Postscripts by Yamaguchi and Fujiwara - 1987

Postscript

by Yamaguchi Yoshiko
Early Summer, 1987

Up to this time, there have been various writings on “Li Xianglan” presenting her positively or negatively. I have allowed most of them to go uncontested. The reason that I had consistently declined a number of invitations to

have my autobiography published was that my early life didn’t strike me as having the kind of experience truly worthy of self-narration. People say that I had a

tumultuous past, but I must confess that during that time, I was preoccupied with

just playing my given roles under given circumstances.

That I decided to publish my autobiography at this time was the result of my

rumination about the need to go beyond personal volition and to properly examine and reassess Li Xianglan’s role within the context of Shōwa history. For me,

the years have passed by just like the Shōwa era, and my reminiscences have grown

all the more fragmentary. Given the variously embellished accounts of Li Xianglan, a figure with whom I was bonded in body and spirit, I wish this time to present un-embroidered episodes of her life based on the knowledge and memory I could

summon to the best of my ability. I need to ascertain where she stood amidst the

flow of Shōwa history, regardless of whatever anguish this work may bring me.

Soon after I began this work, I had the chance to watch a number of films

starring Li Xianglan that I hadn’t seen in decades. (More accurately put, there were

ones that I saw for the first time!) The films I watched included Song of the White

Orchid, China Nights, and Pledge in the Desert, which are preserved at the National

Film Center. While watching them, I was totally struck by a shocking question:

What made me appear in such films while presenting myself as Li Xianglan and

an actress from China? When it dawned on me that I only became cognizant of

this reality after all those years had passed, I felt so mortified with myself that for

months I was not able to sleep at night.

As mentioned earlier, since the age of fourteen, I had more or less been living

apart from my family, and it was always I who was the ultimate and solitary arbitrator of personal decisions. Of course, I had first sought counseling and assistance from friends and superiors, but what I held dearest was the ability to hold my own convictions. They allowed me to refute what I found unacceptable, and it was precisely such convictions that made me think that nothing would become

insurmountable. Yet it was only after nearly forty years, by watching those fi lms,

that I realized just how tenuous this notion of conviction was.

Among my readers, perhaps there are those who think that I have expressed

insufficient sentiments of penitence toward China. Having come face to face with

my previous “transgressions,” I have come to believe that the only path open to

me is to narrate every episode in my past without contrivance; I do not wish to

paint an embellished picture of the past through merely making apologies. Nonetheless, it has been extraordinarily difficult for me to temper the propensity for memory to serve only my own convenience.

This enterprise to retrieve memory required the assistance of many individuals, including that of my Chinese friends. In particular, this book could not have

been written without the full dedication of my cowriter Fujiwara Sakuya. Having

spent his younger days in the northeastern part of China (formerly Manchuria),

Mr. Fujiwara worked for a long time at the Jiji News Agency before being stationed

in the United States. A man with an intuitive feel about the places I have lived, he

has, above all, distinguished himself as a researcher, who scrupulously investigated

the historical background and the areas that my memory had left out. In order to

corroborate my recollections, he visited China twice.

I don’t remember how many tens of hours we spent in our discussions! The

only time we could pull ourselves away from our routine work was in the middle

of the night, or else during weekends or on Sundays. The persistence with which

he interviewed me over a long period of time resurrected recollections of all kinds

about Li Xianglan, so much so that the exercise exhausted my memory.

What we have here is the story of the first half of my life with its focus on the

Li Xianglan years. The reason I have dispensed with my reminiscences since I entered political life is due, naturally, to the fact that more time must be allowed to pass before I can view that part of my life as “history.” That said, the day for me to talk about them as my personal history ( jibunshi) may never come within my lifetime.

In any event, I did manage somehow to conclude my attempt to rediscover Li Xianglan, to make out who she really was. I had once firmly resolved to bury her name, but then in the next forty years or so, she continued to twine around me on any number of occasions. Of course, there was something within myself that had made it difficult for me to tear her out. But now, with the conclusion of my

work, the time is getting closer and closer for us to have a clean break.

From now on, I wish to work toward the completion of the many tasks that

history has given me.

