial
demarcations into fi rst the
Chinese residential section, then the French Concession, and
then the International Settlement. The international concessions of Britain,
the United States,
204
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
205
Japan, France, and Italy were divided into southern and
northern halves by the Suzhou River. The area to the southwest was guarded by
the British and American
forces, while the northeastern portion, from Hongkou to
Zhabei, by the Japanese.
To be sure, this geopolitical distribution held only until
the outbreak of the Pacific War; from December 1941, the Japanese army occupied
all areas of Shanghai, including the foreign concessions.
After the opening of Shanghai, the international concessions
served as bases
for various foreign countries to advance their interests
within the Chinese continent before such settlements were themselves occupied
by the Japanese army; it
was not until the end of the war that Shanghai was finally
liberated from foreign
domination. In the beginning of the city’s opening, the
proprietary aggrandizement of the various white foreign powers within the
concessions was symbolized
by the words “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” on a signboard at
the entrance to
Huangpu Park, the first such facility created in Shanghai.2
Meanwhile, the reaction
against foreign domination conferred on Shanghai yet another
character, that of
a city of revolution and guerilla resistance. Once somebody
escaped into the
deep, convoluted alleyways within the concessions or into
the well-hidden city
slums, he or she would be able to evade the probing eyes of
Chinese officials.
China’s first steps toward modernization, it could be
argued, began in Shanghai. Men like Sun Yat-sen were exiles from Shanghai who
turned the city into a
revolutionary base. The Chinese Communist Party, the
architect of a new China,
was founded in a Shanghai foreign concession. The Cultural
Revolution, too, began in Shanghai. Japanese revolutionaries such as Takasugi
Shinsaku, Miyazaki
Tōten, Kita Ikki, and Ōsugi Sakae visited Shanghai, dreaming
about the romance
of social and political transformation. The gateway into the
Chinese continent was
accessible from Nagasaki in just a day’s time without a
passport; indeed, in the
prewar days, the metropolis came to be called “the city of
Shanghai in Nagasaki
Prefecture.” It was also tantamount to the West as far as
Japan was concerned.
My first visit to Shanghai was in 1940 during the location
shooting of China
Nights. After leaving Man’ei at the end of 1944, I lived in
the city nearly without
interruption through the end of the war until April 1946,
when I was repatriated
to Japan.
The city was truly worthy of the name “Paris of the Orient,”
and it was Asia’s
mecca when it came to all sorts of artistic endeavors—film,
theater, ballet, symphony, jazz. But that lasted only until the 1930s. The
escalation of the Second SinoJapanese War and the Pacific War brought about
increasingly stringent Japanese
military control over the arts, sapping the vibrancy of fi
lm, theater, and music.
Uncompromising artists had several options. Some fled
Shanghai to join Chiang’s
Nationalist forces in Chongqing or Mao’s Eighth Route Army
in the Yan’an area;
some waited out the storm by taking refuge in Hong Kong;
while yet others chose
206
Chapter 13
to maintain their silence. Of course, there were also those,
like Zhang Shankun,
who allowed themselves to temporize with reality by
continuing to work while
channeling their spirit of resistance through artistic
production.
The most popular form of China’s performing arts was the
traditional Beijing Opera. The fi lm media was available only in certain
limited urban areas, but
all the Chinese people loved the theater as a stage art. The
preeminent performer
of the Beijing Opera was the famous female impersonator Mei
Lanfang. During
the war, he resisted Japanese militarism by confining to his
domicile in Hong Kong
and not making a single stage appearance in Beijing or
Shanghai. Apparently, on
one occasion, Kawakita Nagamasa was able to catch an
intimate glimpse of Mei’s
spirit of resistance.
As the tide of the war was turning against Japan, the army’s
Press Division
was contemplating all sorts of strategies to salvage Japan’s
image for fear of growing public resentment within Japanese-occupied
territories. One of the leading proposals was to have a prominent opera per
formance by Mei Lanfang. Kawakita
Nagamasa was asked to negotiate the deal by virtue of the
trust placed in him by
the Chinese.
After arriving in Hong Kong, Kawakita arranged a
get-together in a Chinese
restaurant with Mei Lanfang, along with Zhang Shankun, a
close friend of Mei’s.
When Mei made his appearance, his shaggy, unkempt stubble
and his awfully
crooked back revealed a man who apparently had been reduced
to an utterly unprepossessing form. No one could possibly have imagined that
this was Mei Lanfang, the same man who had once transformed himself into a
luscious beauty and
mesmerized his audience in a grand theater with his splendid
voice.
When the proposal for him to perform was brought forth, Mei
Lanfang stared
directly into Kawakita’s eyes and sighed hoarsely, “I am
grateful for your kind
thoughts, but you can see for yourself the shape I’m in.
I’ve been suffering from a
lingering illness, I’m now terribly old and feeble, and my
legs can’t stand up straight.
There is no way that I can perform on stage. On top of
everything and most importantly, I have completely lost my voice. Now, I am so
embarrassed that I couldn’t
even consider appearing in public.”
In a second, Kawakita understood what the actor really
meant; he had a distinct feeling that Mei Lanfang had been giving, just before
his eyes, the greatest
performance of the artist’s life. When his and Zhang
Shankun’s eyes met, Kawakita
confirmed their common thought. To the Press Division,
Kawakita reported that
“Mei Lanfang is now too old and feeble to do any good. If he
were to be involuntarily put on stage, he would only turn into a laughingstock
and a humiliation to
the Japanese army.”
Once the war ended, Mei Lanfang promptly shaved off his
beard and stood
up straight. He then appeared in a grand Shanghai theater at
a huge public cele-
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
207
bration of war victory before hypnotizing his audience with
his beauty and extraordinary voice.3
In 1944, the war situation in the south made it increasingly
difficult to hide
Japan’s military weaknesses. From October to November, the
American army and
navy advanced into the Philippines and ultimately took the
island of Leyte. Although the Japanese navy announced that it had won a “huge
victory” by intercepting U.S. air forces off the coast of Taiwan, the Chinese
in Shanghai knew what
had really happened by listening directly to the U.S. army
broadcast through shortwave radio: “Our fleet which was sunk by the Japanese
navy has now all emerged
unscathed from the ocean bottom and is advancing toward the
west in attack.”
During those days, Shanghai was also being bombed; the
airport to the north
and the shipyards to the south suffered direct hits.
