The China Lover (3 page)

The problem with Japanese entertainment in Manchukuo was not the lack of money or goodwill. Since the picture studios, as well as the broadcasting stations, were funded by the Japanese government, there was plenty of cash to spend on the best equipment money could buy, from Japan, but also from Germany and even the United States. The Manchuria Motion Picture Association had superb studios. And though some of the money (and most of the native actresses) stuck to the hands of Kanto Army officers, there was still plenty to spare for making top-notch films. The Mukden Broadcasting Corporation too was entirely up-to-date, with the latest soundproofed recording studios, some of which had room for an entire symphony orchestra. Artists visiting from Japan could not believe their eyes; they had never seen anything like it. People sometimes forget this when they criticize us for what happened later. But it is a plain fact that in Manchukuo we
dragged Asia into the modern world. This enterprise, so often misunderstood, was surely something we can still be proud of.

To raise the morale of the native population and make them understand what we were fighting for, it was no good just shouting the usual slogans about Japanese-Manchukuo friendship. Nor could we hope to appeal to the natives by showing films of Japanese pioneers building schools or designing bridges. These things just bored them to tears. And, frankly, who could blame them? They bored me, too. The Manchu mind was, in any case, much too sophisticated for our regular propaganda, and at the same time almost childlike in its craving for comic entertainment. We needed to enlighten and educate, naturally, but also amuse. We wanted to make good movies; not just good movies, but the best, better than the pictures made in Tokyo, pictures that would embody the spirit of the New Asia. This couldn’t be done without top native performers who could sing and act in Chinese, as well as understand our cause, and speak enough Japanese to communicate with the directors and cameramen, who came from our homeland. Finding such people was my headache, often alleviated, it is true, by the company of some lovely Manchurian actresses, whose talents were estimable, though not always quite what was required by the Mukden Broadcasting Corporation.

The man in charge of our propaganda in Manchukuo was an odd fellow, with a finger in many pies, named Amakasu Masahiko, a captain in the Kanto Army. A born fixer, who knew all the powerful people in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Manchukuo, both respectable and not so respectable, Amakasu was like a spider in a giant web. There was nothing in Manchukuo that escaped his attention: the opium trade went through his office, as did other discreet enterprises necessary for the state to function properly and efficiently. Apart from everything else, Amakasu combined the tasks of supervising the security of Emperor Pu Yi and presiding over various important cultural and political institutions,
such as the Shinkyo Symphony Orchestra and the Concordia Association, to promote racial harmony and social order in Manchukuo.

Although he was a figure of great cultural refinement, Amakasu had a somewhat fearsome reputation. Room 202, his suite in the Yamato Hotel in Shinkyo, was guarded day and night by heavily armed soldiers from the Kanto Army. But Amakasu was not a man to leave anything to chance. He always slept with a pistol by his side, a black German Mauser C96. There were many people who would have been happy to see him dead. And even those who would not were afraid of him. The odd thing was that he didn’t look at all imposing. A trim little man with a shaved head, shaped a bit like a peanut, and round tortoise-shell glasses, he rarely smiled and almost never raised his voice above a breathy murmur. To look at him, he could have been an accountant or the manager of a drugstore. But looks are deceiving. Amakasu was feared for good reasons. We all knew that he had spent time in prison back in Japan for murdering a Communist, as well as the Red’s wife and young nephew. Amakasu was a lieutenant in the Kempeitai at the time, our Military Police, and he strangled the entire family with his own bare hands.

A strange bird, as I say. But I liked him. We shared a love of the arts. Amakasu adored classical music and would sit in his room listening to his phonograph for hours on end. And like me, Amakasu was a great reader of
All Men Are Brothers;
a copy always lay by his bedside, next to his Mauser C96. We sometimes discussed the merits of various heroes. His favorite character was Riki, also known as the Black Whirlwind, the hard-drinking warrior who wielded two axes in battle, and who, rather than live in shame, preferred to commit suicide after his band of brothers was defeated. Like his hero, Amakasu was loyal to his friends and a sincere patriot. What endeared him to me most, however, was not his patriotism, which I never doubted, but his unfailing courtesy to the native people. Often, when Japanese officials spoke of “harmony
among the five races,” they were just mouthing official words. One of the great tragedies of Manchukuo was that those who most loudly proclaimed our ideals so rarely managed to live up to them. But not Captain Amakasu. He really meant it. I have reason to know this from personal experience. Let me relate just one example.

