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The China Lover

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By James Hadfield

As true-life stories go, they don’t get much more intriguing than the tale of Yoshiko Yamaguchi. Born in Manchuria in 1920, she was raised by her Sinophile father to be fluent in Mandarin as well as Japanese. With her striking looks and strong singing voice, Yamaguchi proved an attractive asset to the Manchuria Motion Picture Association, who cast her in propaganda films as the ostensibly Chinese actress Li Xianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese). These would make her a star in both Japan and China, where she went on trial for treason at the end of WWII, only to be granted a reprieve when the truth about her nationality came to light.

That would have been enough of a story in itself, but Yamaguchi was only just getting started. She returned to Japan and appeared under her own name in films by Akira Kurosawa and Kon Ichikawa, before attempting to break Hollywood and Broadway as Shirley Yamaguchi. Along the way, she would marry — and swiftly divorce — the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi, then abruptly retire from acting altogether to settle down with a diplomat. Unable to sit still for long, she later reinvented herself as an international reporter for a women’s afternoon TV show, covering conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East, then went on to serve 18 years in the Diet as a member of the LDP.

This fascinating tale provides the basis for Ian Buruma’s "The China Lover," a fictionalized version of a life story that out-weirded most fiction. Buruma is best known as a scholar and historian, and he brings an impressive eye for historical details to the table: wartime Shanghai and postwar Tokyo are both superbly evoked.

Rather than settle on a conventional narrative, he recounts Yamaguchi’s tale through the eyes of three male acquaintances from various points in her life. Daisuke Sato first encounters her when she is 13 years old, and acts as a minder of sorts during her film career in Manchuria. A staunch idealist, he genuinely believes in Japan’s great civilizing mission to create “a truly Asian empire… where all races mixed and were treated equally.” As he watches that dream die, he also finds Yamaguchi slipping out of his fingers, moving toward her next reinvention.

Cut to postwar Tokyo, where the young, enthusiastic and very gay Sidney Vanoven befriends her while working as a movie censor for SCAP, and later as a film critic for the Japan Evening Post. Clearly modeled on the estimable Donald Richie, Vanoven proves the book’s most acerbic and entertaining narrator. (“Who needs a mincing little hairdresser pawing the hair on your arms like some cheap harlot?” he says in one throwaway aside. “I like men, not fake girls, or ‘sister boys,’ as the Japanese called them.”)

His own attempts to fathom and ingratiate himself into Japanese society are mirrored by Yamaguchi’s efforts to make it overseas. She is politely mocked on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and enjoys the dubious pleasures of appearing in such cinematic turkeys as Sam Fuller’s "House of Bamboo" and Edward Bernds’ "Navy Wife."

The final section of the book is perhaps its most unexpected. From a prison cell in Beirut, Kenkichi Sato (loosely based on real-life terrorist Kozo Okamoto) recalls his experiences in late-’60s Tokyo, where he went from hanging out with avant-garde artists and producing soft porn flicks to working as the screenwriter for Yamaguchi’s TV show. Stammering and awkward, he longs for some cause to rally behind — and, when his work takes him to Lebanon, he finally finds one. But even after joining the Japanese Red Army and perpetrating the Lod Airport Massacre, he isn’t forgotten by his former colleague. Yamaguchi continues to write to him, breathlessly recounting her meetings with Kim Il-Sung and Idi Amin (“My goodness, he is a big man!”) and expressing her desire for world peace.

What emerges from this portrait is a very modern kind of celebrity: a star who was everything to everyone yet always fundamentally unknowable, a Madonna before her time. Though Buruma was able to interview the real-life Yamaguchi while writing the book, she always feels just out of reach. Still, what a life — and what a woman.

This review originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp).

© Japan Today

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Born in Manchuria in 1920... She returned to Japan

Interesting to be sure, but I'm wondering how one can 'return' to a country in which they've never been...

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A female Japanese Forrest Gump

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She was a legendary international star in Asia, someone like Marlene Dietrich. She played in Hollywood movie as well. Look at this Youtube video. She was 61 years old at that time and still beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-88aaCUt_zI

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She did indeed have a fascinating life. I would be eager to read the book.

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She also starred in a Japanese version of Yang Guifei, a famous Chinese courtesan of the Tang Dynasty.

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jonobugs she would of done, 'movie premiere' sort of things in japan when her movies aired.. i think thats why she 'went back' to japan

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Hadfield (like Buruma) adopts a mocking tone also, but never reveals the sources for his denigrating summary of Yamaguchi's life.

Buruma is another naysayer who presents his work of fiction as being true, but the only truth in it are the bare-bones historical facts that everyone knows. Everything else in this work of historical fiction-book is imagined.

Hadfield never gives Yamaguchi her due respect - she was someone who led such an event-filled life that Buruma required 3 separate individuals to give their (flawed) imagined impressions of what she was. Hadfield also uses words like "reinvention" - perhaps if Hadfield had to leave Japan and go back to someplace else he would have more appreciation for what a person goes through (and it is not reinvention to use all your talent and energy to find work and keep going and doing what you've always been doing).

I challenge anyone to name any person in history who can match her dedication, energy, range of talent, and yes, her beauty of body and mind (called integrity - look up the Ashi Shimbun editorial at her passing away in Sep 2014).

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I just caught this review of the awful fictionalized version of Ms. Yamaguchi's life by Ian Buruma. The comments by cogit8 above are dead on target. Despite Mr. Hadfield's occasional compliments, e.g. "strong singing voice", "what a woman", the putdown tone is evident throughout. Her American movies like House of Bamboo and Japanese War Bride (not mentioned by JH) were definitely not turkeys. And her own acting was excellent, as has been recognized by numerous critics. Moreover, her voice has been described as "magnificent" by others, an assessment that does her far more justice.

Perhaps more to the point, the review fails to recognize what cogit8 clearly points out. To try to capture Yamaguchi's incredible life through the accounts of 3 men who were probably unreliable in real life is an exercise in futility at best. But the book actually spends little time on her and far more on the personal sexual fantasies and/or adventures of these individuals, none of whom are portrayed in a particularly positive light. One has to question why Buruma even bothered writing the book inasmuch as so much is known about The Divine Yamaguch,i other than the obvious motive of making money.

A noted Japanese professor was asked his opinion about The China Lover at a tribute to Yamaguchi in April 2015. His one word response --- "Trash". That says it as succinctly as is needed.

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