Meanwhile, Kawakita began
to consider ways to shrink the scale of his film
productions. Already in an organizational restructuring under emergency times
in June 1943, Zhonghua Dianying
(or Zhongying) on the Japanese side and Zhonghua Lianhe
Zhipian Gongsi (China
United Film Company or Zhonglian) on the Chinese side were
merged to form
Zhonghua Dianying Company, Incorporated (Huaying).4 Within
Huaying and
with Kawakita’s strong support, Zhang Shankun was able to
continue in business
by lining up seven popular stars—Chen Yunchang, Yuan Meiyun,
Gu Lanjun, Chen
Yanyan, Li Lihua, Zhou Manhua, and Zhou Xuan. In time, Chen
Yunchang left
after her marriage, and Gu Lanjun switched her career to
theater. Later, Chen
Yanyan and Li Lihua both left the silver screen, and so only
the “three big stars”
of Zhou Xuan, Zhou Manhua, and Yuan Meiyun remained.
Under those circumstances, Zhang thought of adding Li
Xianglan to the lineup
and was making plans for such fi lms as Chang’e Flies to the
Moon (Chang’e benyue) and The Fragrant Concubine (Xiangfei). By the time such
talks began, I had
already left Man’ei after seven years of ser vice and was
residing at Broadway Mansion. Chang’e, a beauty in Chinese legend and the wife
of Yi, a renowned archer
who has shot down nine of ten suns in the sky, steals the
elixirs of immortality Yi
has obtained from Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West.
She ascends to
the moon where she subsequently resides. The film was based
on this story, a legend popular among ordinary people and comparable to The
Feather Robe from
Heaven (Ama no hagoromo) and The Tale of Princess Kaguya
(Kaguya-hime) in
Japanese folktales. Zhang was hoping to make an ambitious
musical based on Lu
Xun’s story of the Chang’e legend, with the expectation that
it would become a
hit after the success of Glory to Eternity. The Fragrant
Concubine, on the other
hand, is a tragic story about a princess from a remote
region taken as an imperial
concubine by a conqueror of her people.5
I was thinking of leaving the silver screen after finishing
these two fi lms. My
plan was to publicly reveal my origin and apologize to the
Chinese people before
208
Chapter 13
a press conference after my contractual obligations had been
fulfilled. But although
the screenplays had been completed, the shooting itself
could no longer go forward—
Zhang Shankun, whose links with the Chongqing government had
long been suspected by the Japanese military police, had suddenly disappeared
from Shanghai.
After the Philippines was occupied by the American forces,
Kawakita ordered
all Huaying staff to evacuate their families and encouraged
their repatriation to
Japan unless they belonged to essential units. In April
1945, when the American
forces began to land on Okinawa, fi lm production at Huaying
came to a complete
halt. Among its major members, Kondaibō Gorō, Hazumi Tsuneo,
and Shimizu
Akira had either gone to the battlefield or returned to
Japan. Anticipating an American landing in Shanghai, Kawakita planned to move
the work of the main company to Beijing.
As film production was no longer possible, those connected
with Huaying had
too much time on their hands for days on end. That was when
somebody came
up with the idea of a grand musical. I suppose Kawakita and
Noguchi Hisamitsu
still had lingering notions of a musical about Chang’e
flying to the moon after
taking her elixir of immortality. Many concerned were eager
to launch a majestic
musical show to bring back some vitality to the company.
The composer Hattori Ryōichi, commissioned by the Shanghai
Press Division
jumped on the idea and proposed a “fantasy recital”
featuring Li Xianglan; perhaps he had in mind recreating on stage the
commercially aborted musical My
Nightingale. Since my debut days with Song of the White
Orchid, he and I had long
been congenial friends. The army’s Press Division was also
greatly interested in
the idea, and a planning session was immediately called.
It was a stroke of luck that the musical director at
Shanghai’s army Press Division with which Hattori was affiliated was Lieutenant
Nakagawa Makizō. A Keiō
University graduate now living in the Kansai area, Nakagawa
had studied in Europe in the early Shōwa period and received training as a
tenor in Italy. A tall,
handsome man with a splendid beard, he had a deep empathy
for men of culture,
being an artist himself. Known affectionately by everyone as
“Nakachū,”6 he would
put on his military uniform in the daytime and change into a
suit in the evening
before dashing off as quite a suave dandy into the nightly
social circles. He often
encouraged his press staff to wear civilian clothes at
night, saying, “Shanghai is a
special place where the military man is looked upon with
disfavor. Wearing a military uniform could even get you into personal trouble.
You in the Press Division
might be treated as military officers, but military ranks
don’t mean much in the
Chinese community. I ask you to feel free to interact with
the Chinese or other
foreigners in Shanghai as individual artists.”
One time, Hattori assembled such singers as Watanabe Hamako,
who just happened to be in Shanghai along with his sister Hattori Tomiko, to
perform at the
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
209
Grand Theater (Da’guangming Daxiyuan).7 Even though most of
the audience was
Japanese, the fairly positive reception the show generated
led to Nakagawa’s repeated encouragement to his cultural staff to carry out
their operations along similar lines.
The next project following that success was the proposed Li
Xianglan recital.
Responding immediately to the appeal from its producer,
Kawakita Nagamasa,
the manager of the Shanghai Philharmonic, Kusakari Yoshito,
and the chief musical director, Hattori Ryōichi, were the remaining Huaying
staff in Shanghai
such as Noguchi Hisamitsu, Tsuji Hisaichi, and Koide
Takashi, along with the
ballet dancer Komaki Masahide. As they brought new ideas to
the project, they
also agreed to bring to fruition a wonderful musical—a kind
of world-class fantasy
show that would electrify the imagination of the Chinese and
other foreigners
rather than the Japanese.
At a planning session, Nakagawa proposed a program of
popular theme songs
by the Hattori-Li combination featured in previous fi lms.
Hattori, on the other
hand, wanted the Shanghai Philharmonic, a world-class
orchestra with foreign
players, to accompany Li Xianglan with a symphonic jazz
motif. The orchestra,
said at the time to be the best in Asia, had sixty players,
with Italians, German
Jews, Austrians, and White Russians as its core members.
Hattori’s teacher, [Emmanuel] Metter, had repeatedly been invited to serve as a
guest conductor. While
Nakagawa thought it would be a grand idea, he wondered
whether an orchestra
of that stature would be willing to accompany Li Xianglan
performing hit tunes
or jazz numbers. To this Hattori responded, “What Li
Xianglan will sing are not
going to be popular songs. The majority of them will be
Western and Japanese
classics. In addition, the main theme of the show will be
presented in the symphonic jazz style of George Gershwin. I hope it would be
enjoyable for both classical
music and jazz fans, for the Chinese, the Westerners, and
indeed, for everybody.”
For a long time, it had been Hattori’s strong desire to
conduct a first-class orchestra playing symphonic jazz music such as Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue.
