The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  Yoshiko Yamaguchi stood out in the crowd like a tropical bird, looking absolutely gorgeous in a red and gold kimono. We all rose to our feet when she made her grand entrance, accompanied by Okuno, her co-star, and an older man whom I didn’t recognize. Both men were smartly turned out in tuxedos. The older man acknowledged the presence of various other guests with a slight bow of his silvery head. I tried to catch Yamaguchi’s eye as she walked past my seat, but she didn’t recognize me. I know I shouldn’t have done that. I felt rather disgusted with myself, behaving like some besotted movie fan standing in line for an autograph. Why should she have recognized me? But I couldn’t help myself. It’s the way I am. Hopelessly starstruck, I’m afraid.

  Apart from the divine Miss Y., there was nothing very memorable about the picture itself. I had already seen it anyway, at a private screening for the censorship board. Naturally, the film passed without a hitch. There was, much to my amusement, a sharp intake of breath in the theater during the famous kissing scene, followed, rather curiously I thought, by a round of applause, as if we had been watching a pair of acrobats or performing seals. Kissing, after all, is not that hard. Perhaps the audience felt a sense of relief after all the suspense. But after the Great Kiss, the movie rather petered out.

  The square dancing, on the other hand, was highly amusing. It took place in the Imperial Hotel ballroom, a huge space furnished with rather inferior copies of Louis XVI chairs. Murphy had trained a number of men and women on the staff of our department for many weeks to make sure they gave a good account of themselves. He had also taken a keen interest in the proper attire. Several Japanese women from our secretary pool were dressed in long wide skirts and peasant blouses. The men wore bright red Western shirts with bolo ties and white cowboy hats. I can’t think where Murphy had found this gear, which made the Japanese men look undernourished, since the sleeves were too long and the collars too wide. When everyone had taken his or her place, the band, consisting of a fiddler, a bass player, and a fat man strumming a banjo, struck up a hillbilly tune. As the dancers crossed, and sashayed, and U-turned, Murphy, always the diligent teacher, announced the names of the various dances to his bewildered audience. “This is what we call the California Twirl!” he went, his face a picture of joy, “and this the Box in the Gnat!”

  I don’t know what the Japanese made of it all. Most of the men stood around in groups, chatting and drinking their beers. Miyagawa, the director, had turned his back on the proceedings. One man, a studio executive of some kind, had gone red in the face after downing several beers, and tried to enter into the spirit of things by shouting “Yeah!” at regular intervals.

  “Where is Miss Yamaguchi?” cried Murphy. She was spotted in a corner, talking to the older man who had escorted her into the theater. “May I have the honor?” Murphy enquired with a courtly bow. She opened her eyes wide and graciously declined. “I cannot,” she said. “You’re a showgirl!” boomed Murphy. “You can learn.” “I’m too shy,” she protested. He grabbed her by the sleeve of her kimono and said to the older man: “You don’t mind if I borrow her, do you?” The man said nothing but smiled indulgently as though appeasing a dangerous drunk. Once more the band struck up a tune, the women hiked up their hooped skirts, the Japanese executive shouted “Yeah!” and Murphy guided, not without skill, the kimonoed Yamaguchi across the dance floor.

  “Yamaguchi-san,” I said, after she had been released at long last from Murphy’s grip. She turned round and this time she recognized me: “Sid-san, isn’t it? O-genki desu ka?” I replied that I was very well, and added that I had loved the movie. She gave me a radiant smile. “It’s so good that we can celebrate together. Japan is such a small place, you know. But this is a real international occasion. Thank you so much for helping us so kindly.” I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Helping you to do what exactly, Miss Yamaguchi? My eye was drawn to Murphy, who was busy slapping Yamaguchi’s older companion on the back. “To be international. You can teach us so many things. Where are you from, Sid-san?”

  I told her that I was from Ohio, but had worked in Hollywood. This made me sound far more important than I was, naturally, but I was keen to make an impression. It looked as though I had succeeded. “Hollywood,” said Yamaguchi, gleefully clasping her hands together, “I love Hollywood! Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, Deanna Durbin! Have you seen Because of Him?” I replied that alas I had not, but had she seen The Bride Wore Boots? “Of course, Barbara Stanwyck! I know we are going to be very good friends, Sid-san.”

