Chapter 7 The Days of "The Suzhou Serenade"

With its appetite whetted after the big commercial success of

Song of the White Orchid, Tōhō went on to make China Nights (Shina no yoru with

sequel, directed by Fushimizu Osamu, June 1940), followed by Pledge in the Desert (Nessa no chikai with sequel, directed by Watanabe Kunio, December 1940).

In spare moments between the fi lms, I also made an appearance in The Monkey’s

Journey to the West (Songokū with sequel, November 1940, starring Enomoto

Ken’ichi).1 My involvement in those films kept me away from Man’ei at the time.

Shanghai was the setting for China Nights in which I was a Chinese war orphan rescued by a sailor played by Hasegawa Kazuo, while Beijing provided the

setting for Pledge in the Desert, the story of a transnational romance between a

Japanese civil engineer and a young Chinese woman studying vocal music in Japan.

Each of the films comprising the “continental trilogy” depicts a love story between

a young Japanese man and a Manchurian woman whose relationship is complicated by Chinese resistance forces. At the end of the turbulent storm, a happy ending awaits the young lovers. Made to justify Japan’s continental adventures, these

staple melodramas were big hits at the time.2

Beyond the fi lm’s considerable commercial success, China Nights contains

many episodes reflecting the contemporary social and political scene. For me in

par ticular, China Nights in many ways brings back various deep-seated memories; it was precisely the film that had put me under suspicion of being a hanjian,

that is, a traitor to one’s own country.3 Looking back, I feel embarrassed that I

was so ignorant about the larger world.

Just as China Nights was being fi lmed, the Ministry of the Interior issued an

official ban on the use of “enemy words” and “disrespectful vocabulary.” The actor Fujiwara Kamatari was condemned by the authorities for having the audacity

to disgrace the name of Fujiwara no Kamatari, a figure in Japan’s “national history” (kokushi), and ordered to have his name changed.4 This was also a time when

foreign loan words like baiorin (violin), kurarinetto (clarinet), handoru (handle),

and purogorufā (pro-golfer) had to be replaced by more proper counterparts rep-

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The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

99

resented in kanji compounds—teikin, tatebue, sōkō temba, dakyū senshi, respectively. Among popular performers, the singer Dick Mi’ne had to rename himself

Mi’ne Kōichi.5

China Nights was released in China as well, but when the screening took place

in areas where the Chinese lived,6 the title was changed to Shanghai Nights (Shanhai no yoru). As one might expect, that artificial window-dressing did not succeed in making the fi lm any more publicly palatable. Quite the contrary, the attempt apparently invited even more ridicule.

The most unforgettable scene in the fi lm is when Guilan, the young Chinese

girl played by Li Xianglan, is slapped across the face by the Japanese sailor Hase

Tetsuo played by Hasegawa Kazuo. That was the first time in my life that somebody actually struck me, and the experience was traumatic.

With the loss of her parents during the war and her house burned down, Guilan

hates the Japanese. At one point, she finds herself bullied by a Japanese drunkard

on a Shanghai street, only to be rescued by Hase, who, realizing that she has no

family, takes her to a hotel and entrusts her to the care of the proprietress there.

The young girl is then shoved into a bath and given a change of clothing—a man’s

oversized pajamas. When Guilan emerges in her new outfit with the dirt on her

face washed away, her appearance has changed beyond all recognition. Staring angrily at Hase and baring her teeth like an enraged beast, she starts a rampage with

curses in Chinese despite the kindness the proprietress and the other hotel residents had shown her. When this harangue continues, Hase, at the end of his wits,

slaps Guilan’s face hard, saying, “Wake up! How long are you going to keep on

with your stubborn behavior?”

I can’t tell you how much the slapping hurt! I realized from that experience

that one could indeed see stars breaking out before one’s eyes. The ringing in my

ears rendered every sound mute around me. Meanwhile, the camera was still running, and I realized that my acting had to continue. While I had a hard time remembering my original lines, somehow I managed to utter something that meshed

with the general flow of the scene. After the scene was finished, Hasegawa apologized profusely, saying that in the heat of the moment he had actually slapped me

in earnest.

The physical pain is not the only reason why I remember this scene shot some

forty years ago. This episode remains unforgettable to this day because it later

became a matter of contention during my hanjian trial. Additionally, the scene

indicated how differently the Japanese and the Chinese customarily looked at

such interactions.

In prewar Japan, a man striking a woman could also be seen as expressing

his love for her. On stage as well as in fi lms, the abused woman, impressed by the

perpetrator’s strong masculinity and grateful for his sentiments, would frequently

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come to cherish reawakened feelings of love for the man. Yet this representation was something peculiar to Japanese sensibilities. No controversy would have

arisen if Hasegawa Kazuo had slapped a Japanese woman played by Yamaguchi

Yoshiko, and if the audience watching had been Japanese. But the fact of the matter

is that in China Nights, a Japa nese man strikes a young Chinese woman played

by Li Xianglan, and it was the Chinese audience who raised questions about

what they saw.

In Chinese eyes, the idea of a woman falling for a man after he had abused

her constituted humiliation twice over. Moreover, the Chinese audience saw this

scene in the context of what was then happening in Sino-Japanese relations between the victim and the aggressor. Far from being moved by the expression of

love in the way the Japanese were, the Chinese were goaded into greater hatred

for the Japanese by their action which further inflamed the resistance. Hence the

effect of the fi lm was exactly the opposite of its intended propagandist goal.