Given his responsibility as an officer of the Press Division
to clamp down on
the enemy’s music, Lieutenant Nakagawa pondered over the
proposal, but it must
have been Nakagawa the musician who reached the decision.
“Let’s go for it. But
we cannot call it by Western names such as ‘rhapsody’ or
‘fantasy’; you understand there are slow military types in the Press Division.
Let’s use the Sino-Japanese
term gensōkyoku.”
It was decided that part one of the recital was to consist
of Western and Japanese songs, followed by Chinese songs in part two. But the
question of the theme
song for part three, our main attraction, a rhapsody in
symphonic jazz, remained
unresolved: “Western music should be avoided given the
times”; “The melody
should be cheerful and elegant, with a rhythm that would
make you want to dance”;
210
Chapter 13
“It would be best to have a song sung in Chinese,
considering our goal”; “Let’s have
a song that makes the most of Li Xianglan’s unique voice as
a soprano, and one
that could be arranged in symphonic jazz.”
Listening to the heated arguments, Noguchi Hisamitsu
emphatically raised
his hand. “Let’s call it ‘The Evening Primrose’ (Yelaixiang).
It is in her repertoire,
it has a rumba beat, and it can be sung in Chinese. Last
year, it came to the top of
the charts. Let Mr. Hattori arrange it in various symphonic
jazz, Chinese melodic,
or rhythmic styles. For the medley, the Shanghai Philharmonic
and the Chinese
orchestra will perform it together, with the latter playing
the er’hu, sheng, and pipa.
It will be arranged in such a way that the whole song will
be performed by Li Xianglan alone.”
No sooner had he finished than he began to croon the first
words of “The Evening Primrose”: “Na nanfeng chui’lai qing’liang . . .” (That
southerly breeze brings
a soothing cool . . . ) as his hands and feet began to move
in rhythm. Everybody
felt stirred by his enthusiasm instantaneously. Hattori held
Noguchi’s hands, saying, “Thank you. This is it. We’ll call it ‘Rhapsody of the
Evening Primrose.’ ”
Nakagawa added, “It’s a good song. The rhythm of slow rumba
is precisely what
goes well with symphonic jazz. Since the evening primrose is
a renowned Chinese flower, nobody will raise any objections. It has a cheerful
melody that will
dispel all the gloom. If we give the show a good name like a
joint Sino-Japanese
concert, it will surely be a big hit.” Everyone there shared
their wholehearted admiration for Noguchi’s idea.
Noguchi was an illustrator sent by the Tōwa Trading Company
to Zhonghua
Dianying’s Publicity Division. A fervent jazz fan, he was
able while living in Shanghai to gain wide exposure to and to acquire records
of new American songs not
accessible in Japan. He was also active as a fi lm critic,
but now he is known as a
pioneer in Japanese jazz criticism, a man who had totally
engrossed himself in
the jazz age of the 1930s. Although a 1933 graduate from the
Department of Design in the Faculty of Industrial Arts at Ueno’s Tokyo Art
Academy (currently
Tokyo University of the Arts), he was a great lover of
Western painting and jazz
when he became a Tōwa employee. He developed his talents as
an illustrator by
liberally pursuing another interest: watching Western films.
He was responsible for
designing almost all the posters for popu lar prewar
European films imported by
Tōwa, such as Der Kongress tanzt (Kaigi wa odoru [1931]), Le
Paquebot Ténacity
(Shōsen Tenashichī [1934]), Maria Chapdelaine (Shiroki
shojochi [1934]), and Poil
de Carotte (Ninjin [1932]). Many would remember the
refreshing sketches he drew
with soft pastel colors. Not a single printed word was used
in his posters; this was
true for catchphrases and the names of staff and the cast,
not to mention the title
of the film; everything was executed by hand. The posters
themselves became pieces
of art. His representative works after the war included
posters for The Third Man
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
211
(Daisan no otoko [1949]), Jeux interdits (Kinjirareta asobi
[1952]), and Gervaise (Izakaya [1956]).8
“The Evening Primrose” was composed on commission by Li
Jinguang, reputed to be Shanghai’s best rising composer.9 The sponsor was
Columbia Records
(Baidai Gongsi), which specified that the new composition
retain “the same beautiful timbre as ‘The Candy Peddling Song.’ ”10 At the age
of eighty today, Li is still
living in Shanghai and is active as the music director of
the Shanghai branch of
Chinese Records (Zhongguo Changpian She). Hattori Ryōichi
and others, including myself, met him again after a long separation when he
came to Japan in 1981.
At the lounge of the Hotel New Ōtani, we all nostalgically
sang one of his very
favorite songs, “The Evening Primrose,” and others, with
Hattori on the piano.
When the request was made of Li, he said that he had in mind
the image of
the yelaixiang, a lovely Chinese flower with a sweet
fragrance. Just like its other
name, yuexiaxiang, the white svelte flower perfumes the entire
moonlit garden.
Looking at it as he walked down to his garden every night
gave him in time the
inspiration for his composition. While he did refer to a
Chinese folk melody called
“Peddling Evening Primrose” (Mai Yelaixiang) and an old
Chinese song titled “Evening Primrose” (Yelaixiang), both the melody and the
rhythm of his song were
luxuriantly pervaded by a completely new Western ambience
and carried the
beat of a fluid slow-rumba. The refrain in the latter half
builds up to an emotional
crescendo with a touch of indigenous musical style.
The southerly breeze
brings a soothing cool
The nightingale’s
despondent cry saddens the heart
All the flowers under
the moonlight
Already deep in their
slumber
All except the evening
primrose
Sending forth its alluring
fragrance
I love the misty
panorama at night
And the singing of the
nightingale
Yet my true love is a
dream embroidered with flowers
With the evening
primrose in my arms
And the evening
primrose on my lips
Evening primrose, for
you I sing
Evening primrose, for
you I dream
Ah . . .
For you I sing
For you I dream
Evening primrose . . .
212
Chapter 13
While this is the version composed and with lyrics by Jin
Yugu (Li Jinguang’s
pen name),11 when translated into Japanese, the lyrics by
Fujiura Kō begin with “The
gentle rustle in the southerly wind”; Saeki Takao’s
rendition reads, “Into the spring
breeze, the nightingale sorrowfully laments.”12 Both
versions have a nuance and
image a little different from those of the original. Neither
quite matched the original’s unaffected reference to the soothing effects of
the southerly breeze on those
who had grown weary of the war.
The song became a great hit in terms of record sales.
