By Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Sakuya Fujiwara, Sheldon H. Lu, Chia-ning Chang
ISBN-10: 0824839846
ISBN-13: 9780824839840
The acclaimed actress and mythical singer, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (aka Li Xianglan, 1920-2014), emerged from Japan-occupied Manchuria to turn into a transnational big name in the course of the moment Sino-Japanese conflict. Born to jap mom and dad, raised in Manchuria, and proficient in Beijing, the younger Yamaguchi discovered to talk impeccable Mandarin chinese language and obtained specialist education in operatic making a song. while recruited through the Manchurian movie organization in 1939 to behave in "national coverage" movies within the provider of jap imperialism in China, she allowed herself to be offered as a chinese language, successfully protecting her eastern identification in either her expert and personal lives.
Yamaguchi quickly turned an remarkable transnational phenomenon in Manchuria, Shanghai, and Japan itself because the glamorous lady lead in such recognized motion pictures as Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940), Pledge within the Desert (1940), and Glory to Eternity (1943). Her signature songs, together with "When Will You Return?" and "The night Primrose," swept East Asia within the waning years of the struggle and remained well known good into the postwar decades.
Ironically, even though her celebrated foreign stardom was once with out parallel in wartime East Asia, she remained a puppet inside of a puppet country, choreographed at each flip via eastern movie studios in line with the expediencies of Japan's continental coverage. In a dramatic flip of occasions after Japan's defeat, she was once put less than condo arrest in Shanghai by means of the chinese language Nationalist forces and rarely escaped execution as a traitor to China. Her advanced and exciting existence tale as a handy pawn, prepared device, and tormented sufferer of Japan's imperialist ideology is instructed in her bestselling autobiography, translated right here in complete for the 1st time in English. An addendum finds her postwar occupation in Hollywood and Broadway within the Nineteen Fifties, her friendship with Charlie Chaplin, her first marriage to Isamu Noguchi, and her postwar existence as singer, actress, political determine, tv megastar, and personal citizen.
A big creation through Chia-ning Chang contextualizes Yamaguchi's existence and profession in the historic and cultural zeitgeist of wartime Manchuria, Japan, and China and the postwar controversies surrounding her lifestyles in East Asia.
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Extra resources for Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life
Example text
What he has to say is a most remarkable statement: Keiran, at last, I hit you. I lost [my battle]. This is my punishment [batsu] for having believed too much in my own power. I was a laughable narcissist [boku wa kokkei-na unuboreya datta]. Please forgive me. Now leave and go wherever you please. This is a stunning reversal of the role played so far by Hase, the noble-minded Japanese romantic with an unwavering will to present the best face of Japan before the subjugated Chinese, the man who has keenly taken upon himself the formidable task of transforming Guilan’s intransigent anti-Japanese prejudices.
121 Yet among the dispatches from many literary figures sent to the Chinese front by their publishers, journals, or the government, it is not xlviii Introduction difficult to detect an ominous pattern of cultural and aesthetic marginalization when it came to their portraits of China. In many instances, this was carried through an undertone ranging from condescending indifference and offhanded dismissal to outright contempt. Often, a nativist chauvinism affected travelers’ reports on China’s cultural conditions and social customs whose immediate foreignness and incomprehensibility to Japanese sensibilities served only to accentuate the latter’s impatience and displeasure toward them.
Upon seeing her in military uniform, the Japanese hero cannot help asking in utter astonishment, “How dare you present such a sight as this? 102 “It seems to be a kind of universal archetype,” Satō writes. ”105 Speaking on Song of the White Orchid, Satō Tadao offers the following view on the Japanese perspective on China: xlii Introduction 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.
Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life by Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Sakuya Fujiwara, Sheldon H. Lu, Chia-ning Chang
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