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Postscript

by Fujiwara Sakuya
Early Summer, 1987

When Ms. Yamaguchi Yoshiko consulted me on the writing of

her biography, I recalled the words of the writer Kojima Naoki, “One mustn’t trust

either autobiographies or biographies.” Those are truly words of wisdom that

address the shortfalls of the two genres, the former for its common failure to

objectify the self, and the latter for its habitual inattention to aspects of the self’s

interiority.

While mindful of such words, Ms. Yamaguchi and I began to contemplate if

there was an effective way to synthesize an autobiography by Li Xianglan, on the

one hand, and her biography by Fujiwara Sakuya, on the other. In the end, we naturally arrived at the form of a jointly written autobiography. There have been many

such works written in the West, autobiographies that clearly attribute authorship

not only to the autobiographical subjects but also to their coauthors, as indicated

in such designations as “as told to X” or “written with X.” This work, then, is a

product of collaboration, a format practically unheard of in Japan.

There is no need to evoke Churchill’s memoir about the Second World War

to remind us that the autobiography has long been a well-established and well respected literary genre in the West. Recent years in particular have witnessed

the striking proliferation of autobiographical writings. In Japan, it seems to

me that the relative positions between subjectivity and objectivity, and the relationship between the model and the ghost writer—that is to say, the proper

perimeters between self-expression and biographical fact—remain ill-defined

and inadequately recognized. In that sense, too, our work represents a new

experiment.

This is not just a matter of style. While this book is a record of the life of the

actress Li Xianglan, we agreed on several things prior to the act of writing. First,

we were mindful not to get ourselves into the pitfall of producing a tabloid-type

autobiography about the private affairs of a celebrity. Second, we agreed not to

cover the political arena in Ōtaka Yoshiko’s career as a member of the Japanese

Diet, including her political ideas. Instead, our determination was to produce a

work depicting the life of an actress at the mercy of Japan’s national policy and

within the unfortunate context of Sino-Japanese relations.

That said, it is difficult to write about one human being through the lenses of

two different individuals. For instance, from my perspective, while describing what

must have been a heartrending situation for the autobiographical subject, I cannot very well use the adjective “sad” if she herself insists that she wasn’t sad at all

at the time. The two of us then had to uncover to our satisfaction the reasons why

she had felt the way she did, and it was in the process of our conversations of this

kind that Li Xianglan’s human qualities began to manifest themselves.

During the writing process, Yamaguchi herself fell into self-loathing after

watching her own prewar films, and I couldn’t bear to watch her anguish as her

sense of guilt tormented her. How should such feelings be expressed in writing?

That also led to discussions between us. In the end, it was decided that she articulate her sentiments for atonement in the Postscript, while the main text registers

simply her feelings at the time. We believe that only by doing so can we contribute to genuine Sino-Japanese friendship. I also believe that the differences of the

two coauthors in terms of age, generation, gender, life experiences, and personalities in fact complemented our efforts and prevented us from making easy compromises or falling into self-indulging sentimentality.

After the writing was completed, I developed a renewed sense of respect and

affection for my subject in her various manifestations as Li Xianglan, Yamaguchi

Yoshiko, and Ōtaka Yoshiko. I have learned much from how she was able to take

charge of her destiny through her sense of volition and determination, and from

the strong resilience with which she had lived through the first half of her life. I,

too, was a repatriate from former Manchuria, and through my research, I was able

to learn about an unknown aspect of our tumultuous Shōwa history as it unfolded

on the Chinese continent.

Purely for the sake of convenience, references to and readings of personal and

geographical names and reign years follow the prewar convention. I have entered

katakana transliterations for items generally pronounced in Chinese, and hiragana for those in, or largely enunciated in, Japanese. I have registered bibliographical details for the sources I have consulted. I am grateful to those who have kindly

accepted my requests for interviews, and their names are noted in the text. I am

particularly indebted to the film critic Shimizu Akira and Tōhō Tōwa’s Managing Director Koike Akira on matters about film; the composer Hattori Ryōichi

and the music critic Noguchi Hisamitsu on music; and the writer Nagano Hiroo

on modern Chinese history. Needless to say, I am ultimately responsible for any

factual errors. In addition, I wish to thank the many people who have contributed photographs.

I was indebted to Niita Shō, Date Munekatsu, and Tanaka Katsuhito for their

warm encouragement and assistance during the two-and-a-half years it took to

complete this book. Itō Kiwako served not just as editor, but also took on the difficult task as the coordinator—and the lubricant—between the two authors and

guided us along in our joint enterprise.

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