Most of Amakasu’s business was transacted in his hotel suite, but once in a while he would entertain at a Japanese restaurant nearby, called the South Lake Pavilion, a place frequented mostly by Kanto Army officers. I attended a party there in the winter of 1939. It was a bitterly cold night. The streets were frozen solid. Even the slight mist that hung over the city seemed to have hardened into a cloud of pins and needles. A full moon shone through the haze like a milky fluorescent light.

Amakasu sat on the tatami floor at the head of the long rosewood table, with a straight back, as though a steel rod had been inserted into his spine. Dressed in an olive green uniform, he gazed silently through his round spectacles, drinking his usual White Horse Whiskey. He barely touched the food, even as his guests, including a senior Kempeitai officer and a burly Kanto Army colonel, became increasingly merry on the saké, poured for them by several gorgeous actresses from Manchuria Motion Pictures, who made up for their linguistic deficiencies by being absolutely charming. However, Amakasu was not in a sociable mood. Something was bothering him. An occasional grunt was all that escaped from his lips when anyone addressed him directly.

At one point a surgeon, by the name of Ozaki, an important figure in the Japanese-Manchukuo Friendship Association, raised his cup and proposed a toast to the harmonious relations between the five races. A fat, grinning, red-faced man, the type who fancies himself the life and soul of every party, Ozaki was an egregious example of those who spoke of harmony without sincerity. In any case, Amakasu raised his glass too, and Ozaki, who had a surprisingly mellifluous voice for such
a coarse individual, launched into an army song, jerking his short little arms back and forth, like a tortoise turned on its back, and the others followed suit. Even though the actresses didn’t know the words, they humored the men by smiling and clapping along as well.

Ozaki then proposed an egg race. Clambering down on all fours, not an easy thing to do for a corpulent man in his inebriated state, he ordered one of the actresses to do the same. When she hesitated to take part in the childish game of blowing an egg across the matted floor, a slap on her silk-clad bottom, provoking much laughter from the other guests, forced her onto her knees. One of the men slipped his hand up the skirt of MeiLing, then Manchukuo’s leading actress, and told her to top up his saké cup. Conviviality swiftly descended to lewdness, with cries to hold a “Miss Manchukuo” contest. The Kempeitai officer ordered one of the women to balance a saké bottle on her head, then made her drink from a cup on the floor, like a cat. When she failed to keep the bottle from falling off her head, the lecherous colonel demanded a striptease.

I shall never forget what happened next. Amakasu, already ramrod-straight, stiffened even more. His face had gone very pale, like the moon outside, and his eyes glinted behind his spectacles as though they were catching fire. “Enough!” he rasped in that breathy voice of his, as though he had a permanently sore throat. “Enough! Actresses are not geisha, they are artists.” Nodding toward the girls, he continued: “I demand respect for the artists of the Manchuria Motion Picture Association, and hereby wish to apologize for the behavior of my boorish countrymen.”

Although there were several men in the room who outranked Amakasu, his words had an instant effect. There was no need for him to shout. The fact that he had spoken at all was sufficient to impose instant obedience. The actresses bowed their heads and fixed their eyes on the floor. Ozaki realized he had overstepped a dangerous mark and
kept quiet for the rest of the evening. The men started to pay respect to the Manchurian ladies, some even offering to pour saké for
them
. The reason I can still vividly recall this incident is that it showed another side of this much-feared and indeed maligned man that has not received its due attention. Amakasu may have strangled a family of Reds, but he was also a Japanese gentleman of the greatest sincerity.

It was Amakasu, at any rate, who asked me to find a local singer who could speak sufficiently good Japanese to work with us on a new radio show to be called
Manchukuo Rhapsody
. “The independence and unity of our state cannot be taken for granted,” he told me. “Education through entertainment should be our motto. Our message must be sweet, even if our aims demand sacrifice, rigor and perseverance.” This is the way he usually spoke, when he spoke at all: in clipped sentences, like a man who has no time to waste.

