CHAPTER 6
My Xinjing Years
When I was chosen along with Meng Hong as a delegate to an
exposition in Japan to commemorate the founding of Manchukuo
(Manshū Kenkoku Hakurankai), I was absolutely beside myself with jubilation. As
actresses representing Man’ei, our role was to promote the cause of
Japanese-Manchurian
friendship. Off to Japan, a country I had been dreaming
about! While my homeland was still an unknown entity to me, I had long thought
of it as a nation of
high refinement and advanced culture.
Led by Kondō Iyokichi of the Actors’ Training Center and
Yamanashi Minoru, we went from Xinjing to Pusan on the Korean Peninsula via the
border town
of An’dong (present-day Dan’dong) before crossing the Yalu
River. From Pusan,
we took the Pusan-Shimonoseki ferry to Japan. By the time we
reached the Shimonoseki harbor, it was the fourth day of the trip.
On the night before reaching Shimonoseki, I was so excited
that I couldn’t
sleep at all; I could not even feel the fatigue that had
been accumulating over the
long journey. The next morning, as the ferry made its
approach, the island silhouetted in an emerald mist grew more prominent. I was
seeing Japan for the first
time, unfolding right before my eyes.1
The police officers at the port came onboard and began to
inspect our passports. That was carried out expeditiously. The Japanese
passengers were the first
to disembark, followed by foreigners, one after another.
Standing before a police
officer, Meng produced her passport and was immediately
allowed to go. Next was
my turn. The officer gave a nod and gestured for me to go.
As I walked past him,
he stopped me and said, “Hey, you, just a second. Come back
here! Show me your
passport again!” When I handed it to him, he scrutinized my
face with the picture in the passport and then spit out his words angrily,
“You! How do you have
the audacity to call yourself Japanese?” The name in my
passport appeared as “Yamaguchi Yoshiko, stage name Li Xianglan.”
“What on earth are you wearing, woman!” he clicked his
tongue as he
pointed to my Chinese dress. “Now look! We Japa nese belong
to a fi rst-class
81
82
Chapter 6
nation (ittō-koku)! Don’t you know that? Now, look at you,
wearing the dress of
the third-class Chankoro and talking in their language!2
Damn you! Aren’t you
ashamed of yourself?”
I was standing in the middle of a long line of foreigners
waiting to come ashore.
Curious as to what had happened, the Japanese who had
already gotten off the
ferry were glancing back at the commotion on the deck. I was
too terribly frightened to know what to say. Blood rushed to my head, and all
my eyes could see
before me was a patch of ashen white.
Not knowing the language, Meng Hong had no idea what was
going on. Flustered, she looked at me with worry in her eyes. I, on the other
hand, was too embarrassed to offer her an explanation. Thinking that I was a
fellow Chinese, she
could not have imagined that a police officer was in fact
disparaging a Japanese
woman for using a Chinese name, wearing a Chinese dress, and
speaking in Chinese. When I told her soft ly, “Mei shen’me,”3 the policeman
once again became
incensed that I should be using Chinese in our exchange.
“You shameless shit! If you are a true subject of the
Japanese Empire, damn
it, use Japanese!”
I had no idea why the police officer should openly exhibit
such arrogance in
demeaning the Chinese. Having no words to respond to his
remarks, I got off the
ferry holding Meng Hong’s hand.
This then was my first encounter with Japan, a country of my
dreams.
This was also my first time tasting the bitterness of
Japanese racial discrimination, and to such a revoltingly intense degree.
Crushed by the experience, I felt
nauseated on the express train to Tokyo, though not from
mental shock but visual dizziness.
It had nothing to do with the speed of the Japanese train; I
was accustomed
to the Mantetsu Express Ajia, the fastest train in the
world, which just ran and
ran on the endless expanse of the Manchurian plain. The
scenery from the train
window did not change much at all no matter where the
traveler sped. The evening Manchurian sun descended on the other side of the
horizon even more leisurely than in a slow-motion fi lm. By contrast, the
close-up and jumbled scenes
of Japan moved before my eyes with dazzling speed, like a
film on fast-forward.
Lines of uniformly-paced telegraph poles standing on the
side of the tracks passed
my eyes with astonishing speed. Overcrowded houses stretched
on forever without a break in between. Chimneys, factories, steel bridges,
tunnels, all came and
went with astounding rapidity. Meanwhile, my ears were
pierced by the metallic
reverberations of trains from Tokyo passing us from the
opposite direction and
assaulted by the clattering sound “katan-katan” of the steel
wheels hitting each
piece of the connecting rail, carving out a restless rhythm.
Meng Hong and I were
My Xinjing Years
83
so overcome by this literally head-spining dizziness that we
felt sick and had to
lie down on the seats all the way to Tokyo.
Our next surprise came when we stayed in a Japanese-style
ryokan on our
journey that night. Houses in Manchuria were made of thickset
bricks; windows
and doors were also reinforced with double panes to prevent
the intrusion of cold
air as well as prospective thieves. The frame of a Japanese
house, however, was
made of wood and bamboo; both the sliding fusuma doors and
the shōji screens
were covered with nothing but paper.
When we were shown our rooms, we instinctively let out an
amazed “ai-ya!”
There was no bed in the room, and no pechka or ondol.4 There
was nothing separating our room from the corridor and the garden except a piece
of paper in the
form of a shōji screen. On impulse, we asked the maid
whether this was the place
where we were supposed to sleep and what we could do if
bandits should come
for a visit.
To attend the exposition for Manchukuo’s founding held at
the Tokyo Takashimaya as well as attractions at the Nichigeki,5 Meng Hong and I
dressed up like
two mannequins in Chinese outfits as we endeavored to
publicize Manchuria by
charming the Japanese audience. Meng sang only Chinese
songs, and I was advertized as a Chinese gu’niang 6 with a dexterous command of
the Japanese language. The songs I sang were mainly Japanese ones such as “Moon
over the Ruined Castle” (Kōjō no tsuki) and “Plover” (Hamachidori).
We were greeted with loud applause. I heard people paying
tribute to my Japanese, but that inspired in me a feeling of emptiness. The
Japanese were intoxicated
with superiority when they heard “a Chinese” speaking their
language and singing their songs. Inside Takashimaya and city streetcars,
people would rudely scrutinize our Chinese dress from top to toe with a look of
contempt rather than curiosity before spitting out words such as “He-e, here’s
a Chankoro!”
