Chapter 91 17. A Japanese’s Chinese Confession——Li Xianglan

The Chinese don't know that I am Japanese, I deceived the Chinese.A sense of guilt haunted my heart, as if I had walked into a dead end and fell into a desperate situation.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, there was a famous actress who was prosecuted as a "cultural traitor", Li Xianglan. At that time, many actors, including Wang Lijuan and Zhou Manhua, were sued for participating in the traitor film industry, but only Li Xianglan's lawsuit was the most sensational . This is because, when she was tried, it was finally ruled that the so-called "Li Xianglan" was not Chinese at all, her real name was Yoshiko Yamaguchi, and she was Japanese, so she was not found guilty of "endangering her mother country". Political activities are to release them.This incident, together with the fact that the famous Japanese female spy Yoshiko Kawashima was finally identified as the Chinese Jin Bihui (Kawashima Yoshiko), and that she was shot for traitor became news for a while.

People who spoke Japanese and used Japanese names turned out to be Chinese; those who spoke Chinese and used Chinese names were Japanese, and people were puzzled by this. What kind of person is the real Li Xianglan? Li Xianglan, during the Anti-Japanese War, was the leading actress of Mantie Yinghua Film Company controlled by Japan, and was famous for her sweet singing voice.Li Xianglan's singing voice was indeed very charming, and had a great influence on the Japanese at that time.After arriving in Japan, Mr. Matsubara Dong, the vice chairman of the Kansai China-Japan Friendship Support Association, drove me to go through the phone procedures. At that time, the "Evening Fragrance" played in his car was very charming. When I asked, it was Li Xianglan's.

She was prosecuted as a "cultural traitor" for a reason, because during the Sino-Japanese War, Li Xianglan played a large number of Chinese female images who had a good impression of the Japanese invasion of China and were willing to be subjugated slaves.One can imagine the impact of playing such a role as a Chinese. My Japanese teacher, Ms. Miyakesao (now living in Shin-Itami Umegi, although she is over 90 years old, is still very healthy), her family lived in Northeast China at that time, and she was also a staff member of the Manchurian Railway.She is slightly older than Li Xianglan, and she goes to the same primary school, but her grade is higher.The two families still have some contacts, so they can be called Li (Yamaguchi)'s classmates.Mr. Miyake once lent me a Japanese version of "The Puppet of Man Ying - Li Xianglan", and the Li Xianglan she described shows a side that is not well known.Perhaps, this other side of Li Xianglan also reflects the historical enmity between China and Japan from a special angle.I recorded her description. As for my opinion on Li Xianglan, that is a matter of opinion.

(1) The beginning of Li Xianglan's acting career Li Xianglan's real name was Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who was born in Shenyang, China. Her father was a senior employee of the Manchurian Railway. Speaking of which, both the Manchurian Railway and the Kwantung Army were very powerful at that time. This is a typical colonial family.However, although Yoshiko Yamaguchi is a pure Japanese by blood, she is a woman who was born and raised in China. She can speak Chinese fluently, not because of training, but because she used to use Chinese as her mother tongue. to use.Until Japan's defeat, Li Xianglan seems to have only returned to Japan a few times, and returned as a full-screen artist. The first time she was insulted by the Japanese police, this incident will be mentioned later.

No one of us knows how Li Xianglan feels about China in her heart. However, a person should have a feeling for the land where he was born and grew up as a child. Li Xianglan started her acting career when she was in elementary school, initially in radio stations.Mr. Miyake recalled that once all the students in the school were required to go to the playground to listen to the radio singing program.This program was made by Li Xianglan as a Chinese. The content is like a fish flying in the air. The singing voice is very pleasant and the lyrics are very interesting.After singing, everyone applauded together.The school asked everyone to listen to Li Xianglan's program on the radio, which meant to show off such outstanding students in their school.That's how Li Xianglan became famous.