The title China Nights was changed when it was screened in Shanghai’s Japanese quarters of Hongkuo, but the fi lm was not shown in the best theaters on

Jing’ansi Road, an area comparable to New York’s Broadway district. The Roxy

(Daihua) Theater on Jing’ansi Road adjoining Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s busiest

downtown area, was the only cinema specializing in Japanese films, but even there,

not only was China Nights never put on screen, but not a single Japanese film belonging to the same genre as the “continental trilogy” was shown, let alone the

trilogy itself. Working at the time as a film censor for the army’s Press Division

in Shanghai, the fi lm critic Tsuji Hisaichi observed in “Topics on the History of

Chinese Film”7 that

Chinese characters, male and female, are manufactured to fit the convenience

of the Japanese point of view. To state the matter in extreme terms, they are

like lifeless dolls. Even if there had been no desire whatsoever to humiliate the

Chinese people, the inability to portray real living Chinese characters—in essence, their innermost selves—managed only to evoke displeasure and disgust among the Chinese.

I suppose the commercial success of the “continental trilogy” within Japan

could be attributed to the country’s rising continental boom at the time. Another

related factor, I thought, was that the theme song for each of those films turned

out to be as big a hit as the fi lm itself. In fact, their stale story lines notwithstanding, the fi lms’ background music played out against romantic scenes or picturesque landscapes was quite effective in heightening the dramatic fervor and in embellishing the atmosphere associated with celebrated cultural or historical sites.

The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

101

The Song of the White Orchid has two theme songs, one with the same title as

the film and the other called “That Lovely Star” (Itoshi ano hoshi).8 The music director was Hattori Ryōichi. Unlike popular songs in Japan, their melodies were

fashionably modern with a sort of exotic, continental flavor. The recording vocalist for “That Lovely Star” was Watanabe Hamako, while I did the singing in the

fi lm itself. Beginning with The Honeymoon Express, I sang virtually all the songs

in the films, but when they were later released as records, many of them were sung

by other people.

To give an example, a song called “China Nights” (Shina no yoru) had appeared before the fi lm and become a recording hit with Watanabe Hamako as the

vocalist. After making Song of the White Orchid, Tōhō decided to use it as the theme

song for the next film featuring the Hasegawa Kazuo–Li Xianglan duo. After I sang

the song in the fi lm, Watanabe’s records enjoyed even greater sales; that was the

kind of symbiotic relationship that developed between the film and the record industry. The intricacy of this relationship led to some confusion as to who exactly

the original singer was. The same ripple effects could also be seen with other

fi lms and amongst other singers. In the course of performing various songs while

entertaining troops at the front, my own repertoire of “signature” songs with Chinese melodies also grew in time.

I was lucky to have a big star like Hasegawa Kazuo as my acting instructor

during my debut. As the singer of the theme songs for those two films, I was able

to launch my career as a vocalist as well. For this, I had the good fortune of making the acquaintance of the wonderful composer Hattori Ryōichi, a student of harmonics and composition under the Russian conductor Emmanuel Metter from

the Kyoto University Symphonic Orchestra. Among Hattori’s classmates was Asahina Takashi, currently President of the Japan Conductors’ Association.9 A saxophone player with the Central Osaka Broadcasting Philharmonic Orchestra while

studying classic jazz after the style of George Gershwin, Hattori became a pioneer of contemporary “new music.” In the area of film scores, I was much indebted

to him for teaching me elegant and nuanced techniques to perform popular songs

that he picked specifically to fit my own style.

The lyrics of Hattori’s composition “That Lovely Star” on the B side of the record Song of the White Orchid goes as follows:

The horse carriage runs on,

Into the evening breezes and the green willows.

Soft ly I whisper:

“Forlorn though I may be

My feelings will never change.”

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With its brisk tempo and unique continental flavor, this song ended up becoming a greater hit than the one on the A side.

There were three theme songs for China Nights: “China Nights” and “Longing for Brother” (Sōkeifu) were composed by Takeoka Nobuyuki with lyrics by

Saijō Yaso, while “The Suzhou Serenade” (Soshū yakyoku) was composed by

Hattori Ryōichi with lyrics by Saijō. I sang all the songs in the fi lm, and Watanabe

Hamako was the vocalist for their record versions. “Song of Construction”

(Kensetsu no uta) and “Red Water Lilies” (Akai suiren), the two theme songs in

Pledge in the Desert, the third fi lm in the “continental trilogy,” were composed by

Koga Masao with lyrics by Saijō Yaso.10 The former was sung by Itō Hisao, while

for the first time I did the singing for both the film and the record versions of “Red

Water Lilies.” Its lyrics are:

City lights glimmer,

In the flower capital of Beijing.

The Chinese maiden dreams,

With cotton roses scattering

Before the window sill,

As she awaits her love,

Nine roses followed by one wish.

So went the Koga melody imbued with deeply romantic sentiments evocative of

Chinese sensibilities. It contrasts with “Song of Construction,” with its masculine tenor, as illustrated in the lyrics of the second half of the song:

The flowers may differ

Yet our sentiments converge.

What I await in earnest,

Is the coming dawn

When the flower of Asia blooms!

That was how Japanese-Manchurian friendship was being celebrated. The Japanese

might have been favorably disposed toward the “pure innocence” of the Chinese

maiden with her single-minded yearnings. In China, on the contrary, that representation only provoked resentment.