*
*
*
Beginning with Honeymoon Express, I starred in four films in
a row. After my fifth
fi lm, Song of the White Orchid, and with the exception of
Yellow River (Huang’he,
Kōga in Japanese, 1942) and Glory to Eternity (Wanshi
liufang, or Bansei ryūhō in
Japanese, 1943), all the other films I made could well be
called Japanese. Of course,
they were variously described as coproductions or
joint-ventures with Man’ei, but
in essence, they were fi lms made by Japanese fi lm
companies such as Tōhō and
Shōchiku; the designation of Man’ei appeared only in small
parentheses under the
name Ri Kōran. We did go on location shoots in various
places in China, but virtually all on-set fi lming was done in studios in
Japan. For that reason, I was inundated all of a sudden with opportunities to
“go” to Japan. When I “returned”
84
Chapter 6
to China for purposes other than location shooting, I would
head back to my
family’s home in Beijing or to Man’ei’s head office in
Xinjing.
I stayed usually at the San’ō Hotel while I was in Japan.
Shortly afterwards,
Shigeki Kyūhei, a Man’ei director and the president of its
Tokyo office, was good
enough to rent two adjoining units of the Imperial
Apartments in Nogizaka for my
purposes. That soon became a “second home” for me and my
attendant, Atsumi
Masako. While it was called an “apartment,” for all
practical purposes, it was what
one would describe today as a Japanese-style “mansion.” In
those days, living in a
high-end apartment was still something of a rarity among the
Japanese, and there
was much talk about the place as a modern Western-style
building. Indeed,
Western-style homes were a conspicuous presence in the
vicinity of the Imperial
Apartments, from the area around Nogi Shrine to Aoyma
It-chōme. At the street
corner was a police box, and on the opposite side of the
street stood the residence of
the painter Umehara Ryūzaburō, whom I mentioned earlier. The
neighborhood
had the ambience of a dramatic setting for some of Edogawa
Rampo’s stories.7
Atsumi Masako was also introduced to me through the good
offices of President Shigeki. A graduate of Atomi Higher Girls’ School, she was
about twentyseven or twenty-eight at the time, seven or eight years my senior.
A refined and
trustworthy woman who was like an older sister to me, she is
currently well and
living in Chiba. The Man’ei publicity unit might have wanted
my attendant to
keep a watchful eye on me, but Atsumi was not the type of
person who would report my private affairs to Man’ei. She was an avid reader,
an intellectual type who
had broad-ranging knowledge. For somebody like me, who was
born and bred in
China, she was also an excellent private tutor.
While I had already become very well accustomed to life in
Tokyo at the time
we settled into our Nogizaka apartment, before that I often
found myself at a loss
in Japan as everything worked differently there than in
China. At the beginning,
my body just didn’t feel well. My general and persistent
malaise included headaches, stomach-aches, and an urge to vomit, and I was
worried that I was about
to come down with a serious illness. All such symptoms,
however, completely disappeared once I returned to China. I did not need a
physician to tell me that such
conditions were psychologically induced due to changes in my
living environment.
One time Mother musingly observed, “Since olden times, it
has been said that the
human body cannot tolerate a place different from one’s old
hometown due to the
change in the water. Well, I suppose for Yoshiko, China is
her hometown after all.”
To whip up Li Xianglan’s popularity in Japan while it was
already rising in
Manchuria, Man’ei was putting considerable effort into
promoting Song of the
White Orchid by appointing Miyazawa Tadao to run the
publicity campaign with
a budget of twenty-thousand yen. Following Miyazawa, I
visited Tokyo’s newspaper agencies and magazine outlets, paid courtesy calls
around town, and agreed
My Xinjing Years
85
to requests for interviews. The publicity document Man’ei
produced was disseminated to various venues within the mass media and printed
on posters and newspaper advertisements as well. It read as follows:
Her name is pronounced “Ri Kōran” in Japanese and “Li
Xianglan” in the Manchurian language. Born in the eighth year of the Chinese
Republic and the
ninth year of Taishō, she has just now reached the adorable
age of 21.8 She possesses a unique presence that dazzles her many Japanese fans
with her modern exotic charm, and she is now visiting Japan again.
Raised in Beijing as the beloved daughter of the mayor of
Fengtian, she
speaks fluent Japanese just by virtue of attending a school
for Japanese children. So what we have is truly a representative kū’nyan
[Japanese for gu’niang]
from an Asia on the rise, a woman who speaks the three
languages of Japanese, Manchurian, and Chinese with remarkable dexterity.
While her musical talents have long been recognized along
with her beauty,
as it so happens, her singing broadcasted on Fengtian radio
stations instantly
produced impassioned acclaim like a whirlwind across the
land of Manchuria. Promptly invited to join the Manchurian Film Association,
she soon made
her glorious debut as an actress. Bursting upon the scene
like a comet across
the sky, it is truly beyond imagination to fathom the degree
to which her striking brilliance has enhanced the developing state of
Manchurian films!
And thus, in this fashion, was the life history of Li
Xianglan widely circulated. But in China as well as in Japan, there were people
who knew that I was the
oldest daughter of a Japanese couple named Yamaguchi Fumio
and Ai. There was
always a cloud hanging over this matter, and the issue was
ultimately settled in a
compromise making me a product of a mixed marriage between a
Chinese and
a Japanese.
Reviewing Song of the White Orchid in its September 1, 1939,
edition, the journal Kinema Jumpō published a commentary by the film critic
Suzuki Jūzaburō,
remarking that
Movie fans are a noisy bunch everywhere, and those here in
Manchuria are
no exception. There are not a few rumors about the origins
of the Man’ei star
Li Xianglan. I cannot judge whether she is more fluent in
Japanese or in Manchurian. Suffice it to say she is an intelligent gū’nyan who
knows how and when
to make splendid use of either one of these two languages.
One time, I presented her with a foolish question by asking her to talk about
her personal life.
After rolling her big eyes, she said, “My personal life?
Well, which life do you
want to know, the fictional or the real one?”
86
Chapter 6
This entry appeared in a gossip column meant for
entertainment, and as one would
expect, the writer manifestly led the interviewee around by
the nose in making
fun of her. But I really enjoyed no such luxury as the
report indicated. I couldn’t
tell a lie about my life, nor could I tell the truth, and
all I could do was to fumble
my way through my responses.
Man’ei’s interests in organizing a huge publicity campaign
for Song of the White
Orchid coincided perfectly with those of Tōhō, its partner
company. While their
common justification for action was the usual call for
“Japanese-Manchurian
Friendship” and “Harmony among the Five Races,” in Tōhō’s case,
I think that
they were especially eager to seize this opportunity to
market Hasegawa Kazuo
as a star for gendai-geki, or “contemporary drama.” To be
sure, the relative standings of a new actress from Manchuria and of the big
star and heartthrob from
Japan’s jidai-geki, or “period-films,” were quite different.