However, Mr. Miyake told Li Xianglan to pursue an acting career, and her father was not very willing.Li Xianglan's father was a pro-China Japanese who did not support the aggression of the Manchurian Railway in China. Therefore, he was dismissed from his position in the Yuanbaoshan Incident (this incident should have historical facts corroborated).Therefore, he was reluctant to let his daughter broadcast on a radio station controlled by Manchurian Railway.He once stopped Yoshiko Yamaguchi's singing career in the name of needing further studies.He once visited Mr. Miyake's house and said happily: "It can be regarded as getting rid of that matter (letting my daughter sing on the radio)."

But the good times didn't last long, and Li Xianglan continued to record programs for radio stations.This is because the Manchukuo authorities believed that her songs were very popular, and the status of "Li Xianglan", a Chinese female artist, was very beneficial to improving Japan's image in the Northeast. It is impossible for this "Li Xianglan" to betray Japan. And if it is to train a Chinese actress, that is not certain.In the end, Masahiko Amakasu, the later giant of Manei, a member of the Manchurian Railway Co., Ltd. came to the door in person, and the Yamaguchi family did not dare to refuse such an "invitation".

(2) Let me die under the bullets of China and Japan "Li Xianglan" became more and more famous. At this time, Mr. Miyake graduated from elementary school and transferred to Dalian to attend middle school, while Yoshiko Yamaguchi went to middle school in Beiping at that time.After that, she never saw Li Xianglan again until she returned to Japan after Japan's defeat. Li Xianglan's school is a Sino-Japanese joint school. Because of her proficiency in Chinese and her singing, she has many Chinese friends in the school.This stage was also the moment when Japan's annexation of the three northeastern provinces triggered an unprecedented surge of anti-Japanese enthusiasm in China.

Soon, the Japanese army invaded Rehe, and the Chinese army marched from the south wearing straw sandals and resisted bravely. This was the famous Great Wall War of Resistance at that time.Chinese students participated in the anti-Japanese movement one after another.A classmate asked Yoshiko Yamaguchi for her opinion, and Li Xianglan's answer may have truly reflected her mentality at the time: I hope to stand on the city wall of Beiping and die under the bullets of both China and Japan. At that time, Li Xianglan was just a middle school girl in her teens. I could feel her precocity and her helplessness in that era when she said such words.

After that, Li Xianglan returned to the Northeast, to the so-called "Manchuria", and joined the newly established "Manying" film company. She was 17 years old this year.Thus began her seven-year acting career. (3) Humiliated country In the second year, as an actress of "Manchukuo", Li Xianglan went to Japan by boat to "visit" with other actors of Manchukuo. Few people knew that she was actually Japanese.This is also the first time she has "returned to China".This time when she returned to China, Li Xianglan's song "Evening Fragrance" became popular in Japan because of her cooperation with Dongbao Yinghua.