After giving this much thought, and conducting a few auditions in my office with some extremely attractive ladies, which produced nothing in the way of musical or indeed linguistic talent, but were perfectly agreeable otherwise, I hit upon an idea that was so obvious that I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it before: the girl singer at the Yamato Hotel. Her Chinese was fluent, and since she was in fact Japanese, she could obviously speak in her native tongue. In short, she was just what we were looking for. Age might be the only issue, but that could be accommodated. “Go and talk to the parents,” said Amakasu, whose thin lips curled into a rare hint of a smile. “I’m sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”

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E
VERY MAN HAS
his weaknesses. Mine was young women, especially Chinese women, and most especially Chinese actresses. I say Chinese, but could have said Manchus. We Japanese liked to pretend that most Chinese in Manchukuo were Manchus. In fact, there was little distinction between the two races. Chinese or Manchu, I adored making love to them. They had none of that giggly, schoolgirlish coyness of Japanese women. Their erotic attraction was like Chinese poetry— refined, romantic, and elusive. There is something particularly alluring, too, about the Chinese body, which matches the Chinese mind in its subtlety and finesse: the long elegant legs, the pert, round bottom, the perfect breasts, not too small, not too big. Where the Western woman is large and coarse, like an overripe fruit, and the Japanese woman is small, shapeless, and bland, like cold beancurd, the Chinese woman is a banquet of flavors, spicy, sweet and sour, bitter; she is the finest specimen of a racial selection that found its perfect form after more than five thousand years of civilization. And the feeling that she was mine, all mine, afforded a pleasure that was more than just sexual. I would go so far as to say it was spiritual.

Miss Yamaguchi’s father, Yamaguchi Fumio, had a different weakness, which was, as I mentioned earlier, gambling. To look at him, he was an inoffensive type, slight of build and sporting a pair of owlish spectacles. But he was actually a bit of a rogue. Once in a while we
would visit a brothel in Mukden, stocked with fine Manchurian girls, but this wasn’t really to his taste; he would always be waiting for me, nervously sipping tea in the reception room, long before I was ready to leave. He much preferred the
click-clack
of mah-jong tiles, the rustle of playing cards, or even the chattering sound of fighting crickets, anything indeed that was worth a gamble. The problem with his particular vice was financial. He was always in debt, and relied on the likes of General Li of the Shenyang Bank to bail him out of trouble.

To be frank, Li was a former warlord from Shantung, who took our side in the early 1930s, and was made chairman of the Shenyang Bank as a token of our friendship. The old warhorse had taken a liking to the Japanese gambler and proposed a fair exchange. The Yamaguchi family would have a free place to live in the General’s compound, if Mrs. Yamaguchi would teach the General’s concubine proper European table manners. A somewhat peculiar arrangement, perhaps, but Yamaguchi found the company of the General, with his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, his dark blue Rolls-Royce, and his liking for mah-jong games, which he invariably lost, thus enabling Yamaguchi to recoup some of his debts, congenial. And instructing his number two wife in the art of eating green peas with a knife and fork, or lifting her little finger when drinking Indian tea, was not too strenuous a task for Mrs. Yamaguchi, who was a modern, educated woman with very fine manners, acquired at a first-rate Catholic school in Nagasaki.

General Li’s compound was in the diplomatic quarter of Mukden, a quiet area with large brick mansions in the European style—Baroque, Renaissance, Rococo, or whatnot—standing in the shade of fragrant apricot trees and sweet-smelling acacias. Many wealthy Chinese, friendly to our cause, lived there. The poorer natives dwelled in the walled Chinese city, a lively but rather unhygienic place of dark alleys that reeked of charcoal, garlic, and human excrement. Japanese tended to congregate around Heian Avenue, a big wide boulevard leading to the
main railway station, up-to-date and clean, lined with department stores that could stand comparison to the best stores in London or New York. General Li’s house, not too far from there, was a modern structure in white stucco with a wide entrance flanked by a portico of lime-colored columns.

