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Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (Critical Interventions), by Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Sakuya Fujiwara
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The 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 "The Evening Primrose," swept East Asia in the waning years of the war and remained popular well into the postwar decades.
Ironically, although her celebrated international stardom was without parallel in wartime East Asia, she remained a puppet within a puppet state, choreographed at every turn by Japanese film studios in accordance with the expediencies of Japan's continental policy. In a dramatic turn of events after Japan's defeat, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Chinese Nationalist forces and barely escaped execution as a traitor to China. Her complex and intriguing life story as a convenient pawn, willing instrument, and tormented victim of Japan's imperialist ideology is told in her bestselling autobiography, translated here in full for the first time in English. An addendum reveals her postwar career in Hollywood and Broadway in the 1950s, her friendship with Charlie Chaplin, her first marriage to Isamu Noguchi, and her postwar life as singer, actress, political figure, television celebrity, and private citizen.
A substantial introduction by Chia-ning Chang contextualizes Yamaguchi's life and career within the historical and cultural zeitgeist of wartime Manchuria, Japan, and China and the postwar controversies surrounding her life in East Asia.
- Sales Rank: #2136371 in Books
- Published on: 2015-02-28
- Released on: 2015-02-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.30" w x 6.10" l, 1.60 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 424 pages
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
Review
Li Xianglan or Ri Kōran 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)
About the Author
Chia-ning Chang is professor of Japanese literature at the University of California, Davis.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
shoddy treatment of a fascinating life
By Zangiku
it is a testament to the quality of the autobiography of ri koran (aka yamaguchi yoshiko, aka li xianglan, aka shirley yamaguchi) that its inherent interest is just able to survive this lumbering & inept translation. the japanese version is a smooth & chatty read. one would think that an outfit with the reputation of u-hawaii could have got a native speaker to edit the MS to correct such basic mistakes as film "rolls" for reels, people feeling "embarrassing" instead of embarrassed, a company going "bottom up" & many other eye-rollers that aggravate & obstruct the reader on nearly every page. a graduate student would have done it for 50 bucks, about the price of the book.
that said, the info on offer here is unavailable elsewhere in english, fascinating in its own right, & peppered with a wealth of absolutely sterling footnotes which are a credit to the efforts of prof. chang, who is obviously a knowledgable scholar even if a poor translator. his introductory historical notes are also quite useful, altho turgidly theoretical & with the biases that naturally accompany theory. for readers unfamiliar with the era, a much more basic & factual introduction would be appropriate. for such readers it may be advisable to skip this intro entirely until after finishing the book.
a few simple sketch-maps of china could also have been included, surely, at little cost. each city has at least 3 names (pre-empire, japanese & PRC, not to mention 2 transliterations) & is not often identifiable without visual aids. a contemporary photo or 2 of important settings such as harbin or shanghai, cheaply available on old postcards, would also have made a world of difference. the photos overall are OK but the captions uninformative. (how can one not recognize the "other TV host" as the great film star takamine mieko?? why caption kawashima yoshiko "date unknown" when clearly scrawled across her photo in her hand is "7th october 37"???)
in bringing up these details i am not picking lint. as a specialist historian interested in the period & a ri koran fan, i very much want this fascinating story to be accessible to all. but by its petty penny-pinches the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot. there is little here to draw in general readers & much to confuse & frustrate them. even the historian is likely to be put off by the stilted translation with its mistakes in grammar, vocabulary & name spellings which a single attentive editting could so easily have put right. ergo, fewer books are sold, u-h feels justified in putting even less effort into such works or even abandoning them, ri koran's life & times remain uncelebrated, prof. chang's labors go for naught, the sum total of human knowledge is reduced & the world is a darker place altogether. for shame!
overall quality: 2 stars
historical interest: 5 stars
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Good Book
By Yukio
I'm an admirer of Yamaguchi Yoshiko but not a serious researcher of her life. Since I am intrigued by her and her times, the whole era leading up to and beyond the war that changed everything forever, my thought is to learn about her and in doing that to find an entry into deeper and broader knowledge of those events and people. Mysteries. Big questions. Hunger for answers and understanding. I want to know why it all happened. Up to now this autobiography was only available in the original Japanese. The translator who has rendered this into English did an excellent job. However, I have to say this is not a good read for anyone who just wants an interesting or exciting story. This is for readers who are interested in hearing the author's side of a very complex era told through her recollections of the people she knew during that time. On the other hand, if you can feel the drama of events without having it blasted at you with hyperbolic language and imagery, you might get some feeling for the war years as she experienced it. There is another well known fictionalized biography about her, but the writing is dismally bad. A better introduction, and preparation for reading this autobio, might be the TV bio (in Japanese with English subtitles) "Ri Koran" starring Aya Ueto. Aya Ueto is worth watching anyway. If you were intrigued by the stories and people in "The Last Emperor" you can learn something more about it all through Yoshiko Yamaguchi's story.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
"Fragrant Orchid" an excellent read!
By John M941
"Fragrant Orchid" is an excellent translation of the auto-biography of Yoshiko Yamaguchi: an unassuming Japanese girl born in Manchuria, Northeast China, who by dint of hard-work and an amazing sequence of fateful events, becomes one of Asia's best known film stars. Possessed of natural beauty, a friendly personality, fluency in many languages, and a superb singing ability, her rise to stardom is recounted in detail in this book.
For those readers who wish to see a more visual summary of her life, you may want to access www.yoshikoyamaguchi.blogspot.com to see many rare pictures of her, accompanied by text.
Either way, (book or website) you're in for a treat, since no Hollywood writer could ever dream up a story like Yamaguchi's. In fact, if truth be known, many movies have borrowed elements of her life!
She lived for almost a century; after reading about her, maybe you too will agree she had one of the most unusual long lives in history.
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