According to Hattori’s
recollections, the other very popular songs in Shanghai from
1943 until the end
of the war included “The Candy Peddling Song” by Liang
Leyin, “The Rose Blooms
Everywhere” (Qiangwei chuchu kai) by Chen Gexin, and “The
Drum Song” by
Yao Min. In creating their new melodies, these rising
composers, known in China
as “the group of five” with the addition of Yan Gongshang,
were attempting a synthesis of traditional and Western music. Even among them,
Li Jinguang was the
standard-bearer of China’s new music.
I clearly remember the day when I was recording “The Evening
Primrose.”
With Li waving his baton, the orchestra was beginning to
play the fi rst notes
of the briskly paced prelude. Right at that moment, as I
casually looked away
from the glass panel of the recording studio, I noticed a
woman standing in the
monitor room intently watching us with vulnerable charm. It
was the film actress
Zhou Xuan. Not only did she rise to the top of her
profession by starring in The
Street Angel (Malu tianshi, 1937),13 she was also a popular
singer with such hit
numbers as “The Four Seasons’ Song” (Siji’ge) and “The
Wandering Songstress”
(Tian’ya ge’nu). She was also the first to perform “When
Will You Return?”14
I was Zhou Xuan’s fan and an admirer of her singing.
Noticing the presence
of a star I had dreamed about just before I was supposed to
start singing, I was so
overwhelmed with emotion and excitement that I shouted out,
“Aiya, Zhou Xuan!”
Needless to say, with my abrupt interjection, my recording
got an NG.
Zhou Xuan and I became good friends, and we would go out for
tea and meals
together. She was two years older than I was, and like me,
she started learning to
sing as a young teenage girl before winning a competition at
a radio station, followed by her career as a film actress. Her first
performance was in “Special Express Train” (“Tebie kuaiche [1931]”)15, and mine
was my Man’ei debut, Honeymoon
Express. And so there were a number of similarities between
us. But our association was largely one between singers. We would exchange
songs in our repertoire,
and I remember spending many hours with her in front of her
piano. She was quite
conscientious about learning new things and asked me one
time to teach her how
to perform a cadenza-like flourish in her song.
She was a kind and delicate woman with none of the
pretentiousness of a prominent singer and actress. On the other hand, there
seemed to be an ominous shadow
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
213
of ill-fortune hanging over her. She attempted suicide after
the company with which
she was affi liated opposed her marriage, and after that
incident, she apparently
continued to suffer from a ner vous disorder. After the war,
she again became active in Shanghai’s fi lm world. In 1957, she died
prematurely at the age of thirtynine, apparently of encephalitis after a ner
vous breakdown.
When “The Candy Peddling Song” was becoming a hit, I
performed in a small
recital at the Lyceum Theater (Lanxin Daxiyuan) partly for
publicity purposes.16
After I had sung “When Will You Return?” I was summoned to
appear before the
Shanghai Municipal Council (Gongbuju), the administrative
and policing arm of
the International Settlement, on suspicion that I was
harboring a secret desire for
the return of the Chongqing or Communist government. My
investigator was a
Chinese police officer, and of course, I maintained that I
had not the slightest intention of the sort, and that I was simply singing a
love song. I also defended myself by saying that in fact everyone else,
starting with Zhou Xuan, was singing the
same song.
The affair didn’t develop any further, and I suppose the
reason why the Municipal Council was singling me out for suspicion was that it
didn’t know I was
Japanese. Moreover, something came to my attention only
after it had been pointed
out to me by the police officer: that stage props could very
easily invite misunderstandings. I sometimes performed on stage in a white
dress, and since the stage
background was dark blue and red, the effect was apparently
interpreted as an allusion to the flag of the Chongqing government, with its
blue sky and white sun.
Further complicating the matter was the fact that the
content of the song had to
do with the singer’s deep yearning for the return of a
beloved “you.” Nakazono
Eisuke’s The Story of “When Will You Return” (He’ri jun zai
lai monogatari [1988]),
contains detailed information on the origins of this famous
song and its composer
Liu Xue’an. According to Nakazone, the “you” ( jun) in the
lyrics has also been
interpreted as an allegorical intimation of an eagerly
awaited savior on the part
of the Chinese people, then suffocating under the oppressive
hand of the Japanese army.17
Meanwhile, the planning for the joint Sino-Japanese concert
was making headway. Here is a list of the staff:
Producers: Kawakita
Nagamasa and Kusakari Yoshito
Musical Director and
Arranger: Hattori Ryōichi
Scriptwriters: Tsuji
Hisaichi and Noguchi Hisamitsu
Choreographer: Komaki
Masahide
Stage Director: Koide
Takashi
Orchestra: The
Shanghai Philharmonic
Conductors: Chen Gexin
and Hattori Ryōichi
214
Chapter 13
Hattori first immersed himself for a two-week period
arranging about twenty
songs at the home of a Mr. Kawamura, the Shanghai branch
manager of Yokohama Shōkin Bank (currently Bank of Tokyo). There was a famous
European grand
piano in the reception room of the Kawamura residence, and
Hattori was given
free access to it. When the music score was completed, I,
too, frequently went there
for rehearsals. Hattori made repeated attempts to rework his
melodies and the
rhythm to synchronize with my voice; one could feel his
extraordinary enthusiasm for this recital. Reminiscing about those times, he
reflected how the Gershwin style could never have been given full expression in
wartime Japan, and yet
he experimented to his heart’s content in incorporating it
into his music. Noguchi, his assistant in composition, recalled how they would
stop by his house after
the end of a rehearsal, take draughts of beer and whisky as
they exchanged ideas
on the music, and before they knew it, the night was nearly
over.
The recital was held at the Grand Theater (Daguangming
Daxiyuan)18 next
to the Park Hotel (Guoji Fandian)19 on Jing’ansi Road for
three days in May of 1945,
with one daytime and one evening performance each day. The
theater was the most
elegant venue in Shanghai, with two thousand deluxe seats
equipped with red velvet backs. All seats were reserved. But it was a time when
Japan’s defeat was becoming increasingly apparent. Both Kawakita and Nakagawa
were ner vous about
whether we would have a Chinese audience if Li Xianglan’s
Japanese nationality
became public knowledge.
When the show opened on the first day, the theater was sold
out to capacity,
as were the shows in the following days. The reviews in the
papers were also positive. After all the tickets had been sold, the price of a
seat took on a premium three
times the original admission charge. I was asked by the
theater to continue the
show for another week, but I declined for fear that my vocal
cords couldn’t last
that long. According to a report from Lieutenant Nakagawa’s
Press Division, ninety
percent of the audience consisted of Chinese, along with
white residents of the
foreign concessions, which inspired Hattori to say, with
emotion in his voice, “Now
I can truly sense that music has no national boundaries. The
musical note is the
common language of the world!”
