by Lilian Lee
Yoshiko haughtily took a long pull on the cigarette. She languidly exhaled a cloud of pale smoke, waiting for the magistrate to begin his attack.
He held up a book. Printed in large characters on the cover was the title, Venus in a Suit. The author's name, Shofu Muramatsu, was Japanese.
"Are you familiar with this novel?" the magistrate asked.
"Yes," she replied blandly.
"Are you also familiar with the author of this book?"
"Well, I've seen his name in the papers. He's a fairly well known Japanese novelist, isn't he?"
The judge struggled to keep his temper in check. She was toying with him.
"This novel contains information," the judge said tensely, "furnished personally, by you, to the author—information concerning your treasonous collaboration with the Japanese and your scheming with them to set up an independent state in Manchuria and Mongolia."
"Come now, Your Honor," she said lazily. "You yourself just characterized this as a novel, a work of fiction! Have you ever read any of China's classic novels, like Journey to the West or The Golden Lotus? They're as full of the same scandalous and shocking things—the same seductions and temptresses—as the so-called 'evidence' you're presenting here. I don't suppose you're planning to drag all of these other fictional malfeasants into court as well?"
The courtroom erupted in raucous laughter.
"The court expects the defendant to treat these proceedings with appropriate respect and seriousness," the magistrate admonished her angrily. "Remember that you are addressing a court of law.
Yoshiko immediately assumed a serious manner.
"I address others as they address me—and as befits them. I would expect the court to find a more serious and credible individual to question me," she said, superciliously taking another drag on her cigarette.
Suppressing his anger, the magistrate changed tack.
"As for the secretary who was arrested along with you at your house in Pei Chih-tzu, one Hachiro Ogata—"
Yoshiko cut him off.
"Mr. Ogata is a secretary in name only," she responded swiftly in Ogata's defense. "He is a good man, and a faithful servant. He knows absolutely nothing, and he is innocent of any wrongdoing! You had no business arresting him! I, and I alone, am accountable for my actions. Keep him out of it!"
"All right, then. We won't discuss him. Let's talk about some other people instead, shall we? For instance, Naniwa Kawa-shima. Mitsuru Kashirayama. Yosuke Matsuoka. Daisaku Komoto. Fumimaru Konoe. Hideki Tojo. Shigeru Honjo. Kenji Tohibara. Shunkichi Uno. Hanji Ito. Seishiro Itagaki."
Yoshiko listened calmly as the judge recited this string of names. Men's names, all of them. And all of them Japanese men. She'd spent half of her life under the thumbs of these Japanese men, being passed from one to another. And what for? Was it only so that she could be brought to this humiliating defeat?
No!
When she spoke again, it was without hurry. She formed each word clearly and one at a time.
"I have not betrayed China. I am not a Chinese traitor."
She shot a glance at the magistrate to gauge his reaction before she continued in the same clear voice.
"I am Japanese! I am not Chinese!"
The courtroom was in an uproar. She wouldn't even admit that she was Chinese! The nerve!
At the heart of this incredible and shocking claim there may have been a grain of truth. Had she turned her back on China; or had China rejected her first?
She had only been seven years old when she was sent away.
2
She was a seven-year-old girl with white ribbons in her hair. Her mother was trying desperately to coax her into letting the servants dress her in a white kimono.
"I am Chinese!" Hsien-tzu Aisin-Gioro shrieked tearfully, struggling to free herself from the strange, foreign garment. "I am not Japanese!"
She was just a child, naive in the ways of the world, and she could not possibly have imagined what fate had in store for her. Perhaps it was some instinctive sense of the significance of what was happening to her that made her resist. Despite her age, she already had a strong will. And at this moment, the full force of that will was bent on one thing: not putting on the white silk kimono.
Her mother, the fourth ancillary concubine of Prince Su of the Ching royal family, was the youngest and most beautiful of the prince's many consorts. Prince Su doted to the point of worship on this elegant twenty-nine-year-old with long, luxuriant hair. It was hardly surprising that her daughter— Hsien-tzu, the fourteenth child out of twenty-one little princes and seventeen little princesses—should also be one of his favorites. At this particular moment, however, she did not feel particularly favored. She stood there with tears streaming down her face and cried out in her shrill child's voice:
"I don't want to go to Japan!"
"Be a good girl, and don't cry," her mother entreated.
Hsien-tzu's mother then took her by the hand and led the child to Prince Su's study. She brought her right up to the prince, who was sitting at his desk.
The little girl was in complete awe of her father, and more than a little bit afraid of him, too. Even in ordinary clothes he had a princely air, with his formal manners and serious expression. He was quite an intimidating man, and Hsien-tzu and her brothers and sisters always did their best to steer clear of him. But now here she was, face-to-face with him! She wasn't used to being this close, and it made her very uncomfortable.
The prince and his family were all members of the Ching imperial family, but this did not carry as much weight as it used to. The once-mighty Ching dynasty had been destroyed and replaced by the Chinese Republic in 1911.
