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Book SynopsisThe acclaimed actress and legendary singer, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (aka Li Xianglan, 1920-2014), emerged from Japan-occupied Manchuria to become a transnational star during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Born to Japanese parents, raised in Manchuria, and educated in Beijing, the young Yamaguchi learned to speak impeccable Mandarin Chinese and received professional training in operatic singing. When recruited by the Manchurian Film Association in 1939 to act in national policy films in the service of Japanese imperialism in China, she allowed herself to be presented as a Chinese, effectively masking her Japanese identity in both her professional and private lives. Yamaguchi soon became an unprecedented transnational phenomenon in Manchuria, Shanghai, and Japan itself as the glamorous female lead in such well-known films as Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940), Pledge in the Desert (1940), and Glory to Eternity (1943). Her signature songs, including When Will You Return? and Th
Trade Review“Li Xianglan or Ri K?ran is a myth-shrouded figure whose remarkable career embodied the ambiguity of national identity and popular culture in wartime East Asia. Was she a tool of Japanese militarism in China? Did she see herself as a Japanese advancing her country’s expansionist policy or as a ‘Chinese’ trying to cooperate with the enemy in building a New Order in East Asia? Or was she just struggling to survive the difficult times? Her poignant, deeply reflective autobiography gives us some insight into these intriguing questions. We are grateful to Chang Chia-ning for this passionate, well-crafted translation, which should find a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the violently intertwined histories of twentieth-century China and Japan.” —Poshek Fu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; “Absorbing memoirs of a fascinating woman! This book presents a vivid recreation of a time and a place, mostly China in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but also of the postwar United States and Japan. The tone is by turns nostalgic, contemplative, gossipy, and remorseful. Ms. Yamaguchi is an impressive raconteur of a life whose boundaries between fact and fiction are tantalizingly - and almost seductively - blurred. Professor Chang’s translation is accomplished, smooth, and flowing, with an extensive, sophisticated, and extremely informative introduction.” —Zeljko Cipris, University of the Pacific