  I felt like dancing all the way back to the Continental, which was actually just round the corner from the movie theater. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had made friends with one of the great stars of the cinema, celebrated all over the Far East. As soon as I got into the hotel, I called for Nobu. He had been asleep and was rather annoyed to be woken up.

  “Guess what?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Guess who I met tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “Guess what?”

  “Yoshiko Yamaguchi.”

  “Who?”

  “Yoshiko Yamaguchi. You know, Ri Koran!”

  “Oh.”

  Nobu was not at all impressed. He wasn’t very interested in the movies, preferring French literature and German philosophers. Besides, Ri Koran was a name from the past, a reminder of enthusiasms he preferred to forget. He also thought she was vulgar, or as he liked to put it, “in bad taste,” something he regarded with a feeling of horror that I was unable to share. Too much good taste is the enemy of great art, I’ve always believed.

  9

  THERE IS NOTHING vulgar or in bad taste about Kamakura. Only an hour away by train, the old samurai capital is centuries removed from the neon-lit garishness of Tokyo. People often find Tokyo intolerably ugly. Well, let them think so. I adore its unashamed ugliness. There is no pretense about Tokyo; the artifice is openly, brazenly artificial. But ever since I was first introduced by my friend Carl to its thirteenth-century temples and shrines, the great Kamakura Buddha, the Zen gardens of Kencho-ji and Engaku-ji, Kamakura has been my refuge from twentieth-century madness. Kamakura was saved from the bombings by its insignificance. It has not played a part in the nation’s affairs since the fourteenth century, when the power shifted back to Kyoto, and Kamakura went into a state of aristocratic somnolence. That’s why it survived with all its treasures intact. Even General Curtis LeMay, usually so quick on the draw, saw no point in destroying a place that to him was of no consequence at all.

  I liked to lose myself in the tart smells of temple incense and pine trees, which bore a curious resemblance to the scented salts my mother used when she bathed me as a child. And I always stopped by Mr. Ohki’s store behind Komachi Street, which smelled of camphor wood and old books. Although one might, with a little luck, find a beautifully carved seventeenth-century netsuke there, or a red lacquer bowl of the late Edo Period, Ohki-san specialized in traditional woodcuts. He spoke old-fashioned British English. Before the war, many of his clients had been connoisseurs from Great Britain. “It’s hard to make ends meet these days,” he told me with a weary shrug. “The Japanese no longer care for these old things.” He served me a cup of green tea and patiently answered all my questions. I wanted to learn about everything, from the art of the early monochrome woodblock prints to the painted fans of the Muromachi Period. He would bring out box after box of prints: a perfect set of erotic prints by Koryusai, a first edition print of an early Eisho, as elegant as an Utamaro, but with more delicacy. We talked about art, about literature, about history. Once, to illustrate a point about the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, he showed me prints of battle scenes: handsome Japanese soldiers charging in their black Prussian-style uniforms, bloody Chinese corpses at their feet. “Frightfully vulgar, really,” he commented, before gingerly restoring them to their box. “You notice how they no longer used the old vegetable dyes.”

  This time, however, I had no tim
e to lose, even to see Ohki-san. I had been invited to have lunch with the divine Miss Y., who was staying at the home of a movie producer named Kawamura. The house was in the northern part of town, a plush square mile of traditional wooden houses nestled between the pine trees on a hill. The air was filled with the trilling sounds of early spring—the plum blossoms were just out. It was as if the war had never happened.

  Yoshiko (she insisted that I call her by her first name) was dressed in a purple dress and furry pink slippers. We were joined by Kawamura in a freshly matted room decorated with a simple arrangement of camellias and a Chinese-style scroll painting of a bush warbler. I immediately recognized Kawamura as the older man at the film premiere. Something about him, the elegance of his tweed suit, the sheen on his silver hair, the way he discreetly sized me up through his large tortoiseshell glasses, made me feel a little shabby in his presence, as if I were wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Yoshiko called him “Papa,” which invited the assumption that there was a “Mama” in the house. As indeed there was. Later, when luncheon was served in the Western-style dining room, a short, smiling lady in a sky blue kimono with cherry blossom patterns appeared. She did not say much, but what little she said was spoken in excellent Oxford English, a little like Ohki-san’s.