The last Ching emperor, Pu-yi, had been forced out of power by General Yuan Shih-kai, and the royal family had fled Peking, scattering to other parts of the country. Some of these nobles had chosen to live in peaceful retirement. Others, like Prince Su, had bided their time, awaiting an opportunity to restore the Ching dynasty.
Prince Su had never been fooled by the ambitious General Yuan. Yuan did not want democracy, as he so often claimed. He wanted to be emperor himself! And besides, as far as Prince Su was concerned, Yuan was fundamentally untrustworthy: He was Chinese. Like all of the Ching royal family, Prince Su was not ethnically Chinese but Manchu, a descendant of the nomadic tribes that originally roamed the northeastern corner of the Chinese Empire. Prince Su did not trust the Chinese on principle. While Yuan was consolidating his power, the prince threw in his lot with the Japanese, and one Japanese fellow in particular: Naniwa Kawashima.
Kawashima was a Japanese adventurer who had first come to the prince's attention back in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. The Forbidden City had been surrounded by foreign troops, and Kawashima had presented himself at the palace gates. There, with his flawless Chinese, Kawashima had persuaded the palace guards not to resist. He pointed out to them that stubborn resistance could only result in the senseless destruction of the proud and splendid Forbidden City. Artillery fire would damage its magnificent halls; and looting would strip it of its treasures. Surely, they did not want that! Convinced by his smooth arguments, the guards surrendered.
After this incident, Prince Su and Kawashima became fast friends. The two would spend hours sitting around the fire together, laughing at the follies of current politics. They found that they had much in common. They had similar tastes and temperaments, and they shared the same dream. Both believed fervently in the future of the Ching dynasty. As long as there was a China, they agreed, the great Ching Empire would never perish!
As the dynasty limped along in its final days, Prince Su was the only member of the Ching imperial family who refused to give up trying to resuscitate it and restore it to its former glory.
He planned to go to Mukden, in Manchuria, to join the local warlord Chang Tso-lin, who was raising an army to take on General Yuan's forces. But only ten days after Prince Su left the capital, Emperor Pu-yi formally turned over all political powers to the provision
al Nationalist government. This was tantamount to abdication.
Prince Su was left with no alternative but to flee to Port Arthur, on the Manchurian coast, where he took refuge in the Japanese concession. It was there that he began to devise an even grander scheme. His fourteenth daughter, Princess Hsien-tzu, was a part of his plan. No, she was not merely part of the plan—she was the key to the entire thing!
The prince's Port Arthur residence was an immense, Russian-style red brick mansion set high on a ridge in dense woods. It had altogether twenty-eight rooms. Prince Su's study was on the second floor.
"Come, pay your respects to your father and wish him farewell," Hsien-tzu's mother instructed her.
Timidly, the little girl raised her tear-streaked face.
Her father, this all-powerful head of their household of a hundred people, sat before her, regarding her gravely. He was the tenth bearer of the hereditary title Prince Su. If the Ching dynasty had still held sway, his family would have been the leader of the eight hereditary clans of the Manchu nobility. The prince possessed both a strong character and a natural air of authority. He was a farsighted planner and a capable leader, as well. His demand for order extended even to the most commonplace of domestic rituals, such as family meals. At mealtimes, everybody waited obediently for the sound of the gong before assembling in the mansion's huge dining room.
Hsien-tzu usually watched him from some inconspicuous corner. But now he was very close, right in front of her. He looked intently at his seven-year-old daughter.
"Hm . . . Yes, my Hsien-tzu looks most gallant in her kimono—Just as I knew she would."
For a moment, he seemed lost in thought.
"From this day forward," he continued, "I shall call you Tung-chen—Eastern Jewel. I hope that when you have gone east to Japan, you will be an honored and treasured guest."
Having no idea what he meant, Hsien-tzu merely nodded.
"Tung-chen," Prince Su said. "Do you know why I have chosen to send you? Because, of all my sons and daughters, you are by far the most promising. I am counting on you—you and Mr. Kawashima!"
All the objects in the study were lit up by the brilliant light of a French ceiling lamp. There was a sofa, upholstered in scarlet velvet. There were bookcases, too, filled with copies of ancient Chinese classics, reference works, manuscripts, and various documents. These gave off the pleasant odor of paper and ink. There were other treasures here, as well. Her father even had a large glossy photo of the famous Peking opera star Mei Lan-fang, in performance. Yet out of this room full of marvelous things, all that her father gave her was a rather dingy snapshot, gray-spotted and odd-looking.
It was a picture of Naniwa Kawashima. This was the Japanese adventurer in whom the prince had placed his faith, the man who had devised an ambitious plan for the creation of an independent Manchuria and Mongolia. To this end, he had assiduously studied Manchuria, and his knowledge of the region was encyclopedic. Indeed, he knew far more about Manchuria than most Chinese people did.
The man looked out from the picture with penetrating eyes that were shadowed by heavy eyebrows. He was rather gaunt and had a learned air. He sat stiff and erect in his kimono, gazing into the distance with a pleased smile.
