Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Yamaguchi, Yoshiko, 1920-2014, author.

Title Fragrant orchid : the story of my early life / Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Fujiwara Sakuya ; translated, with an introduction, by Chia-ning Chang
Published Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Series Critical interventions
Critical interventions (Honolulu, Hawaii)
Contents My Fushun years -- My Fengtian years -- My Beijing years -- The Tianjin encounters -- The birth of Li Xianglan -- My Xinjing years -- The days of The suzhou serenade -- The Nichigeki incident -- The spring of my youth -- The two Yoshikos -- Two phantom films: Yellow River & My nightingale -- Glory to eternity -- Rhapsody of The evening primrose -- Shanghai 1945 -- Farewell, Li Xianglan
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Yamaguchi, Yoshiko, 1920-2014.
SUBJECT Yamaguchi, Yoshiko, 1920-2014 fast
Subject Actors -- Japan -- Biography
PERFORMING ARTS -- Reference.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Entertainment & Performing Arts.
Actors
Japan
Genre/Form Biographies
Form Electronic book
Author Chang, Chia-ning, translator
Fujiwara, Sakuya, 1937- author.
ISBN 9780824854041
0824854047
Other Titles Ri Kōran watakushi no hansei. English