  The dining room was decorated with a few paintings in the Impressionist style. I couldn’t make out who the painters were. Delicious Kamakura prawns, followed by tender veal cutlets, were impeccably served by a maid in white gloves. Kawamura was proud of his wines. We drank a German white followed by a French red. “You must excuse us, Mr. Vanoven, for this shamefully inadequate meal,” Madame Kawamura purred. “You see, we are living in rather straitened circumstances. Japan is such a poor country now.” Her husband, looking grave, added that it was all due to that dreadful war, a terrible error, which ought never to have occurred. “Let’s not talk about that,” said Yoshiko, “we now have peace. And we’re all here happy together, all because of you, Papa.” Kawamura murmured something in the way of a polite objection. Madame Kawamura examined the paintings on the wall, perhaps checking whether they were hanging straight.

  Since I’m an American, I have never learned to disguise my curiosity in the way the Japanese do, so I asked Yoshiko about the end of the war. Wasn’t she in China? How had Ri Koran, the star of China Nights, become Yamaguchi Yoshiko again? “I’m sure you’ll have some more wine, Mr. Vanoven,” said Kawamura, as he picked up the bottle. Yoshiko pulled a tragic face. “It was the worst time of my life,” she said, her eyes trained on Kawamura.

  “War is just awful,” Kawamura interjected, “the way it turns men into beasts.”

  “That’s so right,” said Yoshiko. “Let me tell you what happened to me, Sid-san. Me, who was born in China, and loved China as my own country, I was arrested as a traitor. Can you imagine how hurtful that was for me? A traitor, me. Of course, I was a Japanese, but China was my home. And they were going to execute me for being a traitor, for making propaganda for the enemy. I never meant to do China any harm, Sid-san. You must understand that. The date had already been set. In a stadium, they were going to shoot me in front of a crowd. It was a nightmare, Sid-san, an absolute nightmare.” She dabbed her eyes with her napkin.

  “But how could you be a traitor if you were Japanese?” I said, sounding rather silly, even to myself.

  “Of course—” she started, her voice choking with emotion. Kawamura softly patted her knee to ease her distress. I sensed some impatience on the part of Mrs. Kawamura and I felt suddenly embarrassed. It was unforgivably gauche to have brought up these misfortunes. I felt myself breaking into a sweat.

  “Of course I am Japanese, but the Chinese wouldn’t believe me. They thought I was one of them. After all, I was Ri Koran, Li Xianglan.” She gazed at Kawamura with her adoring wide eyes. “But thanks to you, Papa, I pulled through.”

  “I did nothing,” he demurred.

  “Yes, yes, you stood by me at the worst time of my life. You arranged everything.”

  I waited for more. Not for long. “Mama had evacuated as soon as the awful war was over, with little Chieko,” Yoshiko explained. “Papa, bless his heart, kindly consented to stay with me, to make sure I was all right. Oh, it was a terrible ordeal, confined in that ghastly little house in Shanghai, and later in a prison camp, being insulted by ruffians. I thought I would never survive it.”

  At this point Madame Kawamura excused herself and said there was something she had to attend to.

  With all this talk of Papa and Mama, I couldn’t help wondering about Yoshiko’s own family circumstances. Again, with typical American brazenness, I asked her. Were her parents also in China at the end of the war? Yoshiko looked down at her feet and said nothing.

  “Your father was, was—” offered Kawamura, before giving up on his train of thought. Yoshiko sighed. “Well, thank goodness for the Jewish girl,” said Kawamura. As always when that word came up, I felt a slight jolt, forcing me to pay special attention.

  “The Jewish girl?”

  “Yes. Masha,” whispered Yoshiko.

  Masha, it turned out, had grown up with Yoshiko in Manchuria. Close to the end of the war, she suddenly turned up in Shanghai, just as Yoshiko was giving a concert. Without her, Yoshiko probably would have been tried by a war crimes tribunal and executed. To prove that she was Japanese, and not a Chinese traitor, Yoshiko needed her birth certificate, but her parents, who kept that all-important document, were stuck in Peking. Yoshiko was imprisoned, and Kawamura wasn’t allowed to leave Shanghai. So Masha offered to go to Peking and find the documents that would save Yoshiko from a traitor’s death. Somehow Masha tracked down Yoshiko’s parents, got hold of the relevant papers, and smuggled then back to Shanghai inside a Japanese doll. A few days later, Yoshiko and Kawamura were on a boat back home. She never heard from Masha again. Kawamura reassured her. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “The Jews always take care of their own.” I paid due attention, but said nothing.

