Yamaguchi yoshiko biography of albert einstein

Japanese singer, actress, and lawmaker (1920–2014)

The native form of that personal name is Yamaguchi Yoshiko. This article uses Western name uproar when mentioning individuals.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi (Japanese: 山口淑子Yamaguchi Yoshiko; Chinese: 山口淑子Shānkǒu Shūzǐ; 12 February, 1920 – 7 September, 2014) was a Japanese singer, actress, reporter, and politician.

Born in Ware, she made an international job in film in China, Hong Kong, Japan and the Banded together States.

Early in her life's work, the Manchukuo Film Association hidden her Japanese origin and she went by the Chinese reputation Li Hsiang-lan (李香蘭), rendered giving Japanese as Ri Kōran.

That allowed her to represent Dishware in Japanese propaganda movies. Afterwards the war, she appeared stop in mid-sentence Japanese movies under her legitimate name, as well as improvement several English language movies junior to the stage name, Shirley Yamaguchi.

After becoming a journalist take on the 1950s under the designation Yoshiko Ōtaka (大鷹 淑子, Ōtaka Yoshiko), she was elected primate a member of the Asiatic parliament in 1974, and served for 18 years.

After reserved from politics, she served trade in vice president of the Inhabitant Women's Fund.^[1]

Early life

She was congenital on February 12, 1920, respect Japanese parents, Ai Yamaguchi (山口 アイ, Yamaguchi Ai) and Fumio Yamaguchi (山口 文雄, Yamaguchi Fumio), who were then settlers counter Fushun, Manchuria, Republic of Dishware, in a coal mining household area in Dengta, Liaoyang.

Fumio Yamaguchi was an employee discovery the South Manchuria Railway. Depart from an early age, Yoshiko was exposed to Mandarin Chinese. Fumio Yamaguchi had some influential Sinitic acquaintances, among whom were Li Jichun (李際春) and Pan Yugui (潘毓桂). By Chinese custom gather those who became sworn brothers, they also became Yoshiko's "godfathers" (also known as "nominal fathers") and gave her two Sinitic names, Li Hsiang-lan (Li Xianglan) and Pan Shuhua (潘淑華).

("Shu" in Shuhua and "Yoshi" integrate Yoshiko are written with influence same Chinese character). Yoshiko closest used the former name though a stage name and seized the latter name while she was staying with the Fryingpan family in Beijing.

As spiffy tidy up youth, Yoshiko suffered a entail of tuberculosis.

In order advice strengthen her breathing, the dilute recommended voice lessons. Her paterfamilias initially insisted on traditional Asian music, but Yoshiko preferred Excitement music and thus received dip initial classical vocal education cheat an Italian dramatic soprano (Madame Podresov, married into White State nobility).

She later orthodox schooling in Beijing, polishing assembly Mandarin, accommodated by the Perforate family. She was a soprano soprano.

Career in China

Yoshiko strenuous her debut as an team member actor and singer in the 1938 film, Honeymoon Express (蜜月快車), unwelcoming Manchuria Film Production. She was billed as Li Hsiang-lan, plain Ri Kōran in Japanese.

Position adoption of a Chinese usage name was prompted by picture film company's economic and civil motives – a Manchurian mademoiselle who had command over both the Japanese and Chinese languages was sought after. From that she rose to be spiffy tidy up star and the Japan-Manchuria Affection Ambassadress (日滿親善大使). The head answer the Manchukuo film industry, Public Masahiko Amakasu, decided she was the star he was awaiting for: a beautiful actress articulate in both Mandarin and Asiatic, who could pass as Asiatic and who had an brilliant singing voice.^[2]

The Chinese actors who appeared in the Manchuria Crust Production movies were never apprised that she was Japanese, on the other hand they suspected she was knock least half-Japanese as she every ate her meals with class Japanese actors instead of excellence Chinese actors, was given milky rice to eat instead give evidence the sorghum given to decency Chinese, and was paid runny times more than the Sinitic actors were.^[3] Though in repel subsequent films she was near exclusively billed as Li Hsiang-lan, she appeared in a erratic as "Yamaguchi Yoshiko".

Many stir up her films bore some caste of promotion of the Asian national policy (in particular, fitting to the Greater East Assemblage Co-prosperity Sphere ideology) and stool be termed "National Policy Films" (国策映画).^[4] While promoting Manchurian interests in Tokyo, Li would fuse Kenichiro Matsuoka, future television ceo and son of Japanese intermediary Yōsuke Matsuoka, about whom she would write in her account, Ri Kōran: My Half Life, to be her first warmth.

Although she had perspective of marriage, he was immobilize a student at Tokyo Elegant University and not interested subtract settling down at the age. They would meet again stern the war, at which offend Kenichiro attempted to rekindle righteousness relationship, but by then, Li was already involved with dignity artist Isamu Noguchi.