“Red Water Lilies” was first called “The Lights of Beijing” (Pekin no tomoshibi); the change was made immediately before the records went on sale. While

Beijing was the setting for Pledge in the Desert, apparently its composer, Koga

Masao, was inspired by Hangzhou’s enchanting West Lake (Xihu), a landscape

quintessentially reminiscent of a Southern School–style painting (nanhua).11 Koga

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103

had visited the spot on his trip to Shanghai around 1935. Saijō Yaso finished his lyrics for the song on August 8, 1940, and I recorded it on August 21. In just two weeks,

Koga composed and arranged the music based on the image he had held in his

mind for five years. Along with the extraordinary speed with which Watanabe

Kunio directed his films, Koga’s feat became the subject of much talk at the time.

In 1939, I made my debut as a recording vocalist with Teichiku’s “Farewell

Shanghai” (Saraba Shanhai), composed by Koga with lyrics by Shigure Otowa. It

was created in 1932 as the theme song for the film Shanghai starring Ōkōchi

Denjirō and Hanai Ranko. Seki Taneko was the first recording vocalist when the

song came out from Columbia Recordings. Later Teichiku changed its title to “Farewell Shanghai” with me as the vocalist as it tried, without much success, to ride the

wave of the Shanghai boom at the time with such numbers as “The Moon over

the Garden Bridge,” “News from Shanghai,” “The Shanghai Flower Girl,” “Shanghai

Blues,” “On a Shanghai Street,” and “Shanghai Rill.”12 I sang a few more songs for

Teichiku, but none of them became a hit until I switched to Columbia and recorded “Red Water Lilies.”

Thanks to the success of the “continental trilogy” and their accompanying

recordings, military songs and Chinese melodies were becoming fashionable. Most

popu lar among them were “When Will You Return?” (He’ri jun zai lai) and “The

Suzhou Serenade.” Those two numbers became Watanabe Hamako’s and my

signature songs, followed by “The Evening Primrose” (Yelaixiang).

While “When Will You Return?” became a hit after it was performed by the

then-popular Chinese actress Zhou Xuan,13 it became a hit in Japan after the recording by Watanabe Hamako in August 1939. The original composer and lyricist

were said to be Yan Ru and Bei Lin, respectively.14 Its title was translated by the

poet Nagata Tsuneo into Japanese as “Itsu no hi kimi kuru ya,” along with a new

set of Japanese lyrics. The arrangement was by Niki Takio, and the vocalist was

Matsudaira Akira. While that version was the first made in Japan, a female vocalist would probably have been more fitting considering both the lyrics and melody:

Fleeting is the blossom of splendid flowers;

Transient is the fate of flourishing fortunes.

Heaps of sorrow shroud smiles of coquetry;

Tears of longing moisten heartstrings of love.

After our farewell tonight,

When will you come again?

Finish this glass,

Then have some delicacies.

Seldom does life present such moments of intoxicated bliss;

Do you still hesitate to embrace this pleasure?

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Chapter 7

Now, come now, come

Not another word until you empty your glass!

After our farewell tonight,

When will you come again?

I, too, was very fond of the original song and performed it on many occasions.

With Watanabe’s success in mind, Teichiku had me do the recording and put it

on the market the following year. Following Watanabe’s Japanese version, I also

made a recording of it in Chinese. The song’s popularity was short-lived, however,

as both its Japanese and Chinese versions were banned. The reason given by the

censors was that such an effeminate song celebrating free love from a foreign country would surely corrupt public morals. From that time on, Japanese censorship

became increasingly severe.

On the subject of censorship, I wish to digress a little to comment on the famous case concerning Hattori Ryōichi’s composition “Farewell Blues” (Wakare

no burūsu).15 The reason for its ban was attributed to its “unpatriotic and decadent

music that threatens to demoralize Japan’s fighting spirit.” Hattori himself often

spoke to me about the efforts he had devoted to its composition, along with various episodes surrounding its creation. The singer Awaya Noriko turned it into a

great hit, and the number was a par ticu lar favorite among Japanese troops stationed on the Chinese continent. Soldiers often requested the song when I entertained them at the frontlines, making it a piece I will never forget.

Hoping that the lyrics would reflect the weeping sense of sorrow residing deep

in the Japanese, Hattori asked the lyricist Fujiura Kō to visit a red-light hangout

in Yokohama’s Honmoku District frequented by Westerners; the idea was for him

to acquire some on-site experience about the wistful ambience around the harbor area. A few days later, Fujiura returned with just one line in his notes, and it

read “Opening the window, and the harbor came into view.” Running his fi ngers through his disheveled hair, Fujiura said, “Well, how would you, my friend,

carry on after that?” Hattori thundered, “What you have for me is just a cliché

from a crude love song! It’s like saying when a dog looks toward the west, its tail

wags at the east!” Thereupon, Fujiura, with a showman’s flair, came up with the

phrase “With the pier lights of foreign vessels.” Instantly inspired, Hattori conjured up fresh images for his composition, chanting repeatedly to himself that

his piece “would resemble neither American blues nor a popular song.” That apparently was how he finally crafted his melody’s sorrowful low-pitched prelude.

“Farewell Blues” was released in July 1937, just before the Lugouqiao Incident,

which would spread the flames of war across the entire Chinese continent. For

that reason, even though Columbia Recordings had been anxiously anticipating

its release, it found itself in a bind as it could not very well launch an aggressive

The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

105

campaign for a song with such a decadent mood. Despite the absence of any publicity to speak of, Japanese soldiers in China began singing the song, one that reminded them foremost of their homeland.

Opening the window,

And the harbor came into view,

With the pier lights of foreign vessels.