  “I felt so lonely,” said Yoshiko, her face a picture of suffering, “standing on deck watching the lights of Shanghai slowly disappear. Do you remember, Papa? Nothing but darkness and the sound of the waves. I thought I might never see the country of my birth again. That is when I knew that Ri Koran had died.”

  “But Ri Koran is still alive in the movies,” I ventured. I had meant to flatter, but with sincerity.

  Instead of expressing pleasure, Yoshiko bowed her head and burst out: “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She said this with the sudden passion of a young girl, pummeling her chest. “Why did I allow myself to be deceived by the militarists? Unlike you, Papa. I was a tool in their hands. The militarists, and their terrible war, they made me into an accomplice, forcing me to be in those hateful propaganda films. Do you know how humiliating that was for me, Sid-san? To be an accomplice in that cruel war. Do you understand how awful that was?”

  “Now, now,” said Kawamura. And turning to me: “Another glass of wine?”

  “Perhaps,” Yoshiko continued, “I should never be in the movies again.” She said this with a look of resolve. Then, smiling: “From now on I am just Yamaguchi Yoshiko, and I will dedicate my life to peace. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Now, now,” repeated Kawamura. “I hear that you have worked in Hollywood, Mr. Vanoven. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there. Tell me, whom do you know in Hollywood?”

  I mentioned the only famous name I knew. Kawamura looked at me with interest: “Ah, yes, Frank Capra, a very fine director.”

  Yoshiko smiled, pleased perhaps that I had made an impression on Kawamura, and said: “Is he knowable?” I wasn’t sure if she was addressing her question to me or to her patron. In the event, neither of us gave her an immediate answer.

  10

  LIFE AS A censor had its small compensations. I had the invaluable opportunity to see many films in their original state, before politics or morality forced us to wield the dreaded scissors. Not that all the movies we saw were really worth seeing
, but sometimes we were lucky enough to be the first to witness the birth of a masterpiece. One of them was the picture being made when Major Murphy and I visited the Oriental Peace Studios. Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel was a revelation: the pathos of the young hoodlum, humanized by his fear of dying, and of the alcoholic doctor, redeemed by his compassion. Above all, the atmosphere I had come to know so well: the dance halls; the black markets; the poor, squalid, violent life in a ruined city that reeked of humanity. What had looked like a chaotic jumble of lights and sound booms and plywood facades on the studio set had miraculously come to life on the screen. I could only marvel at the magic of film, in the way a religious person marvels at stained-glass windows and candlelit saints in a place of worship. That is what the cinema was to me, a kind of chapel, where I worshipped my saints in the dark, except that my saints were not really saints; they were as human as could be. The transubstantiation of light projected through celluloid to reveal life itself, that was the miracle of cinema.

  Mifune, as the gangster, is all brutish swagger on the surface, but oh so vulnerable, almost childlike, underneath. It is this quality in Japanese men that I adore, in the movies and in life. Surrendering myself to them, worshipping their soft, hairless, adolescent skin, running my hand along their supple thighs, burying my nose in the delicate black tuft above their genitals—this, for me, is a way of sloughing off my adult self and finding my way back to a state of innocence, the natural state of the Japanese, but one that must be regained by us Westerners, corrupted by the knowledge of sin.

  Drunken Angel was not the film that caught Murphy’s imagination, however. He didn’t really see the point of it. Mifune Toshiro, to me, is the perfect Japanese male. But all Murphy could say was: “Who cares about just another dumb gangster.” Worst of all, from his point of view, the movie didn’t have a message, or not one that he could easily discern. Nor did it have the kind of uplifting conclusion that Murphy liked, the happy ending that warmed cold hearts. What stirred his enthusiasm was a different kind of movie altogether. One in particular became a cause célèbre and subsequently left its faded fingerprint on history. The movie was called Time of Darkness, produced by a well-known figure at the time, Nobuo Hotta. I came to admire this brave intellectual, with his gaunt, saintly face. He didn’t much care for appearances; his suits were disheveled, his hair unkempt. But Hotta was one of those rare individuals who never compromised with power. He stood up for his beliefs, not all of which I shared, but no matter, he was a man of principle. Before the war, he had been a well-known Marxist, and everyone knew how much he had suffered for it once the militarists took over Japan.