The 1940 skin, China Nights (中國の夜), also skull as Shanghai Nights (上海の夜), near Manchuria Film Productions, is selfsame controversial.

It is unclear whether one likes it it was a "National Line Film" as it portrays Asiatic soldiers in both a poised and negative light. Here, Li played a young woman foothold extreme anti-Japanese sentiment who torrent in love with a Asiatic man. A key turning come together in the film has picture young Chinese woman being maltreated by the Japanese man, however instead of hatred, she reacts with gratitude.

The film was met with great aversion amid the Chinese audience as they believed that the Chinese ladylike character was a sketch bazaar debasement and inferiority. 23,000 Sinitic people paid to see dignity film in 1943.^[6] After decency war, one of her in character songs, "Suzhou Serenade [ja; zh]" (蘇州夜曲), was banned in China unfair to its association with that film.

A few years subsequent, when confronted by angry Asian reporters in Shanghai, Li apologized and cited as pretext show inexperienced youth at the interval of filmmaking, choosing not space reveal her Japanese identity. Conj albeit her Japanese nationality was not at any time divulged in the Chinese routes until after the Sino-Japanese Enmity, it was brought to defray by the Japanese press during the time that she performed in Japan goof her assumed Chinese name charge as the Japan-Manchuria Goodwill Ambassadress.

When she visited Japan at hand this period, she was criticized for being too Chinese make happen dress and in language.^[7]

When she landed in Japan in 1941 for a publicity tour, blank in a cheongsam (or qípáo) and speaking Japanese with unmixed Mandarin accent, the customs political appointee asked her upon seeing she had a Japanese passport celebrated a Japanese name, "Don't set your mind at rest know that we Japanese pour the superior people?

Aren't give orders ashamed to be wearing low-grade Chink clothes and speaking their language as you do?"^[8]

In 1943, Li appeared in the vinyl Eternity. The film was thud in Shanghai, commemorating the centenary of the Opium War. Honesty film, anti-British in nature contemporary a collaboration between Chinese with the addition of Japanese film companies, was far-out hit, and Li became unornamented national sensation.

Her film songs with jazz and pop-like run, such as her "Candy-Peddling Song" (賣糖歌) and "Quitting (Opium) Song" (戒菸歌), elevated her status oppress among the top singers mull it over all Chinese-speaking regions in Aggregation overnight. Many songs recorded hard Li during her Shanghai date became classics in Chinese favourite music history.

Other noteworthy hits include "Evening Primrose / Niff of the Night" (夜來香), "Ocean Bird" (海燕), "If Only" (恨不相逢未嫁時), and "Second Dream" (第二夢).^[9] By virtue of the 1940s, she had metamorphose one of the Seven Huge Singing Stars.^{[10][unreliable source?]}

United States, Canada, Hong Kong, existing Japan

At the end of Nature War II, Li was delay in Shanghai by the Guomindang and sentenced to death unhelpful firing squad for treason prosperous collaboration with the Japanese.

Bit tensions subsequently arose between decency Kuomintang and the Communists, she was scheduled to be accomplished at a Shanghai horse roote on December 8, 1945. Quieten, before she could be finished, her parents (at the in advance both under arrest in Beijing) managed to produce a artificial of her birth certificate, proving she was not a Island national after all, and accept her childhood Russian friend, Lyuba Monosova Gurinets, smuggle it reach Shanghai inside the head enterprise a geisha doll.

Li was cleared of all charges (and possibly from the death penalty).

In spite of the absolution, the Chinese judges still warned Li to leave China like lightning or she would risk grow lynched; and so in 1946, she resettled in Japan shaft launched a new acting vocation there under the name Yoshiko Yamaguchi, working with directors much as Akira Kurosawa.

Several keep in good condition her post-war films cast become public in parts that dealt either directly or indirectly with unconditional wartime persona as a bilingualist and bicultural performer. For explanation, in 1949, Shin-Toho studios arise Repatriation (歸國「ダモイ」), an omnibus fell which told four stories step the struggles of Japanese wearing to return to Japan devour the Soviet Union after receipt been taken prisoner following nobility defeat.

The following year, Yamaguchi starred with actor Ryō Ikebe in Escape at Dawn (曉の脫走), produced by Toho and homeproduced on the novel Shunpuden (春婦傳). In the book, her diagram was a prostitute in unblended military brothel, but for that film her character was rewritten as a frontline entertainer who falls into a tragic topic with a deserter (Ikebe).

Counter 1952, Yamaguchi appeared in Woman of Shanghai (上海の女), in which she reprised her pre-war a big name as a Japanese woman fading away for Chinese who becomes ambushed between the two cultures.^[11]

In birth 1950s, she established her deception career as Shirley Yamaguchi thrill Hollywood and on Broadway (in the short-lived musical "Shangri-La") insert the U.S.

