Yoshiko Okada
On January 3, 1938, the famous Japanese actress Yoshiko Okada and her husband Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto crossed the Japanese-Soviet border on Sakhalin Island in a sleigh and defected to the Soviet Union.
Both were literary and artistic youths, dissatisfied with Japanese militarism and the high pressure of the right-wing government, and yearned for the utopian Soviet Union, thinking that it was a brave new world.
As a result, Brave New World was not found, but was invited to the Lubyanka (KGB headquarters, then called the NKVD State Security Directorate) for tea, and after interrogation, Yoshikichi Sugimoto was shot, and Yoshiko Okada was sentenced to ten years in prison and sent to Siberian labor camps as a lumberjack.
The ending is so tragic because they went out and didn't look at the yellow calendar - what year was 1938? It was the climax of the father's cleaning, the Soviet Union was in turmoil, everyone was at risk, many foreign friends in the USSR were swept into the vortex and disappeared inexplicably, at this time ran to the USSR, wasn't it to play a lantern in the toilet to find death?
Yoshiko Okada did not die in Siberia, she lived to be 90 years old and did not die until 1992, during which she experienced a lot and fulfilled her long-cherished wish to engage in artistic creation in the Soviet Union, and in 1973 she wrote her autobiography "Life Without Regrets".
As for whether she really has no regrets, only she knows.
01
Yoshiko Okada was born in 1902 in Hiroshima, Japan, to a liberal journalist father and a Dutch mother.
Her father gave her a free-spirited soul, and her mother gave her exotic beauty.
Under the influence and help of her father, Yoshiko Okada embarked on a literary and artistic path when she was a teenager, and successively joined the art seat and the stage association to appear in dramas, and soon rose to prominence.
In 1922, Yoshiko Okada switched from drama to the film industry, and in 1925 she participated in masterpieces such as "Nikkei", "Mad Female Master", and "Five Women Around Him", which became a mess. In the popularity list of Japanese film actors that year, Yoshiko Okada ranked first among female artists.
Yoshiko Okada
There are many popular people, especially actresses. Yoshiko Okada's biggest groove is the chaos of her private life. His father is a liberal journalist, debauched by nature, merciful everywhere, Yoshiko Okada inherited this characteristic of her father, true temperament, love of freedom, and is engaged in literature and art, naturally open and amorous.
At the age of 19, Yoshiko Okada fell in love with a student actor named Yoshiharu Hattori and had children out of wedlock.
Soon, she empathized and fell in love with an old man 30 years older than her, Takaya Yamada, a veteran movie star who had a lot of support for Kako Okada, and the two got together.
The little boyfriend Yoshiharu Hattori is a lover, can't accept the reality of being dumped, and committed suicide by lying on the rails. However, this did not affect Yoshiko Okada's abusive feelings.
In 1927, Yoshiko Okada was scolded by the director when filming "Tsubakihime", and she was aggrieved and confided in the male protagonist Ryoichi Takeuchi, and soon rubbed the spark of love, and before the film was finished, the two eloped together, and at this time Yoshiko Okada had already made a marriage contract with Takaya Yamada.
This is a woman who dares to love and do, marriage contracts and worldly vision, can not limit her, fame and successful career, can not bind her.
Yoshiko Okada
After the elopement scandal was exposed, Yoshiko Okada was very popular, was fired by the production company, and was banned by the film industry, Yoshiko Okada did not think of it, she and Takeuchi Ryo formed a small troupe and toured around.
Five years later, the film industry re-accepted Yoshiko Okada, and she joined Shochiku Pictures, participating in the famous director Yasujiro Ozu's famous films "When to Meet Again", "Daughter of Tokyo", "Tokyo Stay", the return of the king, and her popularity soared.
The career ushered in the second peak, but the marriage fell into a place of chicken feathers. Yoshiko Okada is too famous, far overshadowing Ryoichi Takeuchi, which makes Takeuchi very unhappy as her husband, and she is increasingly addicted to alcohol, and the relationship between the two is broken.
