Caught Between China & Japan: Superstar Li Xianglan

She called China her fatherland and Japan her motherland. Singer and actress Yamaguchi Yoshiko, better known as Li Xianglan (李香兰), has passed away at the age of 94. A rising star during the Sino-Japanese War, she was loved by both Chinese and Japanese audiences. On Sina Weibo, she is commemorated as a star and a traitor – even causing controversy after her death.

Yamaguchi Yoshiko was born in 1920 to Japanese parents in Manchuria. In accordance with Chinese tradition, she had two Chinese adoptive fathers who gave her the Chinese name Li Xianglan. As the Sino-Japanese War was on the way, Li jumped to superstar status as a singer and actress. She was fluent in Mandarin. The Chinese audience did not know she was Japanese, as Li Xianglan hid her true identity throughout the war. During the 1930s and 1940s, Li was emotionally conflicted by both the Chinese hostile attitude towards the Japanese and the Japanese mistreatment of the Chinese, as she later writes in her autobiography “My Life as Li Xianglan” (Halloran 2004).

During the war years, Li starred in seventeen different films. One of them was the hit film Eternity (1943), that made her and her songs popular throughout China. But she also starred in so-called “Chinese continental friendship films”: films produced by Japanese studios that were screened in China, and that depicted the Japanese in a positive manner. The most famous one is Night in China (1940), where Li plays the role of a Chinese girl that detests the Japanese invaders but ends up falling in love with a Japanese naval captain. Li Xianglan was later criticized for playing in these films, that were considered to be “shameful for the country” (Stephenson 2002, 2).

By the end of the war, Li Xianglan was arrested as a Chinese national for ‘betrayal of China’s national interests’ because of her roles in Japanese-produced films. She was facing the death penalty for treason against the Chinese government. Because she was officially recorded in the Yamaguchi family register, Li Xianglan (Yamaguchi Yoshiko) could prove her Japanese identity to Chinese authorities. This lead to the dismissal of charges of treason, and her ‘repatriation’ to Japan, a country that was never actually her home (Stephenson 2002, 9). In 1950, she went to the United States to “learn to kiss like they do in Hollywood movies.” She took on the name of Shirley Yamaguchi, befriended Charlie Chapin, and starred in several Hollywood films, such as Japanese War Bride and House of Bamboo. Yamaguchi was later denied access to the United States because of her connections to suspected Communist sympathizers. She returned to Japan and started a career in journalism and politics. She then became known under the name of her husband, Otaka Yoshiko (2002, 10).

“Although she was Japanese, she had a good heart. The Chinese people will not forget you“, one netizen says on Sina Weibo. Other microbloggers are less positive: “She was a dwarf ['倭' old derogatory for Japanese], and just because she lived in the occupied Northeast for a few years, she changed her name into a Chinese one. She pretended to be a Chinese celebrity. She brainwashed Chinese all the way from the north to the south. It was not until everyone thought she was a traitor after the war that she revealed her dwarf blood. Some people might still commemorate her, but your fu*king candles don’t mean anything.”



“Li Xianglan brainwashed Chinese people from the North to the South”

She was known as Li Xianglan, Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Shirley Yamaguchi, Ri Koran (the Japanese pronunciation of her Chinese name) and Otaka Yoshiko. During her life in politics and journalism, she was involved in the Palestinian issue and reported the Vietnam War. Sino-Japanese relations were an important subject to her. One Weibo netizen honors Li Xianglan by saying: “She is gone with the wind. I hope that one day her fatherland and her motherland will have eternal peace and friendship. It is possible for China and Japan to get along!” Li Xianglan would have been happy to read it. The day that Sino-Japanese relations were officially restored in 1972, she cried. About that moment she said: “I certainly was happy that day. I even think that very day was the “best day of my life”” (Tanaka et al 2004).
http://www.whatsonweibo.com/lixianglan/c