Where will you be heading this time,

Riding the squall of love,

And the evening wind and the waves,

With your grieving heart and ill-fated love,

Along with the sorrowful notes of the blues?

The soldiers trekked from the battlefields to other towns, and from towns to seaports before they crossed the ocean and landed back in Japan. As the song gained

popularity on Japanese soil, from Shimonoseki and Kobe to Osaka and Nagoya,

its records reportedly sold at a rate of fift y thousand copies a day. A rendition by

the chorus of the Hankou troops, in their sweat- and tear-streaked faces, was broadcasted throughout Japan on NHK’s radio waves, marking the first time “Farewell

Blues” was heard on the air.

As time passed, the song was banned, along with “When Will You Return?”

and others. According to Awaya Noriko, it was the most frequently requested number when she entertained troops on the Chinese front. Finding it impossible to go

against the soldiers’ ardent wishes, she proceeded to sing the song, realizing every

time she did so that she might risk arrest by the Japanese military police. Once she

started singing, the supervising officers would either pretend to doze off, or leave

the scene as if they had suddenly thought of something else to attend to. A dead

silence would fall upon the remaining troops as Awaya began to sing from deep

within her heart. After her performance, she herself would suppress her stirring

emotions as she rushed out into the hallway outside. There she would find the

officers still hanging around with tears brimming in their eyes, the same officers

who supposedly had had the good sense earlier to make themselves disappear.

When I met Hattori in 1985, he shared with me his reminiscences about those

prewar days. Among his many celebrated compositions, including “Farewell Blues”

and “The Lakeside Lodge” (Kohan no yado), he told me that he himself was most

fond of “The Suzhou Serenade.” It was, in his words, “the song into which I poured

my heart and soul for the sake of Li Xianglan on director Fushimizu Osamu’s

request.”

“For the sake of Li Xianglan”—those words again moved me deeply. While

China Nights brought distasteful memories when I was reminded how it had been

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manipulated as an instrument for aggression, the wonderful film music did evoke

positive thoughts. Such contradictory memories have made China Nights an unforgettable film for me.

Director Fushimizu Osamu was remembered for his unique expertise in producing light-hearted musicals such as The Singing Yaji and Kita (Utau Yajikita), The

World with Songs (Uta no yo no naka), and Tokyo Rhapsody (Tokyo Rapusodē), all

released in 1936, as well as The Elegant Singing Troupe (Fūryū enkatai, 1937), Chorus

of the Century (Seiki no gasshō, 1938), and others. A good piano player himself, he

was a young director showing great promise to excel in the production of musicals,

a fi lm genre many people regarded as difficult to nurture in Japan.

The popularity of China Nights as evidenced in its record sales convinced Tōhō

to make a film using the same name, and the company specially picked Fushimizu to be its director because of his musical talents. Since the Hasegawa Kazuo–Li

Xianglan duo had been gaining critical acclaim for their appearance in Song of

the White Orchid, likewise a fi lm with a continental setting, Tōhō decided to use

the same cast in their new venture. Fushimizu quickly requested that Hattori compose the music for the fi lm, and the latter immediately agreed, saying that he already had something in mind after his trip to Shanghai.

Hattori had gone to Shanghai on his first trip abroad, accompanying popular singers and actors of the time, including Matsudaira Akira, Itō Hisao, Kamiyama Sōjin, Akasaka Koume, and Watanabe Hamako. For four months he traveled to various places in China as a member of the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbum

delegation to visit the Imperial Japanese troops. Among his traveling companions,

Hattori alone was neither a singer nor an actor, and he joined the group as a saxophone player, thanks to skills he had acquired earlier. Before going to China, he

had never been to a foreign country. While he had wanted very much to experience for himself the authentic music of the land, the war made it virtually impossible for a composer like him to realize his wishes. When he got wind that a delegation was about to be sent to Shanghai to visit troops, he passed himself off as

a saxophone player so that he could participate.

Shanghai in the 1930s was the music mecca where the flowers of European

and American jazz blossomed all at once. Even though the city was ravaged by

war, it was still an international metropolis where the essential elements from all

genres of Eastern and Western cultural expressions manifested themselves in crossfertilizing radiance. In the international and the French concessions, not only were

the buildings authentically Western, so was everything else: languages, lifestyles,

social customs, fashions, and music. Above all, the 1930s was a time when jazz

music was truly epoch-making. Just as the fi lm Shanghai Rhapsody (Shanhai bansukingu, [1984]) depicts, Shanghai was the dream city for Japanese jazz players longing for the real thing.16 Reflecting nostalgically on his experiences half a century

The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

107

later, Hattori heaved a sentimental sigh as he said, “That was my first time to be

exposed to European and American music. I was also able to learn about the richness of Chinese traditional music of which I had been completely ignorant.” He

continued, “After returning from Shanghai, I accepted the request [to compose

for China Nights] only because Mizu-san [that is, director Fushimizu] asked me.

I had also been thinking of writing some music that would allow the talents of Li

Xianglan to flourish after she finished fi lming Song of the White Orchid. At the

time, Saijō Yaso’s lyrics for ‘The Suzhou Serenade’ had already been written. In

one burst of energy, I came up with the melody, which was inspired by the Chinese music that I had heard during my travels there, and then tied everything up

by styling it after a sweet American love song.”