During this period, Yoshiko Okada's mother and father passed away one after another, loved ones died, marriage failed, and people's spiritual world will change in focus, and to a certain extent, they may realize that they may do some outrageous behavior.
In 1936, Yoshiko Okada left the film industry and re-entered the stage play, where she met stage director Yoshikichi Sugimoto, and the two soon fell in love.
Yoshikichi Sugimoto has a family, and Yoshiko Okada is not divorced, but the two still get together, and the concept of love, marriage and family is quite avant-garde.
Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto is not only a stage director, he is a member of the Japanese Communist Party, a backbone of the left-wing cultural movement, graduated from Waseda University in Russian at an early age, and speaks Russian.
In this way, Yoshiko Okada, who originally mixed up in the entertainment industry, was unknowingly involved in politics.
Ryokichi Sugimoto
02
In 1925, the Japanese government promulgated the Law on the Maintenance of Public Security, according to which anyone who organizes an organization with the purpose of changing the "national system" or denying the private property system is sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
What do you mean? It is forbidden to overthrow Japan's existing system by force and to engage in public ownership of property; to put it bluntly, it is aimed at suppressing the Japanese Communist Party.
After the establishment of the Japanese Communist Party in 1922, the Japanese workers' and peasants' movement became increasingly vigorous, which attracted the attention of the Japanese government and the hostility of right-wing forces, so this law was promulgated to suppress the Japanese Communist Party and other organizations from challenging the emperor system.
Since then, with the acceleration of Japan's external expansion and the sharp rise of domestic right-wing forces, the "Law on Public Security" has become a sharp sword for Japan's right-wing forces to suppress the left-wing forces of the Japanese Communist Party.
In March 1928, more than 1,600 members of the Japanese Communist Party were arrested for violating the Law on the Maintenance of Peace; Three months later, the Tanaka cabinet took the opportunity to raise the maximum sentence under the Security Law to the death penalty; In 1929, more than 4,000 members of the Japanese Communist Party were arrested.
Anyone who disagrees with the Japanese government's policies could be thrown into jail. The atmosphere of terror created by the Law of Public Security hung over Japan until the end of World War II.
Under the White Terror, Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto, a member of the Japanese Communist Party, was also affected, and he was sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment with a suspended sentence for a case.
Yoshiko Okada
In 1936, Japan signed an anti-communist agreement with Germany, and in 1937, Japan invaded China in an all-round way, Japan fell into an era of national madness, and the living environment of the Japanese Communist Party deteriorated even more. As a prisoner of thought, Yoshikichi Sugimoto feared being sent to the most dangerous places on the Chinese front line by conscription, and even if he was not conscripted, he could be imprisoned by the government at any time.
Fear weighed down like a boulder, making Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto restless.
At this time, he thought about fleeing, fleeing to the Soviet Union, where there was warm organization and freedom to create.
As for Yoshiko Okada, she is a bit left-leaning, dissatisfied with the increasingly tightening space for acting and speech, and has frequent scandals, and has little nostalgia for Japan, gladly agreeing to follow Sugimoto to escape.
Yoshiko Okada later said in her memoirs: To be honest, I don't feel nostalgic at all. ...... In the current situation, it is not always possible to play a serious drama. If he can successfully enter the Soviet Union, he will be in Moscow, where Tokata and Shi and Shu Sano will be there. He (Yoshikichi Sugimoto) could contact the International Left Theatre Alliance to work there, so I went to study acting.
Yoshi Tsuchikata was a left-wing theater director, and Sano Shuku was a left-wing dramatist, who fled to the Soviet Union in 1934 because of the persecution of the Law on Public Security, and in 1937 they were expelled from the Soviet Union, but Sugimoto and Okada did not know the news.
There are pioneers to lead the way, and those who come after are courageous.
Yoshiko Okada
On January 3, 1938, Yoshiko Okada and Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto came to the border between Japan and the Soviet Union on Sakhalin - after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan acquired the southern part of Sakhalin, bounded by 50 degrees north latitude, with Japan to the south and Russia to the north.