The Yamaguchi family lived in a redbrick house that used to be occupied by one of the General’s older concubines. Before moving there, they had lived in a comfortable but less romantic part of the city, in the kind of clean, modest house designated for middle-ranking Japanese company men. Though Yoshiko was brought up to be a proper Japanese girl, her father made sure she spoke good standard Chinese, a highly irregular thing to do, but he was, after all, an admirer of all things Chinese, and sought to impart this to his daughter. Other Japanese did not always look kindly on such enthusiasms, so a certain discretion was in order, not only to shield little Yoshiko from teasing at school, but also Yamaguchi himself from the unwelcome attentions of our Kempeitai. He had the excuse of being a Chinese teacher, to be sure, but one still had to be careful not to catch “a case of jaundice,” as the Japanese in Manchukuo used to say.

Nothing of the sort was called for in General Li’s compound, which is why Mr. Yamaguchi, though not necessarily his wife, was so happy to move there. He could indulge in his Chinese passions as much as he liked. The household routine proceeded like clockwork: twice a week the General would come down from the main house, lose a game or two of mah-jong with Mr. Yamaguchi, have Yoshiko prepare his opium pipes, and retire with his favorite concubine—a tiny woman hobbling around the compound in her tightly bound feet, who was probably relieved not to have to spear any more peas on her silver fork.

According to my information, there were few visitors to the Yamaguchi family quarters. But there was a young Jewess, a school friend of Yoshiko’s, named Masha, who would come round regularly. It was she,
I believe, who introduced Yoshiko to her singing teacher, Madame Ignatieva. Since she attended the same Japanese school as Yoshiko, her Japanese was fluent. I checked out her parents and found nothing remiss. Her father, who owned a bakery near the railway station, was a loyal member of the Japanese-Jewish Friendship Association.

The General was so fond of Yoshiko that he decided to adopt her as his unofficial daughter. This would have been in 1934, round about the time of Emperor Pu Yi’s inauguration. Ceremony is very important to the Manchu mind. Particular care is taken over family rituals. So to be adopted by a Manchu family should be considered a great honor. And I was greatly honored to be invited to witness the ceremony in General Li’s compound.

Kneeling in front of the Li ancestral tablets, Yoshiko was given her Chinese name, Li Xianglan, or Ri Koran in Japanese, and was officially received into her second family. The ceremony was attended by both her parents, as well as the General and his wife and five concubines, who were all dressed in splendid Manchu robes. The girl acquitted herself of her task quite beautifully. First she bowed to her new Manchu father, then to his ancestral tablets, and thanked the General in beautiful Chinese for the honor of bearing his name. This was followed by a banquet, attended by everyone in the household, including all the General’s concubines, who tittered charmingly behind their ivory fans. I was tempted to deepen my acquaintance with one or two of them, but knew better than to reach for these forbidden fruits. We were served at least one hundred dishes, including, this being winter, a superb dogmeat stew, a specialty of the Manchu cuisine.

As his favorite daughter, Yoshiko spent most of her free time in the General’s rooms. Since he got ill-tempered whenever she was not on hand to serve him, she would rush to his villa as soon as she came back from school, to prepare his pipes and make sure he was comfortable. She could not leave to get on with her homework until he had fallen
asleep, which, after a pipe or two, usually occurred with merciful swiftness.

Mr. Yamaguchi was not best pleased with the suggestion of putting his daughter in a wireless broadcast. “We are a respectable family,” he protested, “and my daughter is not a showgirl.” Mrs. Yamaguchi served us Japanese tea and remained silent. Yoshiko looked up at me with those big luminous eyes of hers, pleading with me to help her out of her dilemma. She was not averse to singing but hated to upset her father. I asked her mother what she thought. “Well,” she replied after some hesitation, “Yoshiko does love to sing . . .” I added that it was “for the sake of our country,” thinking that a dose of patriotism might help. Besides, it would earn Mr. Yamaguchi some much-needed protection from prying officials. “Well, yes, that is as may be, but . . .” And so it went on for some time, until the question of gambling debts was carefully broached and the matter was concluded to the satisfaction of all, including General Li, who was tickled to have her perform under his family name. Henceforth, Yamaguchi Yoshiko would appear on the
Manchukuo Rhapsody
radio show as the young Manchurian singer Li Xianglan, or Ri Koran.