I suppose Tōhō was hoping to ride the wave of Japan’s continental boom by
taking a chance on casting
Hasegawa with me.
Hasegawa’s stage name on his initial debut as an actor was
“Hayashi Chōjirō.”
He made a career move to join Tōhō after his contract with
Shōchiku ended the
year before, whereupon he began using his real name on
screen. During the transition, he was physically assaulted by a ruffian in
connection with bitterness between Shōchiku and Tōhō left over from conflicts
and inability to compromise.
The attack left a cut on his left cheek and caused quite a
public stir. In order to do
real damage to the beau-part actor, his assailant used two
razor blades to perpetrate his bloody act—that was how obsessively-driven the
offending party was.9
Once at Tōhō, Hasegawa’s mind underwent a change. In order
to make a fresh
start for himself, he decided to use his real name. For that
reason, too, Tōhō was
eager to turn Song of the White Orchid into a success.
Needless to say, Tōhō was
by no means uninterested in Li Xianglan. In fact, before
going to Man’ei from Tōhō,
Yamanashi had already made arrangements with the latter and
Nichigeki in connection with my first visit to Japan.
A representation of Japan’s dream of continental expansion
that took the
form of a sweet romance, Song of the White Orchid was a
forerunner of the genre
of so-called “goodwill films” with the Asian continent
(tairiku shinzen eiga). The
story was a simple one. Hasegawa Kazuo played the role of a
Mantetsu engineer
named Matsumura Yasukichi who has been identified by his
superior as a talented worker and a candidate for marriage to his daughter.
Matsumura already
has a lover named Li Xuexiang (that is, Li Xianglan),
daughter of the head of a
powerful Rehe clan and a student of vocal music in Fengtian.
As they continue to
nurture their transnational love, obstacles from Yasukichi’s
family and the Japanese girls who fall for him beset them. For a time, adding
to the complications,
even Li Xuexiang joins the anti-Japanese “bandits” led by
her uncle and attempts
My Xinjing Years
87
to obstruct the construction of a new Mantetsu line. In the
end, all the misunderstandings melt away, and the enemies are beaten back,
thereby paving the way
for a happy ending for the couple.10
The movie was produced by Morita Nobuyoshi and directed by
Watanabe
Kunio, a man known since then for his unusual speed in
making films. We shot
on location from July to August in Beijing and in Chengde in
Rehe Province, then
did set filming at a Tokyo studio as early as October before
we finished our work in
the middle of November. At the end of the same month, the
film, in all its threethousand-nine-hundred-and-forty meters contained in
seventeen rolls, including
a sequel, was shown in its entirety at the Nichigeki
Theater.
When I was first told that I would be costarring with
Hasegawa Kazuo, whose
stature in the industry put him way up in the clouds, the
reality simply didn’t sink
in at all. I had no time to think about anything beyond my
own apprehension that
he might very well find it a waste of time working with a
novice like me. When
the actual fi lming began, however, things went more
smoothly than I had anticipated. All I needed to do was simply act according to
Hasegawa’s instructions. Nervous at first, I was able in time to compose myself
and perform in sync with him.
Despite his prominence, there was not a trace of arrogance
in Hasegawa, who was
always a kind and considerate gentleman to everyone around
him.
On the other hand, Director Watanabe didn’t bother to offer
me any real acting instructions at all—I suppose that was the key to the
unusual speed with which
his films were made. All he did was give out orders and a
brief summary of the next
scene to be filmed. When I was waiting with all my makeup
on, he would say, “Hey,
you’re already on camera. Now run to the knoll on the other
side! Action! Start!”
and launch me into motion by tapping me on the behind just
like one would flick a
horse with a whip. In a flurry, I ran as told, not knowing
whether I should laugh or
cry. In this particular scene, the camera was doing a
long-angle shot that required
no real acting on my part. But I didn’t even know that at
the time.
The special lecture Hasegawa gave me on acting had to do
with iroke, the art
of amorous seduction. But the ways in which Chinese women in
their culture
expressed their femininity were different from those of the
Japanese. To further
complicate matters, for somebody deficient in womanly
attributes like me to exhibit them in a manner comprehensible to the Japanese
was a source of considerable distress.
“You first enter into the realm of iroke through certain
gestures,” Hasegawa
explained. “If I were playing your role, this is how I would
do it.” And he proceeded to show me how to act coquettishly. As might be
expected of a former onnagata,11 the way his eyes, body, and hands gestured to
produce the desired effect
was far more feminine than what I could accomplish. Watching
him perform was
sufficient to make me blush.
88
Chapter 6
“Your eyes must be only half-open and your head tilts just a
little to the side.
Look at a person out of the corner of your eyes and then
slowly move your line of
vision downwards.” I must say that such instructions didn’t
do me much good, as
I was both amused and embarrassed.
Hasegawa was also very keen in scrutinizing various aspects
of his given roles.
He used painstaking care in applying makeup on his left
cheek after the injury he
had suffered the year before. When he was being filmed, he
would pay close attention to the effects of lighting and camera angle, often
making demands more
detailed than the director himself.
While shooting on location, we often visited Japanese troops
stationed in the
area. Needless to say, Hasegawa in onnagata form drew more
attention than I wearing my Chinese dress. When he started to perform
Yukinojō’s Transformation
(Yukinojō henge),12 everyone became so attentive that you
could hear a pin drop.
Every movement of his luscious body was the focus of
attention for everyone in
the audience. Hiding himself behind a screen, allowing only
a part of his face to
be revealed, the onnagata then drooped his eyes in an
apparent moment of shyness before quickly withdrawing himself from sight. With
this act, the audience
led out a reverberating chorus of heartfelt appreciation.
I later learned that one of the reasons why Hasegawa was
good enough to explain to me how things were done in such meticulous and vivid
detail was that he
thought I was Chinese. Forty years later, he revealed to me
in a roundtable talk
sponsored by the magazine Sunday Mainichi (on March 4, 1979)
that at the time
he was at a loss as to what to do with a young Chinese girl
who might not have
any idea how to act in a love scene.
Yamaguchi-san, at first I thought you were a Chinese woman.
Let me tell you
something interesting. One time I asked Kume Masao, the
original author of
Song of the White Orchid, how we should deal with the last
scene. He said, ‘I
think you two should just go right ahead and do a double
suicide!’ I said, ‘Double suicide? I wonder if Li Xianglan knows what it is.’