The recital consisted of three parts. “Songs from the East
and the West” included such Japanese and European numbers and folksongs as “The
Moon over
the Ruined Castle,” “Autumn Grasses in the Garden” (Niwa no
chigusa), “Katyusha,” “Dark Eyes,” “The Drinking Song,” “The Merry Widow,” and
others. The second part consisted of Chinese songs, including such contemporary
hits as “The
Four Seasons’ Song,” “The Rose Blooms Everywhere,” “The
Candy Peddling
Song,” and “Mulan Joins the Army” (Mulan Congjun). The
conductor for the
first and second parts was Chen Gexin.
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
215
The third part was formally called “Yelaixiang gensōkyoku,”
but in contrast
to the name printed on the signboards and in the program, we
chose to call it the
“Yelaixiang Rhapsody” or “Yelaixiang Fantasy.” Similar to
what happened when
I sang at Nichigeki in February 1941, I was so engrossed in
my stage performance
from start to finish that I had little real feel of the
audience’s reaction other than
the sounds they made. Likewise, with his back to the
audience while conducting
in the orchestra’s box, Hattori, too, could only sense the
audience’s reaction behind him. Based on the collective memory of Kawakita,
Noguchi, and Tsuji, the
audience seemed to be totally immersed in a fantasy of
passion and excitement.
After the bell announced that part three was about to begin,
the audience began to quiet down as they sat in darkness awaiting the rise of
the curtain. Away
from the curtain, a low voice could be heard singing
“Ye—lai—xiang” in a long
drawl before it repeated the same fragment with a higher
pitch. With baton in hand,
Hattori began to lead the orchestra in a soft rendition of
the song’s introduction.
As the music quietly played while the curtain rose, I, in a
pure white Chinese dress,
began to walk toward the orchestra with nearly a hundred
players. It was my
solo singing as a coloratura, finishing with a cadenza.
After finishing each line,
the full orchestra replicated the melody; the effect was
similar to a canon between
the solo singer and the accompaniment. When my singing
reached the treble, the
orchestra immediately followed with a return to the cheerful
tune at the beginning of the song in slow rumba. The audience cheered with an
excited “Waa!” and
began to crowd forward all the way to the edge of the stage
as the song approached
its end.
When the orchestra was playing the interlude, I hurriedly
changed into another Chinese outfit, a silvery-hemmed blue dress adorned with
the image of a
nightingale. When I reappeared on stage, I held a white
flower basket with a bunch
of evening primrose blossoms. This time, I was singing the
folksong “Peddling
Evening Primrose” accompanied principally by the er’hu,
while the music from
the full orchestra retreated into the background. Li
Jinguang said that his motif
in composing “The Evening Primrose” came from this piece and
another old song.
While there was a difference between traditional Chinese
music and Western-style
swing, their melodies were equally beautiful. The er’hu with
its whispering timbre was able to reproduce the mood of the folksong’s
melancholy tune in a manner reminiscent of “The Candy Peddling Song.” The
folksong’s lyrics spoke of how
The beautiful evening
primrose blossom, dimly white in the darkness of night,
sends forth its
graceful scent. Its color and fragrance will shortly fade; let’s
enjoy its beauty while
it lasts. Now this is the time to buy them, the evening
primrose blossoms.
216
Chapter 13
A short monologue was inserted into the middle of the
lyrics. Whenever I called
out to the audience, “What about some evening primrose
blossoms?” a few of them
would indeed come up onto the stage as if they had been
invited to do so. I was
momentarily taken by surprise, but in an impromptu act, I
continued my singing
while handing each of them a flower with a bow.
As the multicolored stage lights descended on me from all
directions, the
combo section of the orchestra again played “The Evening
Primrose” in a rumba
rhythm. This time, in a red Chinese dress, I was singing
while doing dance steps
on stage. Then came the string section playing an elegant waltz,
followed by a pulsating evening primrose boogie-woogie. With the boogie-woogie,
the audience,
too, started to move their bodies with the music. I myself
only learned that that
was boogie-woogie rhythm quite some time after the recital.
According to Noguchi, there was a long tradition of playing
boogie in the
United States, but it was only after the late 1930s that it
was incorporated in
earnest in popular music. In Shanghai, the Orient’s jazz
mecca, it was not until
around 1940 that the style began to gain popularity.
Needless to say, it had not
reached Japan at the time. In a frank revelation, Hattori
said that he had long
been interested in the vivacious eight-beat boogie rhythm
and had managed to
obtain the music score for “Bugle Call Boogie.” As he
studied the new rhythm of
“the enemy’s music,” he had thought of incorporating it into
Japa nese music
without anybody noticing it. His fi rst experiment was with
the “Evening Primrose Rhapsody.”
He said teasingly, “While I was practicing in the reception
room in Mr.
Kawamura’s house with this boogie melody, I recalled Li
Xianglan’s face as she
swung her hips while frequently tilting her head to the
side. I can still remember
it to this day.”
“Well, the melody was difficult to sing when I was standing
still the whole
time. I was feeling restless,” I grumbled.
Thereupon, Hattori told me that my complaint was thankfully
just the right
answer he was hoping for. “In that case, don’t stand to
attention like a soldier. Try
to sing as you swing your body in rhythm with the music!”
Using the movement of my hips for his boogie rhythm
experiment in Shanghai, Hattori introduced it into the postwar jazz singing
scene in Japan, thereby igniting a boogie-woogie boom. This began with the
explosive popularity of “Tokyo
Boogie-Woogie” (Tokyo bugi-ugi) by Kasagi Shizuko as she
sang and danced nonstop on the Nichigeki stage, followed by “Shopping Boogie”
(Kaimono bugi), “Jungle Boogie” (Janguru bugi), and “Shamisen Boogie” (Shamisen
bugi), and others.20
Several other episodes occurred during the Evening Primrose
Rhapsody
concert apart from Hattori’s boogie-woogie experiment:
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
217
—On the last day of my
performance, just after I merged into the music at
the first cadenza, I
was late by one beat. “Oh dear!” I thought, but it couldn’t
be helped, and all I
could do at that point was to continue my singing.
But the orchestra with
close to a hundred players managed to follow my
aria without the
slightest disruption. Tilting his head in disbelief, Hattori said, “That’s
incredible. The orchestra followed the singer but not the
conductor!”
—After finishing my
performance on the first night, I returned to my dressing room all flushed in
the cheeks. A decrepit-looking old man with a
walking stick approached
me from the crowd, saying that he was the composer of “Peddling Evening
Primrose.” I had learned that the whereabouts
of the original
composer was unknown, and now before my eyes, there
he was. Both Li
Jinguang and Hattori Ryōichi joyfully and firmly shook
the old man’s hands.