However, the first trip to the motherland that Li Xianglan recalled was quite embarrassing and unbearable for her to look back on. The reason is that Li Xianglan is holding a Japanese passport, but she is wearing a Chinese cheongsam.When passing through the customs, the Japanese police officer in charge of "re-entry" called Li Xianglan out and severely reprimanded her.Li Xianglan, who didn't know what mistake she had made, was terrified. After a long time, she realized that the police officer thought she was a "high-class" Japanese citizen, but she was willing to wear "low-class" Chinese clothes and insulted the Japanese people.This shocked Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who is quite familiar with Chinese culture and has a pure heart, and only then did she understand how deep the contradiction and estrangement between Japan and China have reached. The Japanese police officer asked Li Xianglan to take off her cheongsam and put on "Japanese" clothes immediately.At this time, the person in charge of "Man Ying" came and explained that Li Xianglan's identity was to promote Japan's "goodwill" actor in China, so she had to give up. This incident deeply stimulated Li Xianglan. She lamented in the book "Man Ying's Puppet Li Xianglan": How blatant is the Japanese's sense of superiority and inequality to other Asian nations, what a disgusting one. nationality. (アジアに反しては explicit sense of superiority, sense of difference を持つ日本人って、なんて恶な民族だろう） (4) Li Xianglan's love affair As a movie star, Li Xianglan's marriage and love life were very concerned by people at that time and later, and various rumors about her were widely circulated. However, according to Mr. Miyake, Li Xianglan has a love life that is rarely known to outsiders.That is, Li Xianglan once had a childhood sweetheart, and this person was Keiichi Takagi, an investigator of the Japanese Manchuria Exploration Group. Gao Mu Jingyi, Chinese name Gao Jingyi, is also a child of Manchuria Railway staff, older than Li Xianglan, and has been in close contact with Li Xianglan since childhood. Regarding the relationship between the two, some people in Manchurian Railway know about it, and some people say that there was once Marriage contract.It's just that Li Xianglan's status was rising day by day, but Takagi was considered a "dangerous element", so he failed to develop further. It is said that Amakasu Masahiko intervened and played a certain role.Amakasu was a military police officer. During his service in Tokyo, he was condemned by public opinion for brutally torturing and killing left-wingers. All the people in Yingying were afraid of him. When he intervened, Li Xianglan naturally dared not continue to associate with Takagi. Takagi's so-called "dangerous element" charge stems from his opposition to the Japanese government's ingenious seizure of local Chinese land when he was an investigator of the Japanese Manchuria Reclamation Mission.He had a good relationship with Li Xianglan's father, who was also pro-China, and because of this, he lost his prestigious position in Manchurian Railway and could only work as a Chinese teacher.The so-called "pioneering group" means that Japan transported the landless and landless Japanese poor to Northeast China to reclaim farms and form the national basis for Japan's rule of Northeast China.According to the so-called policy of the Japanese government, the land of this pioneering group must be reclaimed from wasteland, or bought from the Chinese at a price.During the actual investigation, Takagi found that what the pioneering group actually did was to drive out the local Chinese and seize their land.Even Takagi, who is a Japanese, cannot accept such behavior, so he disclosed it in the report. Takagi’s superiors strictly ordered him to delete this part of the content, because the pioneering group’s time requirements were very tight, and it was the most “convenient and quick” way to seize the Chinese land.Takagi refused and became a "dangerous element". In 1944, Li Xianglan participated in Man Ying and Shanghai cultural traitors to co-produce the film "Long Shi Liu Fang", which distorted Lin Zexu's deeds. She felt that the life of using a Chinese name as an actor was hypocritical and exhausted. Meet Takagi after arriving in the northeast. But Takagi was dead at this time, so the two never met again. Takagi's death, recalled by the old Manchurian, was a "misunderstanding" by the local police.Because Takagi once went out, wearing a Chinese-style long gown, but carrying a pistol as a self-defense weapon in accordance with the habits of Japanese residents. The Japanese police encountered him on the way found him carrying a pistol, mistook him for a Chinese guerrilla, and beat him to death. . (5) The singing of the court After the war, Li Xianglan was tried by a Chinese court. Since she was Japanese and believed that she had no personal crimes, the court sentenced her to release. Because the Chinese people hated Li Xianglan's screen images that beautified and flattered the Japanese, the court was in an uproar and demanded a new trial. At this time, Li Xianglan began to sing in the court, her usual popular song, and she wept while singing, bowing and apologizing to the Chinese people hearing the trial.The Chinese people in court were finally moved by her and agreed to forgive her and let her go back to China.Thinking about what the Japanese did in China, the kindness of the Chinese is probably hard to find in the world. After returning to Japan, Li Xianglan resumed her Japanese surname, and later went on to act in some movies, and participated in politics, and later became a senator and a deputy minister.In Li Xianglan's subsequent career, she always expressed her disgust for the Japanese war of aggression and hoped that China and Japan could be friendly. In 1972, when Zhou Enlai and Kakuei Tanaka shook hands, at the moment when China and Japan re-established diplomatic relations, Li Xianglan shed tears and said: "It should be にししかった日です.あの日こそ『わが生活最好の时』だった." (Translation: Really let Happy day, this is "the best day of my life".) In 2005, she published a long article admonishing the Japanese prime minister not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, because "that would deeply hurt the hearts of the Chinese people."This is also her last published article so far. We really don't know what Li Xianglan's mentality is towards China and Japan. However, perhaps, as some commentators have said, she is just an ordinary woman who was tossed between the two countries by fate.