(Laughter) To which
Kume replied, ‘Hmm, since this business of double suicide is
something peculiar to Japan, Li Xianglan just may not know what it is.’ And so
when you
told me afterwards that you knew what a double suicide was,
I was quite
amazed. (Laughter)
Hasegawa and I continued our collaboration the following
summer of 1940
with China Nights (Shina no yoru), followed by Pledge in the
Desert (Nessa no chikai)
in the winter of the same year. Along with Song of the White
Orchid, those three
fi lms were collectively known as the Hasegawa-Li Xianglan
“continental trilogy”
(tairiku sanbusaku). Th is was a time when Japan’s
continental boom was at its
My Xinjing Years
89
height, and my film role was consistently that of a Chinese
woman cherishing sweet,
loving affections for a young Japanese man played by
Hasegawa. All the fi lms in
the continental trilogy were mundane melodramas; moreover,
they were also propaganda tools in the ser vice of Japan’s continental policy.
Yet I worked very hard on those fi lms and did what I was
told. It is true that
I ended up singing praises of the dream and romance of
creating a paradise on
earth based on Japan’s imperial way (ōdō rakudo) and thereby
fanning Japan’s cravings for the Asian continent. The following catchphrases at
the time underscored
such sentiments: “Let’s rise with burning passion for our
enterprise in the continental wilderness!” “Spring willows reflect on the
emerald pond in the land of paradise!” “The flower of love between Japan and
Manchuria blossoms in the shadow
of grueling labor!”
When I watched those three fi lms again in preparation for
this autobiography, I felt utterly ashamed at how poorly I had acted in them.
At the same time,
revisiting these fi lms also allowed me to reflect deeply
about the manner in which
the films depicted anti-Japanese guerilla forces and related
matters. But in the atmosphere of the time, the films in the trilogy came off
as big hits, and I, too, was
a child of that era.
In On Actresses: Collected Works on Japanese Film Actors
(Nihon eiga haiyū
zenshū, Joyū-hen, 1980), the fi lm critic Shimizu Akira
commented:
To the Japanese youths at the time, the idea of advancing into
the Asian continent held a mesmeric allure similar to the prospect of living in
Europe or
the United States for the young people today. Li Xianglan
was the queen in
their dreams with visions of a colorful rainbow connecting
Japan and the
continent. . . . The fact that she was Japa nese was nothing
short of an irony
in history.
In The Cinema and Cannon Fire (Kinema to hōsei, 1985), Satō
Tadao, another film
critic, offered the following analysis of how the Chinese
people were viewed by
the Japanese through the lens of Song of the White Orchid:
Japan was represented by the role played by Hasegawa, and
China by that of
Li Xianglan. If China had trusted and depended on Japan in
the same way,
Japan would surely reward her with love. That was the film’s
message expressed
through a romance. To the Chinese, that was simply an
idiotic and deceitful
idea unilaterally taken by Japan to subject China to
humiliation. For the Japanese living within Japan with no knowledge about the
reality of the Japanese
invasion of China, it was a sweet fantasy that indulged
their naïve self-conceit.
Japanese movie fans were intoxicated by this fantasy. That
was why the film
90
Chapter 6
became a hit. They saw Li Xianglan as a pitiable,
pure-hearted Chinese maiden
who truly fell for a Japanese male. Since Japan was the
object of such adoration by the Chinese, a logic was thus formed that Japan was
not an aggressor
in China but merely its mentor.
For me, Song of the White Orchid was memorable in many ways.
It was the
first Japanese fi lm in which I had a starring role, and I
was fortunate enough to
be appearing with a big star. My work in it also enabled me
to befriend many wonderful people, and the discrimination I had experienced up
until then also became a little diluted as a result.
Before the fi lming actually started, Tōhō and Man’ei were
busy working
on the fi lm’s publicity campaigns. Public announcement of
the fi lm was made
before reporters at Mantetsu’s Tokyo branch office building
in Toranomon. Those
attending included the two lead actors, the original author,
Kume Masao, and the
Tōhō executive Mori Iwao, who was to become the company’s
vice president after
the war. It was on that occasion that I met Iwasaki Akira, a
Man’ei associate. It
appeared that he had just been released from jail several
days before. Active as
the Committee Chair of the Proletarian Film League, or
Prokino (Puroretaria Eiga
Dōmei), he had been arrested and questioned by the police on
the charge of having infringed the Peace Preservation Law. As soon as he came
out of jail, he continued to work as a temporary employee for Man’ei’s Tokyo
office. His job had to
do with the logistics of importing German fi lms into Japan.
While looking gaunt
as a result of his time in jail, this high-spirited critic
from Japan’s progressive camp
was a fine, handsome gentleman with a fair complexion.
Casually wearing an informal kimono, he had something of a nihilistic air about
him.13
As an actress, I secretly wanted recognition from such a
splendid critic, but I
felt too embarrassed to carry on much of a conversation with
him. In any case,
surely he would have been critical of an actress serving on
the frontline as a puppet promoting Japan’s national prestige and its mission
of continental expansion.
While fi lming opportunities for me in Japan had increased,
I continued to
find it difficult to adjust to customs and ways of doing
things in Japan. An old clipping from my scrapbook shows that I gave the
following answers to a Hōchi
Shimbun interviewer on December 7, 1939, who was asking
about my impressions
of Tokyo life:
While life is peaceful at the San’ō Hotel where I am
staying, for some unknown
reason, I have often been awakened by telephone calls at
around seven in the
morning. It is all very strange and perplexing. The callers
would say something like, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice,’ or ‘I am going to
go to Manchuria, and when I get there, I will stop by to see you, okay?’ Those
were people
My Xinjing Years
91
whom I had never known or seen before. I am surprised at how
amazingly
audacious Tokyoites are!”
“As you know, I always go out in my Chinese dress, which
apparently
makes me really stand out in a crowd. It was quite an
experience when I went
to places like the Ginza, where there were so many drunks. Not
a very pretty
sight, I must say. Why did they have to pick me to tease
when there were so
many other beautiful women around? Tokyo women are really
good at their
makeup. I was also amazed at how dashing they looked!”
“While everything is quite accessible in Tokyo, I am
surprised at how difficult it is to get hold of an automobile. In Manchuria,
when necessity arises,
it is quite convenient to ride in a horse carriage; ten or
twenty sen could get
you quite a long distance. The other day, just as I was thinking
of riding in a
rickshaw, a woman wearing a large topknot all of a sudden
appeared in front
of me and took it instead. She was a pretty geisha, to be
sure, but my friends
all laughed at me when I said, ‘Why should I be the one left
behind?’