—During my last
performance on the last day, the audience showed no sign
of leaving even after
the curtain was lowered. Thereupon, I sang an encore number, Zhou Xuan’s “The
Four Seasons’ Song.” The applause
never seemed to stop.
I followed with another Zhou Xuan song, “Unchanging Heart” (Bubian te xin), but
again the audience didn’t even
want to stand. I
offered yet another song, “The Mad World” (Fengkuang
shixie), also a song
by Zhou Xuan popular at the time. In excitement, the
audience began to run
onto the stage, along with Zhou Xuan and Bai
Hong with a large
bouquet of flowers, and the performance ended with
a tight embrace
between Zhou Xuan and me.
The reason I remember this event so clearly is that “The Mad
World” was my
last encore song that night. It was composed by Li Jinguang
for Zhou Xuan at the
time when he wrote “The Evening Primrose.” The words of the
song, also by Li
Jinguang, were something I can never forget. The song’s
first two stanzas are:
The birds sing as if
there were no tomorrow
The flowers bloom
without a care of the world
So absolutely
thrilling!
Oh, so thrilling, so
thrilling!
But why do the birds
sing?
And why do the flowers
bloom?
So absolutely
mystifying
Oh, so mystifying, so
mystifying!21
218
Chapter 13
It was, in other words, a fantasy world concocted within the
mind of an insane
girl, a world that had literally gone mad. Reportedly, the
pitiable and talented Zhou
Xuan died as a madwoman, just as in the lyrics.22 It is
common for legends to associate madness and death in the ill fate of a
beautiful woman, but in actual fact,
she died of type B encephalitis.
After receiving the bouquet from Zhou Xuan and finally
separating from the
fervent audience anxious to shake my hand, I was about to
retreat to my dressing
room when a tall, pretty white woman squeezed through the
crowd and approached
me shouting, “Yoshiko-chan! Yoshiko-chan!” Surprised, I
looked at her face with
wide-open eyes. I was so stunned that I could hardly speak
for a moment.
“Liuba! Liubochka! You are Liuba Monosova Gurinets, aren’t
you! I am so
glad you’re well!” Although I managed to utter those words,
we were physically
separated by the crowd. “Liuba! Let’s talk more! Come to the
dressing room later!
You must come!” I had been speaking Chinese in my role as Li
Xianglan, but in
my conversation with Liuba, the language switched to
Japanese before I knew it.
The last time I had seen Liuba was more than ten years
before, and the Liuba
I saw before my eyes in the dressing room was exactly the same
Liubochka I knew
before. Her cute freckles had become more translucent; her
braided hair was neatly
tied at her back, giving her a cool intelligent look.
“What a wonderful recital you had! My father and mother also
came!”
Following her glance, I saw at the back of the crowd the
familiar faces of her
parents standing next to each other. Her mother’s cheeks
were wet with tears, and
she held a handkerchief to her nose.
I was overjoyed that Liuba thought my singing had improved;
I began my vocalization training only after Liuba had introduced me to Madame
Podlesov.
“When I saw a poster of Li Xianglan, I thought she looked
very much like
you, and I remembered that Yoshiko-chan in Fengtian had most
certainly become
the adopted daughter of the Li family living next to her.
But then I thought this
couldn’t possibly be true, and so I came to find out. Hey,
how did you become an
actress? When did you come to Shanghai, and what are you
going to do? I never
thought you would sing in as grand a theater as this one.” Liuba’s
Japanese poured
swift ly from her mouth in just the way she used to talk.
I, for my part, had a mountain of things to ask her.
“Why did your family suddenly disappear from Fengtian? What
are you
doing in Shanghai now? Is your father still running a
bakery?”
“I can’t explain this all at once. Tonight, our family has
prepared something
for you. You must come over even if it is late.”
That night, a party had been scheduled to celebrate the
success of the recital,
and I was one of the guests of honor. But then, I explained
my situation to Kawakita,
left the party before it ended, and went directly to the
Gurinets’ residence on a
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
219
corner in the French Concession. It had the typical
appearance of a Russian family house, with stone steps from the pavement going
up to the entrance. What I
immediately saw after I was greeted in the reception room
was a red flag with a
star, hammer, and sickle, and a portrait of Stalin.
My surprise on the day of Liuba’s sudden disappearance from
Fengtian now
came back to me. Her house had been trampled by the boots of
the military police. Now I knew that this White Russian family of Jewish
descent, having been
exiled to Fengtian by way of Harbin and Dalian, were in fact
Bolsheviks.
Liuba’s older brother was well and living with the rest of
the family. The thin,
nervous-looking and pimple-faced youth had now grown into a
fine-looking
young gentleman. He still had a sullen look on his face, and
I fondly remembered
his unsociable habits. With a somewhat embarrassed
expression, he too extended
his hand to shake mine, saying, “Yaa!” Liuba’s father was no
longer working as a
baker, and was now employed at the Consulate-General of the
Soviet Union in
Shanghai. I was told that both Liuba and her brother were
working there as
well.23
I was warmly greeted by the whole family. The various
Russian food items,
lovingly prepared by Liuba’s mother, were all delicious.
What I appreciated most
were the pirozhki stacking on top of each other like a
mountain.
“I remember Yoshiko-chan liked these a lot when she was
small, and this time
I specially prepared them for you.”
From that day on, Liuba and I resurrected our friendship.
Our rendezvous
in Shanghai was always a Russian eatery on Jing’ansi Road,
which served a delicious chocolate parfait. I didn’t care whether she was White
or Red; to me Liuba
was Liuba.
*
*
*
My close friendship with Liuba continued until April 1946,
when I was repatriated to Japan. Reflecting the conditions of the times, our
relationship during that
interval appeared to consist not merely of friendship but
also a certain political
nuance. I said “appeared to consist” because I myself was
largely unconscious of
that particular character of our relationship. The following
was what I had been
told by parties connected with the Press Division of the
Japanese army: “Since you
are a friend of Liuba’s and can speak Russian, you must have
many Russian acquaintances. Since Japan and Russia are not at war and enjoy
well-established diplomatic relations, please be as friendly with them as you
can. What about having
a recital on Russian folksongs next time?” I was surprised
to learn, after reading
Tsuji Hisaichi’s “Topics on Zhonghua Dianying’s History,”
that my friendship with
Liuba was being used as an instrument for initiating
Soviet-Japanese “peace operations” (heiwa kōsaku).