With deft arrangement of the cornet and violin at the interludes, thereby accentuating the effects of its Chinese-inspired melody without tarnishing the acoustic tradition of the Chinese bowed-string instruments, “The Suzhou Serenade” was

well-received by its audience. Meanwhile, the melody came to be known in Europe and the United States as “China Baby in My Arms.” Hattori went on to say,

“Although the name of the song has to do with Suzhou, I was really inspired by

the image I had of [Hangzhou’s] West Lake. On the other hand, if I hadn’t even

laid my eyes on Suzhou itself, the sticker label would have been phony. So during

my next trip to Shanghai, I went sightseeing in Suzhou and visited the Frosty Mountain Temple [Hanshansi]. Just like its name, the temple had quite a bleak feel about

it, and while the scenery was beautiful, the place was desolate. On top of that, there

were no more Suzhou beauties to be seen. Because of the war, I suppose they had

all escaped deep into the mountains.”17 Likewise, when Koga Masao wrote his

theme song depicting the Beijing scene for Red Water Lilies, he apparently also

had West Lake in mind at the time.

I myself have visited West Lake’s Zhongshan Park any number of times. This

beautiful lake is surrounded on three sides by small green islands with flowers

blooming in profusion along its waterfront. It was so named due to its location to

the west of old Hangzhou city. The lake is divided into three areas by the Su Di

and the Bai Di causeways. The vicinity around Solitary Hill (Gushan) at the center

of Bai Di Causeway and a spot in the middle of the lake known as “Three Ponds

Mirroring the Moon” (“Santan Yinyue”) are the most scenic sights. During their

tenures as government officials in the region, the two great poets Bai Juyi and Su

Dongpo left a number of works praising the lake’s beauty, and its causeways were

named in their honor.

In your arms,

Dreamily I listened to

The songs from the boats,

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Chapter 7

And the singing of the birds.

As spring blossoms scattered,

Along the waterfronts of Suzhou,

The willows gently wept,

As if unable to bear the sight.

Still quite sensitive about how the song was performed at the time, Hattori

thought it was a travesty that the line “the singing of the birds” (tori no uta) had

been altered sometime after the war to the singing of “love songs” (koi no uta).

He told me that the latter version only diminished the rich evocativeness of the

lyrics. “People might say that I am blowing my own horn, but the arrangement of

the melody makes it neither an indigenous Chinese nor a Japanese tune. It has an

appetizingly Western feel to it, but it’s still an Oriental melody, wouldn’t you agree?

Speaking as the composer himself, I, too, find this mixture of Japanese, American, and Chinese elements simply irresistible!”

A big fan of the melody, Director Fushimizu had the song arranged in various styles and the music played for over ten minutes in the last romantic scene

until the words announcing the fi lm’s end appeared on screen. Shooting the last

scene was rather stress-free: all Hasegawa and I had to do was stroll arm in arm

on the location set. In some shots, we held hands, looked at each other’s face,

smiled, and then I would cast down my eyes in a moment of coquettish shyness.

That was my “acting.” Following the movement of the camera, we strolled happily around a temple, a tower gate, a small waterway, a bridge, and a park.

The recording of “The Suzhou Serenade” was performed by Kirishima Noboru

and Watanabe Hamako before the record went on sale concurrent with the fi lm’s

release, and the discs were quickly sold out. After the war, some intelligence officers of the American Occupation army came to visit me when I was staying as a

guest in Kawakita Nagamasa’s Kamakura residence. No sooner did one of them

take a look at my face than he yelled, “Hey! Ms. Keiran!” and asked to shake my

hand. “Keiran” was the Japanese rendering of “Guilan,” the name of the young

Chinese woman I played in China Nights.

Working for the Defense and the State departments, those intelligence officers were intellectual types who had graduated from universities such as Harvard

and Columbia. During the war, the Japan Division of the State Department had

recruited officers for intensive short-term training in the enemy’s language to prepare them to learn about the conditions of their war time adversary. Apparently,

Japanese fi lms were used as teaching materials to acquaint students not only with

the language, but also with Japanese customs and ways of thinking in specific situations; the idea was that it was quicker to learn this way than to have students

read the famous The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by the cultural anthropolo-

The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

109

gist Ruth Benedict. Among the films they had chosen was China Nights, not merely

because it was a big hit. I suppose it was deemed good teaching material as it

allowed students to learn about Japanese culture and patterns of behavior by

watching such telling scenes as the one in which I was slapped by Hasegawa Kazuo.

Viewing the fi lm over and over again, those intelligence officers would familiarize themselves with the language and the Japanese people by memorizing the

fi lm script. The Japanese government, on the other hand, had a radically different approach, going as far as banning “enemy vocabulary” such as “baseball” and

the like.

Those Americans had watched the fi lm with keen attention. A Harvard man

expressed his amazement that I didn’t stumble running across the burned-down

wasteland wearing high heels. A Columbia graduate surprised me with his close

attention to details when he surmised how challenging it must have been to film

the scene toward the end in which Guilan attempts suicide by slowly submerging

her body into a Suzhou creek. In fact, that par ticular scene was fi lmed not in

Suzhou, but on location in Inba’numa in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, a place chosen

for its proximity to Tokyo and its similarity to Suzhou’s wetland topography. Indeed, the atmosphere of the place brought to mind Suzhou’s seemingly crystalclear waters and its reedy marshes, but only I knew from bitter experience how

different the place was from Suzhou’s riverbanks.