She married Nipponese American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, rephrase 1951.^[12] Yamaguchi was Japanese, on the contrary as someone who had grown-up up in China, she mat torn between two identities significant later wrote that she change attracted to Noguchi as a big shot else who was torn halfway two identities.^[13] Li spent mid 1953 and 1954 in Metropolis, Canada.

They divorced in 1956. She revived the Li Hsiang-lan name and appeared in a few Chinese-language films made in Hong Kong. Some of her Decennary Chinese films were destroyed fluky a studio fire and accept not been seen since their initial releases. Her Mandarin wallop songs from this period incorporate "Three Years" (三年), "Plum Blossom" (梅花), "Childhood Times" (小時候), "Only You" (只有你), and "Heart Song" (心曲 – a cover marketplace "Eternally").

TV presenter and politician

She returned to Japan and rear 1 retiring from the world custom film in 1958, she attended as a hostess and newscaster on TV talk shows. Despite the fact that a result of her matrimony to the Japanese diplomat Hiroshi Ōtaka, she lived for fine while in Burma (modern Myanmar).

They remained married until sovereignty death in 2001.

In 1969, she became the host commuter boat The Three O'Clock You (Sanji no anata) TV show shed Fuji Television, reporting on influence Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well likewise the Vietnam War.^[14] In honourableness 1970s, Yamaguchi became very refractory in pro-Palestinian causes in Nippon and personally favored the Mandatory Liberation Organization.^[15] In 1974, she was elected to the Scaffold of Councilors (the upper Semidetached of the Japanese parliament) gorilla a member of the Openhanded Democratic Party, where she served for 18 years (three terms).

She co-authored the book, Ri Kōran, Watashi no Hansei (Half My Life as Ri Kōran). She served as a principal of the Asian Women's Supply. As part of the 1993 fall honors list, she was decorated with the Gold delighted Silver Star of the Coach of the Sacred Treasure, Straightaway any more Class.

Yamaguchi was considered in and out of many Chinese in the post-World War II period to hair a Japanese spy and so a traitor to the Island people.^[16] This misconception was caused in part by Yamaguchi ephemeral herself off as Chinese in every part of the 1930s and 1940s.

Scrap Japanese identity not being on the face of it revealed until her post-war process nearly led to her operation as a Chinese traitor.^[17] She had always expressed her crime for taking part in Altaic propaganda films in the obvious days of her acting vocation. In 1949, the People's State 2 of China was established uninviting the Communist Party, and duo years later, Yamaguchi's former tautology from the Shanghai era now the 1930s and 1940s (along with all other popular music) was also denounced as Faint-hearted music (黃色音樂), a form match pornography^{[clarification needed]}.

Because of that, she did not visit Spouse for more than 50 age after the war, since she felt that the Chinese locked away not forgiven her.^[18] Despite dead heat controversial past, she influenced coming singers such as Teresa Teng, Fei Yu-Ching, and Winnie Dynasty (韋秀嫻), who covered her tracheophyte hits.

Jacky Cheung recorded regular cover of Kōji Tamaki's "行かないで" ("Ikanaide") and renamed it "Lei Hoeng Laan." (Both the advanced version and subsequent remake without beating about the bush not have any actual references to Li Hsiang-lan. The Island title instead refers to representation unknowable quality and identity signify the singer's lover.) In Jan 1991, a musical about take it easy life was released in Yedo, which generated controversy because betrayal negative portrayal of Manchukuo frozen many Japanese conservatives.

Yamaguchi was one of the first salient Japanese citizens to acknowledge rectitude Japanese brutality during wartime profession. She later campaigned for in a superior way public awareness of that accredit of history and advocated salaried reparations to so-called comfort detachment, women of various nationalities who were forced into sex enslavement by the Japanese military at hand the war.^[19]

A recording of trim 1950 concert performance in Sacramento, California, was discovered by clever professor from the University announcement Chicago in 2012.

The chorus included six songs and was performed before an audience be defeated Japanese Americans, many of whom had likely been interned at hand World War II. Speaking break through 2012 about the concert, Yamaguchi said, "I sang with covet that I could offer relief to the Japanese Americans, brand I heard that they difficult gone through hardships during leadership war."^[20] She died at nobleness age of 94 in Edo on September 7, 2014, fair ten years after one castigate her fellow Seven Great Melodious Stars, Gong Qiuxia.^[21]

Names

She was credited as Shirley Yamaguchi in significance Hollywood movies, Japanese War Bride (1952), House of Bamboo (1955), and Navy Wife (1956).

She was once nicknamed The Judy Garland of Japan.^[22]

Other names secondhand as movie actress:

• Li Hsiang-lan
• Li Hsiang Lan
• Ri Kōran
• Li Xiang Lan
• Hsiang-lan Li
• Xianglan Li
• Li Xianglan
• Yoshiko Yamaguchi

Selected filmography

In the media

Movies about her

Other media

See also

References

Bibliography

External links