Perhaps, until now, there are still some Chinese like her, not because she is a singer and a star, but because she has a conscience.
She has many names: Shuko Yamaguchi, Li Xianglan, Pan Shuhua, Shuko Daihak... These names accompanied her throughout her life, and in their transformation, she was fortunate to become a singer and movie star, and successfully escaped the death penalty and embarked on the road to politics. Of course, she finally discovered that people should be honest and have a conscience, and did something beneficial to the friendship between China and Japan.
So, she wasn't annoying enough.
01. She calls Japan "motherland" and China "mother country"
She wrote an autobiography in which she went to an anti-Japanese rally in 1936 as a Chinese. At that time, everyone had to speak around the question of "what if the Japanese army invaded Beijing", she did not know how to say it, but she had to say it, so she thought for a long time before saying: Then, let me stand on the city wall... That way, the bullets of the Chinese can hit me, and the bullets of the Japanese can hit me... I may be the first to die... But this is the best way out for me.
She also wrote a reminiscence essay, "Trying to Soothe a Wounded Heart," in which she said that in 1938, at the age of 18, she went to her native Japan after becoming famous, checked her passport, and prepared to disembark. It was the first time she had set foot on Japanese soil, but she heard the Japanese customs officer say to her: "Don't you feel ashamed that you are a national of a first-class country and wear the clothes of a third-class country?" "The clothing of third-class countries is not to say that the materials and workmanship are not good and not valuable, but the Chinese style. She was very sad by the words of the Japanese customs official, and later, recalling the situation at that time, she said: "The people of my motherland (Japan) despise my mother country (China) that gave birth to me and raised me, which makes me feel very sad, and from then on, I began to hate Japan." ”
In her account, these two events make people feel that there is a huge rift between China and Japan, and she will always be hurt when she walks in it. Of course, it is not difficult to see that the first to hurt her is the Japanese, just like standing on the walls of Beijing, Chinese bullets may not have been fired, she has been killed by the Japanese.
Killing a dead is an assumption, but the injury must be real. It was in her injuries that she did something like this:
In 2005, at the age of 85, she published a lengthy article exhorting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which houses Class A war criminals such as Hideki Tojo, because "it would deeply hurt the hearts of Chinese."
If 2005, when this happened, can be regarded as a time node in her later years, then she has been affirmed by China not long before and after this node.
Before the node: In 1975, when she was already a member of the National Assembly, she was received by Liao Chengzhi, president of the China-Japan Friendship Association, when she was passing through Beijing. Later, in 1978, she visited Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin and Changchun again.
After the node: In September 2014, she passed away at the age of 94. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hong Lei said she "supported and participated in the cause of Sino-Japanese friendship after the war and made positive contributions to this end, and we mourn her passing away."
She went through her life, born and raised in China, and then returned to Japan and died in Japan. So, her story is more like a mixture of Chinese and Japanese stories, just as she calls Japan "motherland" and China "mother country".
02. She was a "sugar-coated shell" in the Kwantung Army's war policy.
Born in 1920 in Bei yantai (now The Beacon City, Liaoning Province), near Fengtian, Liaoning Province, China, she moved with her family to Fushun. Her father's name was Fumio Yamaguchi and she had many Chinese friends. Because her father had worked at the South Manchuria Railway Co., Ltd., she could speak fluently Chinese, and she also worked as a Chinese teacher at the company's night school, so she could speak Chinese from an early age. In 1932, in the Pingdingshan massacre, Fumio Nakaguchi was detained by the Japanese side on suspicion of his links with Chinese anti-Japanese fighters, and the family moved to Shenyang afterwards. On the fushun train to Shenyang, she met a Russian-Jewish girl of the same age, Liuba.
LiuBa attended a Japanese language school, spoke Japanese, and went into exile with her family to Fengtian (present-day Shenyang), where she quickly became good friends. Once, she went to play at Liuba's house, and Liuba introduced her to Mrs. Podolesov, a famous Soviet opera singer who was also in Fengtian, and after repeated pleading, became a student of Mrs. Podolisov and embarked on the road of singing.
Soon, Mrs. Bodolisov held a solo concert and asked her to wear a kimono mat and sing a song, but she did not expect to be favored by a Japanese person in the audience. The Japanese, the head of the Fengtian Radio Program, felt that she had great potential and could be cultivated, so he asked her to sing "Manchurian New Songs" for the radio program, and since then, she has had a stage name Pandan and has gradually become known to people. In 1933, she recognized her father's Chinese classmate Li Jichun as her adoptive father, and added a Li character to her stage name, giving her the Chinese name Li Xianglan.
Li Jichun is a Hui ethnic group, who was admitted to the cavalry section of the Kaiping Wubei Academy in his early years, and was a good friend of Wu Peifu. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he defected to Japan, became a traitor, and tried his best to persuade Wu Peifu to leave the mountains to take up an important post in the puppet North China government, but was severely rejected. After the founding of New China, he was executed for treason.
At the end of 1932, the head of the Japanese special agent, Toihara Daisa, appointed Li Jichun as the commander-in-chief of the "National Salvation Army", and the general headquarters was located in Jinzhou. Li Jichun recruited soldiers and horses, and pieced together thousands of rabble-rousers. In January 1933, the Japanese army launched a large-scale attack on the passes of the Great Wall, and the "National Salvation Army" acted as a guide to guide the Japanese army to drive straight in. In this regard, Li Jichun became a sinner in the history of attracting enemies into the customs. With Li Jichun's "popularity", Li Xianglan came to Beiping in 1934, studied at the Peiping Yi Teaching Girls' High School under the name of "Pan Shuhua", and recognized Yamaguchi Fumio as his righteous father in Beiping, who met a pro-Japanese figure Pan Yugui.