220
Chapter 13
Affi liated with the Shanghai Press Division under the
General Staff Office of
the China Expeditionary Army, Tsuji was responsible for such
matters as the distribution and censorship of films within Japanese-occupied
areas in Shanghai. Part
of his work also involved questions regarding the
distribution of Soviet fi lms. At
the time, Japan and the Soviet Union had concluded a
neutrality pact, and on the
surface, the two countries were carrying on normal
diplomatic relations. After 1942,
the Soviet Union had been making repeated requests that
Soviet fi lms be distributed through Huaying so that they could be screened in
the Shanghai area, but
the Japanese expressed reluctance. Meanwhile, since Japan
had already sent a large
fighting force to the Pacific arena and had no desire to see
any trouble developing
along the thinly guarded Soviet-Manchurian border, it was
keen to maintain
friendly relations with its neighbor. However, the
anti-Communist character of
the Tripartite Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy had
made it impossible to
screen films from a Communist country within
Japanese-occupied areas. As a result, whenever the Soviet request was received,
the Japanese would procrastinate
with a noncommittal response until some convenient excuse
could be found. The
Japanese negotiator for such matters was Tsuji Hisaichi,
while his Soviet counterparts from its Consulate General were an old man of
about sixty years of age and
his daughter. Tsuji wrote in “Topics on Zhonghua Dianying’s
History”:
I have completely
forgotten their names in full, but I do remember the fi rst
name of the daughter.
She is called Liuba. She spoke good Japanese, sometimes
even to the degree of
being loquacious. Since she was born in Dalian, she said
that she learned
Japanese as a child, but she wasn’t particularly boastful of her
skills. She spoke Japa
nese with such fluency that at times I myself felt that
I was not her match—quite
a formidable counterpart.
And so for three years after 1942, Tsuji had been
negotiating with his formidable
counterpart Liuba, the cultural affairs officer at the
Soviet Consulate General.
In 1945, after the consignment of the best Kwantung Army
forces to the
South Pacific front, the China Expeditionary Army exercised
increasing caution
to avoid any dispute that might arise between Japan and the
Soviet Union. Indeed, it proclaimed official guidelines for an active course of
rapprochement
with the Soviet Union. Colonel Mori, a staff officer with
the Shanghai army, was
given the task of promoting closer relations with the
Soviets. Contacts with the
Soviet Union alerted him to the strong Soviet desire to
screen its own fi lms in
Japanese-occupied territories. Thereupon, he requested
Kawakita’s assistance to
import, distribute, and screen such fi lms under Huaying’s
auspices. Kawakita
accepted his request, and Soviet fi lms began to be shown in
the city of Shanghai
after a five-year drought.
Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
221
The following is how “Topics on Zhonghua Dianying’s History”
records “the
secret story” of Japan’s rapprochement with the Soviet
Union:
At the time, Li
Xianglan was in Shanghai, perhaps waiting for the production
of her next film, or
perhaps participating in discussions about a scenario. Then
it became known that
Li Xianglan and Liuba had been close friends during
her student days in
Beijing. The two had a happy reunion in what must be described as a strange
stroke of fate.
Upon learning about
this episode after he and Liuba became well acquainted, Mori requested Li
Xianglan’s active participation in Japan’s operation to forge closer ties with
the Soviet Union. (What that meant was probably no more than first developing
closer friendships with Soviet officials and
civilians alike in
Shanghai.) The Soviets, too, knew about Li Xianglan’s talents as a singer
through such fi lms as Glory to Eternity, and Mori requested
that Li perform songs
from that country.
Through Liuba’s good offices,
Li Xianglan began to study under a Russian vocalist. Meanwhile, Liuba became
one of the important gatekeepers for
Mori’s Soviet
initiatives. From the sideline, I sketchily observed what Mori was
doing, wondering
whether such efforts could really reorient Soviet national
objectives into
bringing greater sympathy toward our country.
It was too bad for Li
Xianglan. The very person who had planned her next
fi lm, Zhang Shankun,
was now on the other side of the battle line. However,
Li Xianglan was fond
of singing from the start and had studied the art professionally since she was
a young girl. It appeared that she was practicing enthusiastically, thinking
that this was a good opportunity for her to learn to
sing Russian songs. I
have repeatedly seen Liuba by her side as her devoted
attendant.
While “Topics on Zhonghua Dianying’s History” is an
important source of
reference, it contains several factual errors on this
matter. First, Liuba and I knew
each other not from “my days in Beijing,” but from my time
in Fengtian. While
parties connected to the army had asked me to work toward
Soviet-Japanese friendship through music, I had never been “requested” to
participate in Japanese “operations” (kōsaku). Furthermore, it was not Liuba
who had exercised her good offices in securing a vocal instructor for me in
Shanghai; it was Kawakita Nagamasa
who introduced me to a Jewish Russian woman named Bella
Mazel, saying that I
must continue my singing lessons with a good teacher if I
intended to quit acting
in favor of pursuing a vocalist’s career. As far as Russian
folksongs were concerned,
I had learned virtually everything from Madame Podlesov
during my Fengtian
years. As for Madame Mazel, she is well today and lives in
New York. Whatever
222
Chapter 13
intentions Staff Officer Mori might have entertained as an
“operative,” neither Liuba
nor I nor Madame Mazel had any knowledge of such political
maneuverings. In
any case, the military situation made it clear that Japan’s
defeat was becoming more
imminent by the day, and before any Soviet-directed
operations could be launched,
the war ended.
As for the critical story about the rapprochement the
government of Japan
undertook toward the Soviet Union, the initiative came from
the Japanese Emperor himself. To secure Stalin’s good offices to act as an
intermediary in peace
negotiations with Britain and the United States, the government
formally decided
to send former Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro as Special
Envoy to Moscow.
To present this request, Satō Naotake, Japanese Ambassador
to the Soviet Union,
asked for a meeting with Foreign Minister Molotov on July
13, 1945. As the Foreign Minister declined to meet because of his “other
preoccupations,” Satō presented his request for a visit with Deputy People’s
Commissar of Foreign Affairs
Lozovski. The Soviets responded that they could neither
accept nor deny such a
request since Konoe’s mission was not clearly defined.
On July 21, Foreign Minister Tōgō telegrammed Ambassador
Satō in Moscow, instructing him to convey to the Soviet Union that the purpose
of Special
Envoy Konoe’s visit was to request the Soviet Union’s good
offices in peace negotiations between Japan and the United States and Britain.
The telegram arrived
on the 24th, and the ambassador conveyed the message to
Lozovski the next day.
He received no reply.
On the following day, July 26, the historic Potsdam
Declaration was issued by
the United States, Britain, and China calling for Japan’s
unconditional surrender.
Chapter 13: Rhapsody of “The Evening Primrose”
1. Opened in January 1908, the famous steel bridge over
Suzhou Creek connecting the Huangpu and Hongkou districts has long been one of
the enduring symbols of Shanghai.