"This is your foster father," Prince Su told his daughter. "He will prepare you well for your role in a great undertaking: You are to participate in the restoration of the Ching dynasty. This man will guide you. You must obey him."
Kawashima had made personal sacrifices for the Ching cause. His devotion had gone beyond his friendship with Prince Su. He had gone so far as to grow his hair long so that he could wear a Manchu braid. He had also become an avid student of Chinese history and geography. Although his youthful plans for an independent Manchuria and Mongolia had been crushed, he had never given up hope. He held fast to his belief that the territory of Manchuria was the key to Japan's future survival.
Manchuria was quite a prize. This splendid land that occupied the northeastern corner of China was rich in natural resources as well as being strategically located.
Although he was actually a year older than Prince Su, Kawashima had cleverly told the prince that they had been born in the same year. In a further show of flattery, he took to respectfully addressing the prince as his elder, and the two quickly became fast friends. They had even become adopted brothers, exchanging horoscopes as part of the ritual. It was on that day that Kawashima, dressed in the robes of a Ching official, had posed for a commemorative photograph with Prince Su. They were seated side by side, in front of a Japanese wisteria screen.
Prince Su handed his daughter a letter, instructing her to deliver it to Kawashima. The message read:
I give you this little trinket. I hope that you will always treasure her.
Hsien-tzu's carriage arrived, and the entire household came out to see off the sweet-faced but teary-eyed "little trinket."
The garden of the prince's residence was ablaze with flowers as brilliant and multicolored as silk brocade. There were peach trees, apricot trees, acacias, sunflowers, and eight kinds of cherries, all in bloom. It was spring of the year 1913. Seven-year-old Hsien-tzu, still an innocent, was setting out for Japan all alone.
3
When Hsien-tzu, now also called Tung-chen, disembarked at Shimonoseki, the man in the picture was there to meet her, as promised. His heavy eyebrows were knit tightly together, as though serious troubles were weighing on his mind.
The child had never seen this man before, and she had no feelings for him at all. Yet he was to be her "father," and she went with him, home to the Akabane district of Tokyo.
He, too, gave her a new name, a Japanese name: Yoshiko Kawashima. Yoshiko would learn to sign her name in Japanese, speak Japanese, and sip miso soup, just like a little Japanese girl.
Naniwa Kawashima had looked worried that first day, because the political situation in China was changing rapidly. Indeed, by January of 1915, things would have changed so drastically that Kawashima would be forced to alter his plans completely. For it was then, just as Kawashima was actively promoting Ching restoration, that Japan had confronted China with the so-called "Twenty-one Demands." Had China agreed to all of them, it would have become, in effect, a Japanese protectorate. The attitude of the Japanese government was completely inflexible, and the demands were so outrageous that not only did the people of China reject them as preposterous, there was even a segment of Japanese society that criticized these demands. Nonetheless, Chinese president Yuan Shih-kai agreed to most of the conditions, with disastrous results for China. Turning his back on the people of China, Yuan donned the dragon robes of a Chinese emperor and strutted about the political stage, calling himself emperor. But before people even had time to catch their breath, this "emperor" was dragged from the stage. The people waited for the next act in this spectacle.
Naniwa Kawashima's original plan had been to unite Inner and Outer Mongolia with the three provinces of Manchuria: Mukden, Kirin, and Heilungchiang. Here he would install the deposed Ching emperor, Pu-yi, as sovereign. This enterprise required money, able strategists, and troops.
As a primary-school student, Yoshiko Kawashima did not receive any of the moral guidance a child normally should. Instead, everything she learned outside of her regular schoolwork was geared to foster in her an intense love and longing for her "Manchurian homeland." She was completely innocent of the true purpose underlying her education. Even if she had known, she probably would not have been able to understand.
Kawashima kept Yoshiko close to him, and the only time she ever got to play with her classmates was during recess in the schoolyard. The boys all had shaved heads, and they looked like mass-produced toy soldiers lined up in their uniforms of cotton jackets and twill pants. All the little girls wore printed silk jackets and purple satin culottes.
Physical education at this school included military drills, which, for the boys, included sparring with bamboo sticks. The object of this game was to conquer China. If you could "penetrate" China,
then you could eat fresh sweet pears, live in a fancy house, and be waited on by Chinese servants. And everybody knew that Chinese servants were the most loyal and obedient in the whole world.
During recess the children also liked to play fighter planes. One day Yoshiko was the fighter plane. She flew around, bombing her classmates, and one by one they all fell down. But one little boy refused to fall down. Yoshiko charged ahead, humming like an engine and making exploding noises, and she pushed him roughly to the ground.
When the boy hit the ground, he started to cry.
"What are you crying about?" Yoshiko taunted him. "If there's a war, you'll be the first to die, you chicken!"
"Hey, Yoshiko," another child asked slyly. "Where are you from, anyway?"
"China? Japan? Where?" another chimed in.
Yoshiko was tongue-tied. The truth was, she wasn't sure what country she was from. She was all mixed up, and the confusion threw her off balance.