In any case, compared with stressful Tokyo, China was after
all a place where
I could feel at ease both mentally and physically; I had
grown accustomed to the
country during my many years living there, and, just as
Mother said, perhaps the
water of China was more agreeable to me. When I returned to
Man’ei’s main office in Xinjing, my Chinese friends, actresses at Man’ei, would
all press me to talk
about my new experiences in Tokyo. I would be busy visiting
my family in Beijing and appearing in concerts in Fengtian. But compared to
Japan, I found life
in China more enjoyable.
Meanwhile, the Man’ei actresses were very happy to learn
that their salary
was almost doubled. After taking up his new position as
Man’ei’s director, Amakasu
Masahiko began right away to carry out a series of new
policies, including salary
adjustments, improvements of working conditions, personnel
changes, and systematic reforms. The appointment of Amakasu, former captain of
the Japanese
military police, took effect on November 1, 1939.
The fi lming of Song of the White Orchid was followed by my
per formance
at the Nichigeki. As I stayed for the entire year in Tokyo,
I wasn’t involved in all
the busy changes that were taking place in the Xinjing
headquarters with the appointment of the new director. I was surprised,
however, upon learning that
General Manager Yamanashi Minoru of Tōhō, the man who had
scouted me for
Man’ei, had been forced to resign for having ruffled the
feathers of the new Man’ei
director.
Former Captain Amakasu Masahiko was said to be the man who
had brutally murdered the anarchist Ōsugi Sakae, his live-in wife, Itō Noe, and
Ōsugi’s
young nephew Tachibana Sōichi in the middle of the Great
Kantō Earthquake.14
92
Chapter 6
The first Man’ei director was Jin Bidong, the son of Prince
Su of the Qing Imperial family and the older brother of Kawashima Yoshiko. As
he was only a parttime director who lived in Dalian, Jin was no more than a
figurehead. Managed
by a conglomeration of divergent constituencies, including
the Manchukuo government, Mantetsu, fi lm companies, and the mass media, Man’ei
had been criticized from the outset as an extraordinarily inefficient
organization. Two years
after its establishment, Mutō Tomio, the publicity head of
Manchukuo’s General
Affairs Agency, came to the conclusion that radical surgery
was necessary to cure
this bureaucratic patient. After discussing the matter with
Kishi Nobusuke, the
Deputy General Director of the agency, it was decided that
former Captain Amakasu,
who had just resigned from his position as the General
Affairs Director of
Kyōwakai, would be made Man’ei’s next director.
Rumors that an unofficial decision had been made to appoint
Amakasu as
Man’ei’s director apparently led to utter confusion within
the organization. Everybody knew Amakasu’s popular reputation as a terrorist
who had massacred
Ōsugi Sakae and others. There were a few remaining questions
at his court martial, such as whether he had followed his superior’s orders or
whether he had been
involved in the murder of young Tachibana. In December 1923,
he received a prison
sentence of ten years, and then was released after serving
two years and ten months.
After a study tour in France, he ended up in Manchuria as a
Japanese civilian and
began collaborating with the Japanese military. In time, he
became well known
for his behind-the-scenes influence in Japan’s continental
advancement and the
establishment of Manchukuo. In order to put the deposed Qing
Emperor Puyi on
Manchukuo’s throne, Amakasu was involved in a top secret
mission to bring him
from Tianjin to Tang’gangzi, camouflaging him as laundry
inside a wicker trunk
and having him dress like a coolie inside a hard-seat train
compartment, in episodes that could very well have been taken directly from a
spy thriller.15 Similarly,
working as a 007-style secret agent, the person credited for
getting Puyi’s wife
Empress Wan Rong out of Tianjin was none other than “the
Mata Hari of the
Orient,” Kawashima Yoshiko.
It was in recognition of his work toward the creation of
Manchukuo that former Captain Amakasu had been given the prize of Kyōwakai’s
General Affairs
Directorship. Even without men like him at Man’ei, the film
company had already
been thought of as an instrument of Japan’s national policy,
advancing Japan’s colonial enterprise through its cultural activities. And now
with Amakasu as director, there was fear that this would give rise to the
impression that right-wing militarists had finally taken over the company.
Apparently, this personnel development
was the talk of the town, at least in Xinjing’s Japanese
community. The general
reaction was that this was an authoritarian interference
into Man’ei’s personnel
affairs by the Japanese military. The common sentiment was
something like, “No
My Xinjing Years
93
way would I work under a killer!” and “How dare this most
uncivilized of men
ends up taking control over Manchuria’s most prominent
cultural institution!”
According to the “Reminiscences of the Manchuria Film
Association”
(Manshū Eiga Kyōkai no kaisō)16 of Tsuboi Hitoshi, former
director of Man’ei’s
entertainment fi lm division, on the day the appointment of
Man’ei’s new director
was announced, Amakasu arrived by car at the entrance to
Man’ei’s headquarters on Hongxi Street at 9:05 in the morning. All the other
company executives
had yet to arrive for work. Realizing this, Amakasu
proceeded to send cars to pick
them up and bring them to headquarters before officially
announcing that, beginning the next day, all executives had to report for duty
before 9:05 in the morning. This was immediately followed by his order that the
manager’s room next to
the director’s office be cleared for a get-to-know-you
meeting of all staff above
the rank of section chiefs. “My name is Amakasu, the new
Man’ei Director. Glad
to make your acquaintance.” And that was all he said.
In contrast, General Manager Yamanashi Minoru, representing
all Man’ei’s
staff, greeted Amakasu by saying, “It is our honor to
welcome you as our director,
sir, someone with such distinguished ser vice toward the
creation of Manchukuo.
We are so determined to offer ourselves totally to the ser
vice of our company that
we are prepared to bury our bones in Manchuria.” To
everybody’s surprise,
Amakasu replied, “I have not performed any distinguished
service to Manchukuo
or to anything else. A Japanese should have his bones buried
in Japan after he dies.”
He spoke so emphatically that his words threw a wet blanket
over the enthusiasm
of the entire staff. Tsuboi’s reaction was that Yamanashi’s
comments were really
nothing out of the ordinary and that every general manager
in a Japanese company would probably have said more or less the same thing.