I walked from the edge of the swamp toward the pond, and as my feet sank

little by little into the water, the leeches of Inba’numa began to attach themselves

to my legs. I suppose I had them to thank if I had successfully translated my physical itch and pain into an expression of anguish on the part of the despondent

suicidal woman I was playing. Just before my character was about to be drowned,

Hasegawa rushed to her rescue, and the melodrama concluded with a happy ending, something we had already finished fi lming in Suzhou. With the sweet music

of “The Suzhou Serenade” in the background, the two of us embraced and then

walked away from the scene. I suppose some spectators must have been quite

amazed as they watched, as the cape I was wearing was completely dry without

even the tiniest drop of water dripping from it!

Hattori, a very congenial friend of Fushimizu’s, was later asked to be the musical director for such fi lms as The Vigor of Youth (Seishun no kiryū [1942]). Fushimizu, on the other hand, was an impressionable young man with an already weak

constitution before he contracted tuberculosis and passed away in July 1942. His

funeral was held at the recording facility of Tōhō’s Kinuta Studio, a fitting venue

for a music-loving fi lm director. Needless to say, Hattori was the man responsible

for the music on that occasion, and he conducted an orchestra playing instruments

with muted strings. The number they played was “The Suzhou Serenade,” by far

Fushimizu’s favorite piece.

110

Chapter 7

Incidentally, Iwasaki Akira also registered his impressions upon hearing “The

Suzhou Serenade,” in his book A Personal History of Japanese Film (Nihon eiga

shishi, 1977).18 When I first met him, he had just been released from jail after being arrested for his opposition to government legislation aimed at the fi lm industry. A year later, he was again arrested for his involvement with the Society for

the Study of Materialism (Yuibutsuron Kenkyūkai), an incident that landed him

in prison for about eight months. The essay from which I quote below is a sort of

prison diary reflecting on his experiences at the time:

One early evening, a song managed to waft its way into our prison cell; it must

have come from a radio in a house somewhere. . . . The tempo was quite slow,

so much so that if it had become any slower, the singing would likely have gotten out of tune. The voice belonged to that of a young woman, and it was the

first time I heard the song. A hushed silence quickly fell upon the entire cell

as I listened to it intently. The intonation in her voice and the way she carried

the melody suggested a Chinese flavor as the singing became more and more

alluring along with her long drawn-out notes. Violent and vulgar men though

they were, prisoners with stubbly faces all listened with their eyes closed; one

could even see tears streaming down some of their faces. . . . Something strange

had happened to all those intimidating and filthy characters. Meanwhile, we

were all dreaming of a world far away as our bygone memories began to stir

up bittersweet emotions within us. Even after the song ended, for a while no

one spoke a word.

That was how I first heard “The Suzhou Serenade.” While I was cooped

up in my cell for more than half a year, a lot of new things had been taking

place in the outside world; this popu lar song was one of those things. A late

newcomer to the cell was somebody who knew such matters, and he told us

that that was Li Xianglan singing.

Iwasaki forgot that he had met me the year before; perhaps his lapse of

memory was due to the fact that it was only a short meeting at a press conference at which the release of Song of the White Orchid was announced. Indeed, he

wrote later that he had earlier seen a fi lm starring Li Xianglan, but at the time he

simply could not remember it at all. That was Song of the White Orchid for which

he came as an observer of the stars’ photo shoot. Iwasaki went on to say that he

subsequently formed a new friendship, professionally and personally, with Li.

Our professional association had to do with Iwasaki’s work with Man’ei in producing My Nightingale and Winter Jasmine in both of which I played the starring role. Our personal friendship involved the assistance that I and his other

friends rendered his wife, Iku, and their son for their visits to Iwasaki in jail.

The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

111

After the war, however, it was I who was the recipient of many kindnesses from

Iwasaki.

A serious man of letters with a progressive bent, Iwasaki made a sharp distinction between public ideology and personal friendship. Evidence of this can

be seen in his following comment:

After the war, Li Xianglan resumed her Japanese identity as Yamaguchi Yoshiko. I was surprised and disappointed when she became a Diet member under the wings of the Liberal Democratic Party, even though I could have accepted it if she had at least run as a member of the Socialist Party.

On another matter concerning the theme songs for my film—I was once asked

if I had sung the theme song for Song of the White Orchid in the presence of

Emperor Puyi. I had no recollection at all that I had done such a thing, but the

questioner referred to a scene described in a book by Yamada Seizaburō named

Emperor Puyi (Kōtei Fugi, 1960) in which Puyi introduced a pianist he had retained along with Li Xianglan to his younger brother Aisin Gioro Pujie and his

wife at the Imperial court in Xinjing. What brought this about, according to the

book, was the fi lm Song of the White Orchid. When I got hold of that book, a

work presented as nonfiction, I came across the reference to Song of the White

Orchid in Chapter Four entitled “Emperor Puyi and Madam Hiro,” the latter being the wife of Puyi’s brother, Pujie.19 After his graduation from the Japa nese

army cadet school—where he performed so well that he was given a sword by the

Japanese Emperor—Pujie worked with the Imperial guard unit at Manchukuo’s

Xinjing Imperial Household Division. The woman who was to become his wife was

a daughter of Marquis Saga Sanetō, a member of the court peerage, and she herself was an accomplished graduate from Gakushūin’s Higher Division.20 They

became a couple in 1937 through an arranged marriage.