They claimed that they came to Hua Tai Island to accumulate materials for Ainu Urta films and to comfort the soldiers guarding the border.
The Japanese soldiers stationed here could hardly believe their eyes that Japan's most beautiful stars would come to such a remote and desolate place.
The soldiers graciously received Yoshiko Okada and Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto, fulfilled their requests to visit the border, and provided them with a sled.
Freezing and snowy, the sleigh galloped, and seeing that they were getting farther and farther away from the observation post, the two took advantage of the sleigh driver's unpreparedness and fled across the border to the Soviet Union.
03
Soviet border guards soon discovered Yoshiko Okada and Yoshikichi Sugimoto.
Captain Gregory Sishchenka recalled the episode: I went up to the lookout, shot them in the ear, shouted "Stop, raise your hands", and the two obediently obeyed the order. The Japanese hold their boots in their hands and stand in the snow with only socks. Hearing my shouts, they threw away their boots and said in Russian "we are Japanese, we fled to the USSR to take refuge."
The news of Yoshiko Okada and Yoshikichi Sugimoto's defection to the Soviet Union instantly made headlines in major Japanese news media.
General public opinion believes that this defection was planned by Yoshikichi Sugimoto, and as for Yoshiko Okada, she was just in love and eloped with abduction, and the Japanese were generally sympathetic to her.
While the Japanese press was overwhelming with reports on the elopement of the popular actress to the Soviet Union, Yoshiko Okada and Yoshikichi Sugimoto anxiously awaited the verdict of fate at the Soviet border station.
News reports
Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto could not prove his identity as a Japanese communist, and the manner and purpose of the two men coming to the Soviet Union were quite bizarre, and it was difficult for Soviet border guards to believe their statements.
On 7 January, the border post was ordered to arrest two people on charges of illegal entry. The two were taken to Alexandrovsk, Sakhalin, where they were separated and held in an adjoining room, where they were subjected to endless, nightmarish interrogations and torture.
The two had really bad luck and bumped into Stalin Meyerhold.
Meyerhold was a famous Soviet director, actor, theorist of drama, talent, and a founding master of Soviet theater. Stanislavsky once said: The only director I know of is Meyerhold. Meyerhold had a student named Eisenstein, the father of Russian cinema and one of the founders of montage theory.
Meyerhold exonerated Stalin because he proposed the theory of "hypothetical drama" and Meyerhold's law.
The theory of "hypothetical drama" contradicts Stalin's line of "realist drama"; "Meyerhold's Law" holds that successful literary and artistic works in history cannot be said good by everyone, nor can everyone say bad when they first appear, they should be liked by those who like it, and hated by those who don't like it, and good works must have their own characteristics and arouse people's interest in evaluation.
Obviously, these theories or laws of Meyerhold transgressed, and in the USSR only Stalin had the right to think, and everyone else carried out the will. As for literary and artistic works, Stalin believed that good is good, Stalin believed that bad is bad, which round to get a play to point fingers?
Meyerhold's wife was even more fierce, and she even wrote to Stalin, saying that Stalin did not understand drama and literature, and that the layman guided the insider.
Naturally, the NKVD should focus on those whom Stalin did not like, Meyerhold was doomed to death, and the NKVD was concerned about the crime against which to kill him, so as to avoid extraneous complications and bad influences.
From the remarks, it seems that there is no convincing evidence to be found, and at this time, Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto and Yoshiko Okada collided.
These two Japanese are engaged in drama or movies, and they cannot prove their identity, and there is no doubt that they are Japanese agents.
The purpose of their trip was to connect with Meyerhold, an attempt to carry out a criminal and horrific assassination while Stalin was on his way to the theater.
Meyerhold
04
The outline of the script is set, and the details depend on the confession.
The confession was the simplest, and under the fierce care of the NKVD, both were recruited.
Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto confessed to being a spy for the Japanese Army Staff Headquarters and was assigned by the military department to come to the Soviet Union to connect with Meyerhold, who had worked with Tsuchikata Yoshi and Sano Suku, during which time he was developed into a Japanese spy with the aim of murdering Stalin who was watching the play.
Yoshiko Okada also admitted: We crossed the border with espionage purposes.
The hundreds of pages of continuing transcript record Yoshiko Okada's interrogation:
I am in very bad health, I have not eaten for 5 days, please, give me some white bread. I'm ashamed to trouble you, but please, let the doctor prescribe me some medicine. If you can, please give me some books and a dictionary in Japanese translations of Tolstoy and Gorky.
I'm very weak, can I eat a little white bread? If I can, I will exchange my Japanese money into rubles to pay, can I exchange money? I sincerely hope to become a citizen of the Great Soviet Republic, believe me, I have no other desires than that.
In a later letter of complaint, Yoshiko Okada said: "The interrogation was extremely harsh, I was asked to stand, I could not sleep for five days and nights, my body was unbearable, and my mental condition was on the verge of collapse.
Yoshiko Okada in detention
Now that it's recruited, things are simple.
In September 1939, the court sentenced Yoshiyoshi Sugimoto to death and Yoshiko Okada to ten years in prison without appeal.
The two were tried and sentenced separately, and neither knew the fate of the other.
Yoshikichi Sugimoto was soon executed, and Yoshiko Okada was sent to a Siberian labor camp to perform heavy physical work such as logging wood and burning branches.
In 1943, Yoshiko Okada's fortunes took a turn for the better, and she was secretly transferred to Lubyanka Prison to teach Japanese to strategic spies for Japan until her release in 1947.
Teaching Japanese to intelligence officers was a top-secret mission, and years later, Yoshiko Okada avoided the experience, saying that she lived with an aunt, learned Russian and painted.
During the cleaning, many people who knew Japanese in the Soviet Union were treated as spies, so that there was a shortage of Japanese language experts after the war.
Under these circumstances, Yoshiko Okada was assigned to the Moscow Broadcasting Committee as a Japanese announcer.
Soon, the broadcasting committee brought in two Japanese prisoners of war, one of whom was named Shintaro Takiguchi, 11 years younger than Yoshiko Okada, and the two went from colleague to friend, from friend to lover, from lover to husband and wife.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet society began to thaw, and Yoshiko Okada regained her reputation, and she was told by the authorities that Yoshikichi Sugimoto had died in prison of pneumonia.
Yoshiko Okada's life was on the right track, she entered the Moscow State Academy of Dramatic Arts, and after graduation, she worked at the famous Mayakovsky Theater, fulfilling her long-cherished dream of working in literature and art in the Soviet Union.
Yoshiko Okada's complaint
05
In 1968, the news of Yoshiko Okada's death reached Japan, arousing widespread sympathy among the Japanese people, who hoped that she would return to Japan.
In 1972, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko visited Japan, and Prime Minister Sakae Sato took the opportunity to ask Yoshiko Okada to return to Japan, and Gromyko agreed.
At the end of the year, Yoshiko Okada returned to Japan with Shintaro Takiguchi's ashes (died of illness in 1971), causing a media sensation. The following year she published her autobiography Life Without Regrets.
Yoshiko Okada, who is more than seventy, is not old, she was invited to participate in movies and television, talk shows, published books, and lived a very fulfilling life.
Yoshiko Okada in her later years
In 1986, Yoshiko Okada still chose to return to the Soviet Union, she spent half her life in the Soviet Union, accustomed to the Soviet Union, other places have become home, since then she has been interviewed by Japanese reporters many times, but never returned to Japan until her death.
In 1989, Assistant Procurator General of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, Valentin Liapov, came to Yoshiko Okada's home and confessed to him the case, and it was only then that Yoshiko Okada completely solved all the mysteries.
And all this is thanks to Gorbachev, who made it public and exposed countless old black history of the Soviet Union, including the famous "Katyn massacre", which was also made public in his hands.
Three years later, in 1992, Yoshiko Okada died in Moscow.