Yet Yamanashi was immediately demoted and returned to Japan
early the following year. As to why he had incurred such wrath from Amakasu, Tsuboi
gave
several reasons. First, Amakasu knew already that Yamanashi
had been opposed
to his appointment as director. Now this about-face on
Yamanashi’s part to be his
henchman infuriated the new executive. Amakasu was
particularly offended to
be described as a man of distinguished ser vice to the
establishment of Manchukuo, and to be again called as such on that occasion
irritated him. Another reason Tsuboi gave had to do with Yamanashi’s ineptitude
in allowing Kawakita Nagamasa from Tōwa Trading Company (Tōwa Shōji) to snatch
away monopoly rights
from Man’ei to import Festival of the People and Festival of
Beauty, two parts of a
German documentary fi lm on the Olympics.17
In any case, within a period of two weeks, the new director
initiated personnel changes and ordered that staff salary and other working
conditions be improved
to bring them on par with those in other national-policy
companies. This was what
he said: “Li Xianglan’s monthly salary is two hundred and
fift y yen, while Li Ming
94
Chapter 6
gets only forty-five. That’s too much of a difference. Let’s
raise hers to about two
hundred yen. Currently, actors on the lower rung get
eighteen yen a month. How
can one survive with that kind of pay? At least we have to
raise it to the current Li
Ming level of forty-five yen. If you pay people more, they
will work hard for you.”
I was totally in favor of this salary boost. With this in
view, I was able to inquire with no hesitation in the course of our daily
conversations what the monthly
pay was for my Chinese colleagues. One time, upon seeing the
scriptwriter
Hasegawa Shun wearing tattered, mud-splattered shoes,
Amakasu immediately
told the personnel chief to supply him with a new pair.18
Another time, Amakasu
was infuriated when he found out that Man’ei actresses had
been asked to serve
wine for Japanese and Manchurian dignitaries at a banquet
held at the residence
of Xinjing’s mayor. Insisting that “actresses are not
geishas but artists,” he demanded
that the mayor host another banquet, this time to express
his gratitude to Man’ei’s
actresses who would be his guests of honor. Under the
director’s order, I, too, was
asked on multiple occasions to entertain important guests
locally and from afar,
but at no time was I forced to serve as a wine pourer. On
the contrary, I was introduced as “the pride of Man’ei.”
On another occasion, Amakasu used his own money to host an
elaborate banquet at the Yamato Hotel to which all Man’ei actors were invited.
This time, he
conducted himself totally differently from his usual
expressionless self. As host,
the man was charming and engaging, helping actresses take
off their fur coats and
even admonishing other more aloof directors and section
chiefs for not doing the
same for “our guests.” As long as he was behaving like this,
his image as a “terrorist” seemed to fade away, and an increasing number of
Man’ei staff actually became fans of this slight, taciturn former military man.
That was not all. We even
heard people resolutely telling stories about his innocence,
that it was another party
in the military who had killed Ōsugi Sakae and others, while
Captain Amakasu
alone took the blame for the crime.
Since it was quite rare for an actor to be called into the
director’s office, I did
not particularly socialize with Amakasu even though he
turned out to be a member of my “fan club.” I have forgotten what had prompted
this fan club to arise,
but I do remember that luminaries in Xinjing’s financial and
political world had
created something called “Support Society for Li Xianglan.”
Its president was Lieutenant General Yoshioka Yasunao, a staff officer of the
Kwantung Army and an
advisor to the court of Emperor Puyi. I cannot remember all
the names of the other
members, but according to the recollections of Yukiko,
Yoshioka’s oldest daughter, they included General Affairs Director Hoshino
Naoki, Deputy Director Furumi Tadayuki, Deputy Director of General Affairs
Agency Kishi Nobusuke, and
President of Manchurian Development Bank Okada Makoto. In
addition, there
My Xinjing Years
95
were other figures from the financial world such as Takasaki
Tatsunosuke and
Aikawa Yoshisuke.
One night, a regular gathering was held at a high-class
Japanese restaurant
where everybody was having a good time singing in unison.
Without any prior
notice, Amakasu showed up and somewhat bashfully joined us
for drinks. When
it was time to say goodbye, he gave me a somewhat
embarrassed grin and said,
“Now I too have joined your fan club, yes, yours truly.”
Amakasu lived in a suite at the Yamato Hotel in front of
Xinjing Station, and
one winter, a cold forced him to stay in bed for about a
week. During that time, I
occasionally stayed with the Yoshioka family, and each
morning I would visit him
at the hotel with Yukiko bearing some Japanese-style rice
porridge we made. He
would rise from his bed, scratching his head with his usual
embarrassed look and
say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have bothered!” In me, he evoked the
immediate image of
a bashful man with that signature shy smile of his, but he
had other aspects to his
character as well.
He was a very heavy drinker and consumed as much as a bottle
of whisky a
day. I was told that there was an endless supply of Scotch
whisky delivered to him
from a certain agency in the south. Once he had the day’s
work behind him, he
would invariably indulge in his favorite habit as if he were
trying to forget everything that had just happened, along with bits and pieces
of his past as well. I couldn’t
help thinking that intoxication was his way of securing a
certain sense of equilibrium during the rest of his living hours. Meanwhile,
this dreaded terrorist, a man
perceived to be the instigator of both the murder of Ōsugi
Sakae and Japan’s continental conspiracy, was quietly transforming himself into
“the father of Man’ei.”
While it was true that Man’ei’s official task was to make
national-policy fi lms
to promote “Japanese-Manchurian Friendship” and “Cooperation
and Harmony
among the Five Races,” the continental trilogy and other
films I made with Japan’s
private companies were by far more blatant in championing
Japan’s national
agenda. In depicting China, the people at Man’ei did view it
as its own land inhabited by people like themselves, but the attitude of
Japanese films was more akin
to that of the police officer I encountered at Shimonoseki
harbor. The Xinjing studio strived to make films to cater to Chinese tastes,
even though their efforts might
not have succeeded at every turn. Of course, it did produce
contemporary dramas, or shi’zhuang pian, with a strong pro-Japanese flavor, but
at the same time it
also came up with a number of celebrated period films, or
gu’zhuang pian, such
as The Great Duel (Longzheng hu’dou) and Rouge (Yan’zhi)
that aimed to provide
pure entertainment to the Chinese public. Additionally,
Man’ei also experimented
in turning distinguished Beijing opera pieces such as Spring
in the Jade Hall
(Yutang’chun) and Little Cowherd (Xiaofang’niu) into films.