Emperor Puyi did not produce any offspring. Suspecting that the proposition

by the Kwantung Army for an arranged marriage between Pujie and Hiro represented its plot to introduce Japanese blood into his family’s lineage, he was apparently not happy about the arrangement. After realizing Hiro’s genuine love for

Pujie as her husband and her determination to live as a Chinese woman, however,

Puyi was able in time to develop a sense of trust for his sister-in-law. According

to Madam Hiro’s memoirs, The Wandering Imperial Consort (Ruten no ōhi, 1959),

Puyi confided to her that at one time he thought she was a spy for the Kwantung

Army, something Puyi himself noted in his own autobiography The Early Part of

My Life (Wode qian ban sheng).21 In any case, according to Emperor Puyi, the Emperor was embarrassed for having treated Hiro with such suspicion and was thinking of doing something to make amends. Knowing that she had seen the fi lm Song

112

Chapter 7

of the White Orchid, he came up with the idea of giving her a pleasant surprise by

fortuitously introducing her and her husband to Li Xianglan. The Emperor was

taking piano lessons from a young pianist from the Xinjing City Orchestra, who

also happened to be the same piano teacher for Li Xianglan.

So the Emperor invited his instructor and Li Xianglan to his court, introduced

them to Hiro and her husband, and without any prior notice, held a sort of chamber music recital in the evening. Behaving much like a mischievous child, the

Emperor was absolutely engrossed in his trick to surprise Pujie’s family. To be

sure, by inviting a fi lm actress to his court, the Emperor was apparently playing

a forbidden game of his own.

While Emperor Puyi depicts the event very vividly, and all the characters appear with real names, I simply cannot recall my own participation in the scene. I

have indeed met Mr. and Mrs. Pujie, and I was also acquainted with most of the

members in Manchuria’s Imperial family, including the Emperor’s second sister,

his exceptionally graceful third sister and her husband Runqi, the younger brother

of Empress Wan Rong, the Emperor’s fift h sister, and others. I have also sung any

number of times in their presence. But I have no recollection whatsoever that I

ever sang before Emperor Puyi in his Imperial court. Obviously, that part of the

book is fictional.

In the same book, Lieutenant General Yoshioka, a staff officer of the Kwantung Army attached to the Imperial household, appears in the role of a villain.22

Viewed in light of his official duties, Yoshioka might indeed have acted as a watchdog in the ser vice of the Kwantung Army, but from my perspective at the time,

he was not “an old man with a spiteful look on his face” as described in that book.

Just as the description of me singing before the Emperor was fictional, I wish to

believe that Lieutenant General Yoshioka’s villainous role was fictional as well. I

suppose assessments of historical figures often diverge, depending on the time of

the appraisal and one’s par ticu lar point of view.

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Chapter 7: The Days of “The Suzhou Serenade”

1. Enomoto Ken’ichi (1904–1970), comedian, singer, and the founder of the

Enoken Troupe in 1932, who went on to achieve considerable popularity on radio, in

films, and musicals.

2. In China Nights, the sailor Hase Tetsuo played by Hasegawa Kazuo is called

for duty the night of his marriage to Zhang Guilan, played by Yamaguchi, only to be

ambushed by Chinese resistance fighters on a river journey. Heartbroken over the news,

Guilan is about to attempt suicide when Hase miraculously reappears on the scene

completely unharmed, leading to a happy ending accentuated by the theme music of

the fi lm.

3. Specifically, a traitor to China.

4. Fujiwara Kamatari (1905–1985), who had a supporting role in China Nights,

was perhaps best remembered for his appearances in a number of Kurosawa Akira’s

classic fi lms, including Ikiru (1952, playing the government bureaucrat Ōno), Seven

Samurai (1956, playing the farmer Manzō), Yojimbo (1961, playing the town’s silk

merchant Tazaemon), High and Low (1963, playing the garbage man), and Red Beard

(1965, playing the dying artisan Rokusuke). Fujiwara no Kamatari (614–669), an important force behind the Taika Reforms as Inner Minister (uchitsuomi) during the

reign of Emperor Kōtoku, was later the founder of the Fujiwara clan. While their

names have the same pronunciation, the Chinese character for their respective

“kama” is different, though this did not prevent Fujiwara the actor from suffering

his fate.

5. Dick (Dikku) Mi’ne (1908–1991), jazz singer and actor. His name was first

changed to Mi’ne Kōichi—without his consent when Mi’ne was touring China as a

singer in 1938. Mi’ne’s protest resulted in his successfully getting his original name

back in 1939, only to be changed again in 1940 under the order of the Ministry of the

Interior. See ja.wikipedia.orgs entry on Dikku Mine.

6. Presumably as opposed to foreign concessions where the film’s original

title Shina no yoru prevailed. For one thing, many wartime Chinese in particular

looked upon Shina, a Japanese word used to refer to China from the mid-Edo period

until the end of World War II, as derogatory.

7. Tsuji Hisaichi, “Chūka Den’ei shiwa,” Eigashi kenkyū 4–15. The original

text carries the following note on Tsuji: “After the war, Tsuji joined Dai’ei and was

320

Notes to Pages 101–103

remembered in the history of fi lmmaking as the producer of a series of internationally acclaimed works by director Mizoguchi Kenji.”

8. A note in the original text reads: “Byakuran no uta was composed by Takeoka

Nobuyuki, with lyrics by Kume Masao, and sung by Itō Hisao and Futaba Akiko. [Itoshi

ano hoshi] was composed by Hattori Ryōichi, with lyrics by Satō Hachirō, and sung

by Watanabe Hamako.”