Under the packaging of the Japanese army, under the care of her adoptive father and righteous father, in 1938, Li Xianglan was manipulated into the pseudo-"Manchurian Film Association", and at the same time, the Japanese army launched her as a "Chinese singer", and became famous for the song "Night Fragrance". After that, she also successively acted in some films that promoted the Japanese army or whitewashed Japan's war of aggression, becoming the "sugar-coated shells" in the Kwantung Army's war policy.
In 1942, Li Xianglan went to Shanghai to develop, filmed the movie "Wanshi Liufang", and sang the theme song "Selling Sugar Song" and the interlude "Quit Smoking Song", which became popular throughout China. Subsequently, she sang "Night Fragrance" and "Hate Not Meeting And Not Marrying", "Haiyan", etc., making herself one of the "Seven Queens of Songs" on the beach with Gong Qiuxia, Zhou Xuan, Yao Li, Bai Guang, Bai Hong, and Wu Yingyin. A Japanese woman became popular in China.
03. She was arrested by the Republic of China government and sang "Night Incense" in court
What Chinese did not expect at that time was that Li Xianglan, a singer and movie star who ate Chinese food, went to Chinese school, and wore Chinese clothes, was actually Japanese. A dramatic scene takes place in 1945. In that year, Japan was defeated and surrendered, Manchukuo was dissolved, and Li Xianglan was arrested by the government of the Republic of China on charges of treason.
In 1944, before Japan's surrender, Li Xianglan realized that she could no longer make films of "Sino-Japanese goodwill" and plucked up the courage to ask the signing company to terminate her contract with her. Then she breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that because she pretended to be Chinese, the days of suffering between China and Japan were over. But after Japan's surrender, she couldn't help but feel sorry for Japan when she saw Chinese rejoicing and celebrating everywhere. Maybe that's her, a woman caught between China and Japan. China raised her, but she was also a Japanese, and Japan was her motherland.
At first, Li Xianglan was locked up in the shelter, and some people asked her for money, and some people coveted her beauty, claiming that as long as she agreed, she would be guaranteed to be fine. But she didn't say yes, and looking at the greedy and clawed people, she seemed to smell death. After being arrested by the government of the Republic of China, the major newspapers accused her and Yoshiko Kawashima of being thieves, and even deduced that she would be shot, and she felt frightened.
At the trial, the judgment of the military court read: "A Chinese, performing a film that desecrates China and supports Japan's mainland policy, is a betrayal of China." People in the courtroom demanded that she be sentenced to death, and she tried to calm herself down, saying that she was Japanese, formerly known as Shuko Yamaguchi, and her father, Fumio Yamaguchi, so that there was no such thing as a traitor, and the crime of adultery could not be established. However, who can prove that she is Japanese? In the midst of an uproar, the young girl she met on the train, Liuba, appears, and Liuba says she can find her birth certificate.
Liu Ba was working in Shanghai at the time and promised to help her go to Beiping to find her. Soon, she received a small rectangular wooden box from her mother, which contained a doll containing her household registration certificate. As a result, she was acquitted by the judge. Looking at the angry people in the audience after the great disappointment, she bowed deeply and sang "Night Fragrance" with tears:
The southern wind blows cool, and the nightingale cries softly,
The flowers under the moon are all dreaming, and only the night is fragrant, and the fragrance is revealed,
I love the night, and I love the nightingale singing,
Love the flower-like dream even more, embrace the night incense, smell the night incense,
Night incense, I sing for you, night incense, I think for you,
yes...... I sing for you, I think for you.
Night incense, night incense, night incense...
As a result, she was innocent, and she was gone, considered one of the songs of the Japanese invaders anesthetizing the people of the occupied areas, and was soon banned by the name "Han traitor songs".
In 1946, she was sent back to Japan, on a steamship, and when she heard her singing "Night Incense", the tears could no longer help but roll down, and then she said in her heart, "Farewell, China; farewell, Li Xianglan!" After arriving in Japan, she stepped into the film industry under the name of Shuko Yamaguchi, and even thought about going to Hollywood, but gave up for some reason. In 1951, Shuko Yamaguchi married the American engraver Isamu Noguchi, and the two divorced in 1956. In 1958, Shuko Yamaguchi fell in love with diplomat Hiroshi Ōtaka. Hiroshi Ohtaka was then a secretary and third-class clerk of the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations. After marriage, he took her husband's surname, changed her name to Big Eagle Lady, and quit the show business as a diplomat's wife.
In 1969, 50-year-old Shuko Ohtaka became the host of Fuji TV. In 1974, she appeared on television and ran for the Senate for 18 years. In 1992, he retired from the Senate... At the time of her death, "at that time, Chinese did not know that I was Japanese, I deceived Chinese, a sense of guilt wrapped around my heart, I seemed to have walked into a dead end, fell into a desperate situation..." This is her conscience, she has nurtured her conscience in China and China. She used her honesty to speak of her conscience.
In the long river of history, the earth has always pulsated, the sun and wind are always like yesterday, and the crops and trees are still growing. But as a person, the most profound and important thing is nothing more than to be honest and have a conscience, although this can not form a grand positive energy at any time, but it should be paid attention to and practiced by people at all times, and it is also a real and concrete life. Her meaning is clearly here, even if she is trapped on the island, there are expectations of squeezing out, so it is worthy of respect and remembrance.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!