96
Chapter 6
All these films had been conceived in accordance with the
principle Amakasu
established. He was quoted in the August 1942 issue of Eiga
Jumpō as saying:
“What the nation demands today is for us to provide
entertainment to the public
through films. To accomplish this, we must immerse ourselves
in the making of
films that will captivate the interests of the Manchurian
people.”
Amakasu abolished censorship at the publicity office and
worked toward a
reformed system whereby the planning and production of fi
lms could be accomplished on Man’ei’s own initiative. At the same time, he
expanded Man’ei’s associated businesses by leaps and bounds. For instance, he
actively invited Kabuki,
operatic, musical, and art groups from Japan to perform in
various locations in
Manchuria, and he supported the Datong Troupe in an attempt
to develop a new
theater there.19 He also established the Xinjing Music Group
and organized regular concerts in various locations. Another initiative
involved inviting the conductor Asahina Takashi, the violinist Tsuji Hisako,
and the vocalist Saitō Aiko for
frequent recitals and special per formances. I, too,
participated many times on
such occasions.
Amakasu also went on to establish Huabei Dian’ying (North
China Films)
in Beijing with Man’ei’s capital investment and Zhonghua
Dian’ying (China Films)
in Shanghai with tripartite funding support from the Nanjing
government, Man’ei,
and Japanese fi lm companies. For the latter, he invited
Kawakita Nagamasa from
Tōwa Trading Company to be its vice director—which amounted
to his being de
facto director. The films made by Zhonghua Dian’ying catered
to the Chinese audience without much propagandistic slant in favor of Japanese
national policy. I,
too, appeared in one of its films, Glory to Eternity.20
Hoping to encourage serious film studies, Amakasu
established the Scientific
Institute for Film Studies (Eiga Kagaku Kenkyūjo) headed by
the fi lm director
Kimura Sotoji.21 Perhaps he was dreaming eventually of
creating some sort of a
Man’ei cartel in expanding the scope of his many ventures.
These included the
creation of the General Film Agency, Manchurian Technical
Sound, Manchurian
Everlasting Industries, Manchurian Record Disks Supplies,
and the Manchuria
Journal. The recruitment of talented personnel to the
company was also one of
Amakasu’s contributions; the list included renowned,
progressive fi lm directors
such as Suzuki Shigekichi, along with Uchida Tomu, and Katō
Tai, a man who
specialized in making “science” films (kagaku eiga).22 He
also recruited the scriptwriters Yagi Yasutarō and Matsuura Takeo, as well as
Sugiyama Kōhei, who was
to become a cameraman of international fame and the winner
of many postwar
awards. A rather peculiar recruitment was the famous Keiō
baseball pitcher
Hamazaki Shinji, a major player in intercollegiate games and
the future manager
of the Hankyū Braves, who was invited to come to Manchuria
to help promote
sports among the Man’ei staff.
My Xinjing Years
97
The Chinese continent was a new haven for Manchurian
vagabond adventurers such as Amakasu and men like him who found themselves
displaced from
Japan’s right-wing militarist establishment. That said,
along with the Mantetsu’s
Research Division (Mantetsu Chōsabu), Man’ei was
sufficiently open-minded to
go beyond ideological divides and welcome artists from the
leftist camp as well.
In addition to those already mentioned, artists who came to
Man’ei included the
scriptwriter Hara Ken’ichirō and Ōtsuka Yūshō, the man
responsible for staging
fi lm screenings on revolving locations. Having spent ten
years in prison for his
involvement in the Ōmori Gang Incident,23 Ōtsuka was able to
work under the
protection of Amakasu. And then there was the progressive fi
lm critic Iwasaki
Akira, a part-time employee of Man’ei’s Tokyo branch office
under the recommendation of Director Negishi Kan’ichi. In time, he was promoted
to Assistant
General Manager to assist Shigeki Kyūhei, who was president
of the branch office.
Later, unable to suppress his passion for making films,
Iwasaki ended up producing
Winter Jasmine (Geishunka, 1942) and My Nightingale (Watashi
no uguisu, 1943)
for Man’ei,24 in both of which I played the leading role.
Amakasu managed the affairs of Man’ei with masterly
shrewdness and, with
his many accomplishments, was able to earn the respect of
the staff. But I knew
that much credit should go to his able assistant, Principal
Director Negishi Kan’ichi.
If Amakasu reminded one of Oda Nobunaga on account of his
temperament as a
terrorist and a militarist, the liberal humanist Negishi was
reminiscent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi who served under Nobunaga. The broad outlines
for Man’ei’s initiatives toward personnel appointments, organizational reforms,
and film policies were hammered out by Negishi before they were actively
implemented
through Amakasu’s political savvy. It was only due to the
intimate collaboration
of the two that the management of Man’ei went so smoothly.
This was not my
impression at the time, but the conclusion I reached after
recently indulging myself in reminiscences with those connected with Man’ei.
But after the spring 1945
departure of Negishi, the “Mother of Man’ei,” to recuperate
from an illness, even
the “Father of Man’ei” was apparently quite depressed.
Perhaps his unique analytical powers and his grasp of information gave him a
sense of the tragedy the
Pacific War was about to unleash. Negishi’s successor was
former Director Wada
Hidekichi, who was promoted to Principal Director.
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Chapter 6: My Xinjing Years
1. The year was 1941, when Yamaguchi was twenty-one.
2. Chankoro, a derogatory word to refer to a Chinese person,
is believed to be
a corruption of Zhong’guoren.
3. “It’s nothing,” or “That’s all right,” in Chinese.
4. Pechka, a Russian-style stove made of brick or clay and
connected to a
cooking stove accessorized with a chimney. Ondol, a device
of Korean origin built
under the bed to channel heat from such sources as cooking
for warmth.
5. The famous emporium chain Takashimaya was first founded
in 1831 in
Kyoto as a cotton-wear store. By the 1930s, it had branches
in some of the largest cities in the Kansai and Kantō areas. First built in
1933 in Tokyo’s Yūrakuchō area, the
Notes to Pages 83–90
317
three-story Nihon Gekijō (Japan Theater), or Nichigeki for
short, was the largest
structure of its kind in Asia at the time with a capacity of
more than 2,600 seats. It
was opened in January 1934 under the management of the Japan
Theater Company
(Nihon Gekijō Kabushikigaisha) and subsequently was beset by
fi nancial difficulties.
It was then incorporated into Tōhō in 1935. In the postwar
period, it continued to
serve as a major venue for the popu lar arts, including its
well-known striptease performances at the Nichigeki Music Hall. The theater
closed in February 1981 due to
local land redevelopment initiatives.