2. While it has been argued that the sign’s exact wording
might have been a
popu lar myth, the first “public” park in China established
in 1886 was closed to the
Chinese people until 1928. According to the regulations by
order of Secretary, Council
Room, Shanghai, N. O. Liddell, on September 13, 1917, the
“Public Garden” was “reserved for the Foreign Community” and “dogs and bicycles
are not permitted.” In Robert
A. Bickers and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “Shanghai’s ‘Dogs and
Chinese Not Admitted’ Sign: Legend, History and Contemporary Symbol,” China
Quarterly 142 (June
1995): 444–466, the authors write, “For over 60 years before
June 1928 most Chinese
certainly were barred from the parks administered by the
foreign-controlled Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) of the International
Settlement in Shanghai” (p. 444).
3. Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) famously declined all invitations
to perform under Japanese patronage during the Second Sino-Japanese War and
supported his
family by selling off his paintings. While in Hong Kong
during the war, he reportedly practiced tai chi, played badminton, and studied
English, but devoted most of
his time to painting. In October 1945, Mei gloriously
returned to perform on stage at
Shanghai’s Majestic Theater (Meiqi Daxiyuan) with the
Beijing Opera performer
Yu Zhenfei. Among their performances were “Broken Bridge”
(Duanqiao) and “Peony Pavilion” (Mutan-ting).
4. For details, see Jubin Hu, Projecting a Nation: Chinese
National Cinema
Before 1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003),
pp. 131–133.
5. Different versions and retellings of the Xiangfei legend
exist regarding the
fate of a Uyghur girl taken as a consort by Qing Dynasty’s
Qianlong Emperor in the
334
Notes to Pages 208–212
eighteenth century. For a discussion in English on the
Xiangfei controversy, see
James A. Millward, “A Uyghur Muslim in Qianlong’s Court: The
Meaning of the Fragrant Concubine,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (May
1994): 427–458.
6. Short for Nakagawa Chūi, or Lieutenant Nakagawa.
7. Constructed in 1928 with the attendance of Mei Lanfang at
its opening ceremony, the theater was reputed to be Shanghai’s most elegant
structure during the
1930s and the best cinema in the East. It underwent a grand
renovation in 2008 to
restore its former splendor.
8. Noguchi himself wrote about jazz in Nemoto Ryūichirō,
ed., Jazu dandizumu Noguchi Hisamitsu Jasu no ōgonjidai (Tokyo: Kōdansha,
2012). For a collection
of Noguchi’s poster works, see Tsutsui Takeshi and Nemoto
Ryūichirō, eds., Yūroppa
meigaza: Noguchi Hisamitsu gurafikku shūsei (Tokyo: Asahi
Sonorama, 2001). An
earlier version of Izakaya, similarly based on Zola’s
L’Assommoir (1877), was screened
with little success in Japan in 1934.
9. Li Jinguang (1907–1993) and his other distinguished siblings
in such fields
as Sinology and musical composition have been collectively
called “the Eight Horsemen
of the Li Family.” Li began his artistic career in Shanghai
in 1927 working for the China
Performance Troupe before writing music for cinematic productions
starting in 1939.
Besides “Yelaixiang,” his long-cherished works included
“Xiang’ge’lila,” “Cai binlang,”
and “Fengkuang shijie.” After 1949, Li worked for the
Shanghai Record Company and
served for a time as Head Conductor of the Chinese Central
Ballet Symphonic
Orchestra.
10. For an informative account of Shanghai’s premier record
company Baidai
Gongsi, see “Jindai Shanghai Baidai Changpian Gongsi
chengshuai ji,” Shi Lin 5 (2008),
which is available online at http://www.55id.cn/post/158/.
The old site of the two-story
company, now transformed into a stylish European-style
coffee shop, still stands
within the grounds of Xujiahui Park in southwestern
Shanghai.
11. For audio per formances of the song by Yamaguchi (in
both Chinese and
Japanese) and Zhang Yan, a contemporary Chinese singer, see
http://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=Dt7QJ9_nY38&feature=related and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=MCPYNcijVkE& feature=related, respectively.
12. For Aoe Mina’s performance of the song with Saeki’s
lyrics, see http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwaBwuACns.
13. Directed by Yuan Muzhi, the fi lm has enjoyed a
distinguished reputation
as one of China’s classic “leftist” productions with its
portrayal of the Shanghai underclass in the 1930s, including prostitutes and
various other members of the lower
working classes. Playing Xiao Hong (her real name as an
adopted child), a poor teahouse singer, Zhou Xuan performs the theme songs
“Tian’ya ge’nu” and “Siji’ge.” See,
respectively,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxu8Kxuf-Sg&feature=related and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIEUeMiJBhY&
feature=related.
14. See chapter 7 for a translation of part of the song’s
lyrics.
15. “Tebie kuaiche” was the name of a dance and singing show
from Shanghai’s Mingyue Troupe.
Notes to Pages 213–234
335
16. With a long history dating back to 1867, the two-story
theater was built by
British residents in the French Concession in 1930 and
opened in 1931 with a seating
capacity of 749. After a number of name changes, one of the
oldest theaters in Shanghai reverted to its original name in 1991.
17. For Nakazono’s book, see also chapter 7, n. 14.
18. First built in 1928, then demolished and rebuilt in
1933, the Daguangming
Daxiyuan had 1,900 seats and screened mostly foreign films.
See Paola Iovene, “Phony
Phoenixes: Comedy, Protest, and Marginality in Postwar
Shanghai,” in China on the
Margins, ed. Sherman Cochran and Paul Pickowicz (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University
Press, 2010), pp. 267–287.
19. Constructed in 1934 in art deco style, the elegant hotel
was the tallest building, the oldest skyscraper, and a symbol of Shanghai for
over half a century.
20. For a version of “Tokyo Boogie-Woogie” and its more
recent reincarnation
as an advertisement song “Shanghai Boogie-Woogie,” visit
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=6SfpSymF0MI and http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=QkCBWldqL4o&
feature=related, respectively.
21. The translation follows the original Chinese lyrics. The
song was performed
by Zhou Xuan in the popu lar fi lm Yujianu directed by Bu
Wancang in 1943.
22. See Zhou Xuan’s performance of the song at
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=kNvKtVXadFE. The lyrics of the song as sung in the
fi lm, however, show no
indication that the girl will die mad, even though she
laments the mad world in
which she lives. The rest of the lyrics are as follows:
What are thrills?
What are mysteries?
What is affection?
What is love?
Birds! From now on, you are not allowed to sing!
Flowers! From now on, you are not allowed to bloom!
I don’t need this mad world!
This mad world!
23. On the fate of Liuba’s brother, see chapter 15, n. 4.
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