9. Emmanuel Metter (1884–1941), a Ukrainian who turned to music after his

earlier career in law. After his exile to Japan subsequent to the Bolshevik Revolution,

he served as the conductor at the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kyoto

Imperial University Symphony Orchestra. See Okano Ben, Metteru Sensei: Asahina

Takashi Hattori Ryōichi no gakufu, bōmei Ukurainajin shikisha no shōgai (Tokyo:

Rittōmūjikku, 1995). Asahina Takashi (1908–2001), an internationally acclaimed conductor who debuted at the New Symphonic Orchestra (currently the NHK Symphonic Orchestra) in 1939 before continuing his illustrious career by engaging the

Austro-German repertoire and by conducting, among others, the Shanghai Symphonic Orchestra during the Japanese occupation, the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra

(currently the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra), and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as a guest conductor.

10. Koga Masao (1904–1978), a distinguished popu lar song composer who

began his career as a member of Meiji University’s famous Mandolin Club before

becoming exclusively affi liated with Japan Columbia Recordings. Inspired by the

compositions of Nakayama Shimpei, Koga was particularly known as the creator of

such popu lar “Koga melodies” as “Sake wa namida ka tameiki ka,” “Oka o koete,”

“Yu no machi erejī,” and “Kanashii sake.” The poet and lyricist Saijō Yaso (1892–1970),

a graduate and later a professor at Waseda University, helped to popularize French

symbolist poets including Mallarmé and Rimbaud.

11. Also known as Nan’zonghua, a mainly monochrome genre of painting established during the end of the Ming Dynasty and imported into Japan at around the

mid-Edo period with renowned practitioners such as Ike no Taiga and Yosa Buson.

12. The Japanese titles of the songs are “Gādenburijji no tsuki,” “Shanhai-dayori,”

“Shanhai no hanauri-musume,” “Shanhai burūsu,” “Shanhai no machikado de,” and

“Shanhai riru,” respectively.

13. Zhou Xuan (1918–1957), much celebrated as a singer for her “golden voice”

and one of the most well-known Chinese actresses from the late 1930s to the 1950s.

Of her more than three dozen fi lms, the one with the most enduring fame was Street

Angel (Malu tianshi, 1937) with Zhou playing the role of a young, ill-fated singer in

Shanghai’s brutal underclass world. The “Wandering Songstress” (Tian’ya ge’nu),

one of its themes songs and Zhou’s signature number, remains much cherished to

this day.

14. Originally a theme song for the film Three Stars Accompanying the Moon

(Sanxing ban’yue, 1937) with Zhou Xuan as its first recording vocalist. Li Lili then performed the song for the 1939 Hong Kong resistance fi lm Paradise on Solitary Island

(Gudao tiantang) before Yamaguchi brought the number to the height of its popular-

Notes to Pages 104–112

321

ity during the war years. Opinions vary as to who the original composer and lyricist

were. Nakazono Eisuke suggested Liu Xue’an, then a student at National Shanghai

Conservatory, and Huang Jiamo, the scenario writer of Three Stars Accompanying

the Moon, using their pseudonyms Yan Ru and Bei Lin, respectively. For this reference

and a discussion of the matter, along with the political controversies surrounding the

song, see Nakazono’s He’ri jun zai lai monogatari (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha,

1988). I also wish to note that the Chinese character for “Bei” in the pseudonym “Bei

Lin” was erroneously printed as “Ju” (“gu” in Japanese) in the Yamaguchi/Fujiwara

original, p. 160.

15. See Christine Reiko Yano, Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in

Japanese Popular Song (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 36. For a study

of the history of Japanese jazz, see E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz

in Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

16. Shanhai bansukingu (1984) was an award-winning production directed by

Fukasaku Kinji with Matsuzaka Keiko and Kazama Morio.

17. Hanshansi (Kanzanji in Japanese) is mentioned specifically in the last line

of “Suzhou Serenade.” First built in the early sixth century during the Six Dynasties

and celebrated in a well-known poem by the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ji, the temple

has made the vicinity around it one of the most renowned spots in the city of Suzhou.

The fact that the celebrated poet-monks Hanshan and Shide (Kanzan and Jittoku in

Japanese) were residents of the temple in the mid-seventh century has further added

to its appeal. Young women of Suzhou have popularly been celebrated for their beauty—

presumably the reason for Hattori’s rather abrupt reference here.

18. Published by Asahi Shimbunsha, the book is not only useful for the understanding of the zeitgeist of Japan in the late 1920s through the war years, but also a

valuable guide to such subjects as the history of the Proletarian Film League, wartime

Japanese cinema, and Iwasaki’s career and his prison experiences.

19. Pujie (1907–1994). His full name in Japa nese reading was Aishinkakura

Fuketsu.

20. Before the war, children from the Imperial family and families of the peerage

were educated at the Gukushūin. The Higher Division (kōtō-ka) referred to the last

three years of the seven-year school curriculum in the prewar higher school system.

21. Puyi’s Wode qian ban sheng (Beijing: Qunzhong Chubanshe, 2007) was a

revised version of the old 1964 publication. For an English translation, see W. J. F.

Jenner, trans., From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

22. A note in the original identifies Yoshioka’s official title in 1938 as Colonel,

Staff Officer of the Kwantung Army Command, and Attaché to the Emperor of Manchuria, and in August 1939 as Major General, Vice Chief of the General Staff Office of

the Kwantung Army Command, and Attaché to the Emperor. In December 1942, he

occupied the same positions with the rank of Lieutenant General. For more information on Yoshioka Yasunao and his relationship with Puyi, see Irie Yōko, Kihi dokusatsu

sareta ka? Kōtei Fugi to Kantōgun sanbō Yoshioka no nazo (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1998).