6. Meaning a Chinese maiden, the expression gu’niang
(kū’nyan in Japanese)
was apparently gaining a degree of popu lar recognition
among urbanites in Japan at
the time.
7. Edogawa Rampo (1894–1965), the doyen of mystery and
detective stories in
modern Japan. For an English translation of his works, see
Japanese Tales of Mystery
and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo, trans. James B. Harris
(Tokyo, Rutland: Charles
E. Tuttle, 1960).
8. Since Yamaguchi was born in 1920, the correct year should
be the ninth
year of the Chinese Republic, as indicated in an explanatory
note in her original text.
9. Hasegawa joined Tōhō in September 1937. On the attack
itself and its aftermath, see Peter B. High, The Imperial Screen, pp. 154–156.
10. For another synopsis of the fi lm, see High, The
Imperial Screen, p. 271.
11. A male actor playing female roles in the Kabuki or
Shimpa theater, sometimes referred to as oyama.
12. The name of Mikami Otokichi’s 1934–1935 story about the
female impersonator Nakamura Yukinojō’s revenge for his family members who were
executed in
Nagasaki on false charges. Hasegawa Kazuo played multiple
roles in a famous 1935–
1936 fi lm version directed by Kinugasa Teinosuke. A later
1963 fi lm version, more
readily available today under the title An Actor’s Revenge,
was directed by Ichikawa
Kon, with Hasegawa in the leading role.
13. Iwasaki Akira (1903–1981), a left-wing fi lm critic and
producer whose intriguing and important prewar career traversed the
establishment of the Proletarian
Film League of Japan and the tumultuous war years of
intellectual and political suppression under the notorious Peace Preservation
Law and the Film Law. Much of that
history, including his experiences in prison, is recorded in
his Nihon eiga shishi
(Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1977). He worked at the Tokyo
office of the Manchurian
Film Association, producing such ill-fated fi lms as My
Nightingale (Watashi no
uguisu) with Yamaguchi Yoshiko in the leading role. His
postwar activities included
the production of the noted documentaries The Effects of the
Atomic Bomb Against
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946), as well as Kamei Fumio’s
Nihon no higeki (1946). He
was often seen as the first Japanese fi lm critic to be
translated into Chinese, by none
other than Lu Xun, in January 1930. Iwasaki’s interest in
Chinese fi lms began in the
spring of 1935, when he visited Shanghai and film artists
there. He was said to have been
impressed with left-wing tendencies in some fi lms made in
the city before publishing
his reactions in such magazines as Kaizō. See Yau Shuk Ting,
Honkon Nihon eiga
318
Notes to Pages 91–96
kōryūshi, pp. 10–11 and p. 77. On the Proletarian Film
League, see Makino Mamoru,
“Rethinking the Emergence of the Proletarian Film League of
Japan [Prokino],” trans.
Abe Mark Nornes, in In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in
Honor of Makino Mamoru,
eds. Abe Mark Nornes and Aaron Gerow (Victoria: Trafford/Ann
Arbor: Kinema Club,
2001), pp. 15–45.
14. On September 16, 1923, Ōsugi, Itō, and their
six-year-old nephew were said
to have been murdered by Amakasu Masahiko, Mori Keijirō, and
three other military
officers. Amakasu was given a ten-year prison sentence at
his court martial but released in secret after serving only less than three
years in Chiba Prison. For a study of
Amakasu Masahiko that revises and complicates the popular
perception of the man
as the butcher of Ōsugi Sakae et al. and his
behind-the-scenes exploits in Manchuria,
see Tsunoda Fusako, Amakasu Taii (Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko,
expanded edition, 2007),
with a commentary by Fujiwara Sakuya. A more recent study is
Sano Shin’ichi’s
Amakasu Masahiko: Ranshin no kōya (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2008),
which was the winner of the thirty-first Kōdansha Non-Fiction Prize in 2009.
See also Kajima Shigeru’s
review of Sano’s work in Mainichi Shimbun (Tokyo Morning
Edition, July 13, 2008).
15. In 1931, Colonel Doihara Kenji and Colonel Itagaki
Seishirō planned the
secret operations of putting Puyi on the throne of
Manchukuo, despite opposition
from the Japanese Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijūrō. In
November, Puyi was secretly
taken from his Tianjin’s Jing Yuan residence in the Japanese
Concession to Tang’gu
by motorcar and a Japanese military launch before reaching
Yingkow in Liaoning
Province aboard the Awaji Maru.
16. Published in Eigashi kenkyū: 19, 1984 as indicated in
the original.
17. Both were directed by Leni Riefenstahl on the XI Olympic
Games held in
Berlin, 1936.
18. Given in the original text is the following note:
“Hasegawa Shun was the
younger brother of [novelist] Maki Itsuma who used the
pseudonym Hayashi Fubō,
and the older brother of the now deceased writer Hasegawa
Shirō.”
19. A note in the original text reads: “One executive
officer of the Datong
Troupe was Betsuyaku Hiroo, the father of the playwright
Betsuyaku Minoru.”
20. See chapter 12.
21. A note in the original indicates that the de facto person
in charge at the institute was Akagawa Kōichi, the father of the popu lar
novelist Akagawa Jirō. Kimura
Sotoji was the younger brother of the famed Western-style
painter Kimura Sōhachi.
22. Suzuki Shigekichi (1900–1976) was most celebrated as the
director of the
silent fi lm Nani ga kanojo o so saseta ka (1930), based on
the work of the proletarian
writer Fujimori Seikichi on the plight of a downtrodden
girl. Uchida Tomu (1898–1970)
appears later in this autobiography; for his career and
relationship with Amakasu,
see Craig Watts, “Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Confl
icted Comeback from
Manchuria,” Bright Lights Film Journal 33 (July 2001),
online at http://www.bright
lightsfi lm.com/33/tomu1.htm. Katō Tai (1916–85), the nephew
of pioneering director
Yamanaka Sadao, was later to make a name for himself making
period films and gangster movies for Tōei with such celebrated stars as Fuji
Junko.
Notes to Pages 97–100
319
23. On October 6, 1932, the Ōmori branch of the Kawasaki
Daihyaku Bank
was robbed of thirty thousand yen by three armed men who,
upon their subsequent
arrest, were found to be members of the illegal Japanese
Communist Party which
needed funds to support its activities. (Ōtsuka was not
among the three men.) The
instigator of the plan was Matsumura Noboru, who in fact had
been working as a spy
for the Special Higher Police (Tokkō-keisatsu).
24. My Nightingale will be discussed in detail in chapter
11.
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