Markus Nornes and Inuhiko Yomota discuss Yoshiko's life.

the April 2015 NYC Japan Society web-page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=f_94bpndcBA


Introduction by Marcus Nornes:

The above short synopsis of Yamaguchi's life stands as one of the best you will find (I've communicated this thought personally to Professor Nornes). 


In contrast to the above is this presentation by Inuhiko Yomota, who apparently has a less than positive view of Yamaguchi:

Yomota's lecture is also featured on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqKi9_pxFKc

Yomota's spoken English ranges from sub-standard to atrocious; his lecture attempted to review her whole life story in the first twelve minutes or so. However, the rest of it is only really understandable if you already know her life-story and can recognize the key moments and films. 

Yomota began by citing her "long and notorious life" (one wonders if he really wanted to say "noteworthy" or if he knows the difference between the two words). And why is she notorious? because "she frequently changes her name, her language, her lovers, her husbands, her movie production companies, her political positions, and her nationality". The good professor may be surprised to learn that other people feel she was an outstanding woman for the same above reasons, including many others which he is so blind to. Indeed, Yomota is sending a clear message to women: don't change your lovers, your husbands, your companies, or your efforts to progress, or you will be labeled "notorious". 

As for "an actress with a thousand names", here Yomota is pandering to common western perceptions that anyone with additional names is criminal in nature, which is why additional names are termed "aliases". He knows very well that oriental culture from antiquity onward has always accepted additional names, such as the ones people adopt to confuse the gods (have a read of Maxine Hong Kingston's "Women Warrior" to understand this concept). Yomota also omits the time-honored practice of people (including actresses) who can adopt whatever nom de plume they wish to. Yoshiko Yamaguchi also has the name Li Xianglan: the 998 other names of Yomota are but derivations of these 2 names. As to which of these 2 names came first in her life, one should read my "Mystery" page

for insight on this elemental question. 

Yomota's digressions from his text were also strange, one being particularly demeaning: "Yamaguchi introduced me to her bedroom, where there was this big picture of her in kimono along with Kim il Sung". the audience tittered at this (my friend Peter Z. attended the event). So the good professor fed the audience red-meat and also dishonored himself by recounting such an episode. 

At another point in his mumbled rambling, he says "she was not interested in discussing Manchuria or history, but instead she asked me for Edward Said's address . . ." as if this were something else which could be mocked by the audience but it was quite 'over their head' to do so. [edit: Said is a famous intellect on the side of the Palestinian cause, and this ties in with Yamaguchi's own feelings on the subject. The fact Yamaguchi was not interested in discussing history with him is telling, because she was a friend to everyone, and especially genuine students of history.]

After the above script, he tried to present key scenes from her films; unfortunately his film-clips were not separated one from the other. So throughout the 'lecture', he's fumbling with his computer trying to find the beginning of clips and trying to stop them before the next clip plays. It led to a presentation where he's commenting on one film while scenes of another show on screen. Add to this chaos his inability to clearly say simple sentences and you have a recipe for a lecture which didn't convey her life-story very well. He did, however, try to translate certain film sequences 'on the fly' in the languages of Japanese, Chinese, English and Russian (demonstrating in a back-handed way Yamaguchi's great linguistic skills).