by Lilian Lee
A band struck up the Manchurian national anthem. The sky was overcast, and an icy wind cut through the assembly. Still, nothing could dampen the spirits of the gathered Manchu officials as they watched the emperor reverently performing the ancient rituals of kneeling and kowtowing to heaven. Squeezed between two rows of Japanese rising suns were the eight banners of the eight clans of the once-mighty Ching. The emperor's own standard-bearers, holding aloft yellow dragon pennants, knelt for the entire ceremony. Pu-yi was so moved by these solemn proceedings that his eyes brimmed with tears.
Yoshiko was there, too. She was one of the people who had made this event possible, she thought smugly. Her heart beat proudly in her breast, and she was filled with inexpressible excitement as she watched the emperor of the mighty Ching being restored to his rightful position.
Manchukuo has been born at last! she thought to herself. We had to wait for twenty years, but now that we've started, nothing will be able to stop us. Manchukuo is just the beginning—someday all of China will be returned to us, and the Ching Empire shall reign once more! And with the rebirth of the empire will come the destruction of all those who helped to overthrow it. They will be made to pay!
These thoughts crowded her head as she proudly watched the awe-inspiring and sacred ritual. Every sacrifice she had made was worth it.
She recalled a poem her father, Prince Su, wrote when he was forced to leave Peking:
The wild goose wings home to his native land, He cries out in sorrow on his flight northeast. Looking back, he sees the fires of war behind him, As the sun sets red over the plains of China.
Yoshiko would always remember this day as the most glorious day of her life. Dressed in military uniform, with jodhpurs, leather boots, and an army cap, she looked very fine indeed. An ornately wrought sword hung from her waist on gold braid, and two guns nestled in leather holsters—a brand-new "type two" Mauser and a Carter automatic pistol. Her shiny polished boots clicked sharply with every footstep as she stepped up to the rostrum, radiating confidence. Shunkichi Uno, her patron, protector, lover, and boss, pinned a three-star medal of honor onto her shoulder and bestowed on her a new title: Commander Chin Pi-hui of the Pacification Army of Manchukuo.
There were five thousand troops under her command, and her rank of commander in chief entitled her to an official seal one inch square. This gave her the authority to issue orders. Many men opposed to the Manchus and Japanese would submit happily to the authority of this charismatic princess. Yoshiko, now called Commander Chin, was a legend, something especially amazing for one so young, and she reveled in her newfound fame. For their part, the Japanese were happy to indulge her fantasy by flattering her. Although she thought she was using them to achieve her own ends, it was they who were using her; but she was too intoxicated by everything to see that.
The Japanese were the masters of Manchukuo, and since they mistrusted other races, they sought to dominate all aspects of life—politics, economics, ideology, and culture. They pretended to promote what they called "Coexistence and Copros-perity," but all this slogan really meant was "Be like us." Japanese became a required course in elementary and middle schools, and official documents were written in Japanese, not Manchu or Chinese. Japanese people were first-class citizens, and city planners renamed the streets of the new capital after the streets of Japan's old capitals of Kyoto and Nara.
The coronation was an international affair, with guests attired in everything from kimonos to Western suits to Chinese clothes. There were the heads of the corporations that controlled or produced all of life's necessities—railroads, heavy industry, coal mining, utilities, telephone and telegraph, gold mining, aviation, and agriculture. There were military officers, tycoons, artists, writers, musicians, and reporters. Flashbulbs were popping nonstop, and in the midst of this dazzling swirl of activity, there was Yoshiko. She wore a proud and haughty expression, but the suggestion of a bewitching smile played about her lips as she lifted her chin slightly every time she shook hands.
Sometime later one of the guests passed forward a card announcing the arrival of yet another guest, who bore the rather outlandish title of "Army Major and China Group Head, Bureau of Information, Division of Pacification, North China Expeditionary Force Headquarters." Yoshiko's eyes immediately went to the man's name: Yamaga.
Yamaga? Yoshiko raised her eyes and took a look around. She couldn't believe it—it was him! Had he been transferred to Manchuria?
He had put on a little weight in the intervening years. He must be going on forty, she thought to herself. Dignity had come with age, and the cocky young upstart was gone, replaced by a man who appeared to be a quintessentially old-fashioned intellectual. He had a slightly eccentric but elegant demeanor, and was clad in a full-length Chinese scholar's robe and a felt cap. A beautifully carved walking stick completed the picture. His Mandarin Chinese was perfect, of course, since she was the one who'd taught it to him.
A flood of memories surged over Yoshiko, mingled with a trace of regret. She was not the girl she used to be—and he had changed, too. There was no going back—that was the saddest thing about life. The welter of conflicting emotions made her senses reel, but Yamaga seemed unruffled.
"How do you do, Commander Chin," he said coolly.
Despising him for being able to act as though there had never been anything between them, she gave an even colder response.
"Thank you for coming. Your presence is appreciated."
He undoubtedly knew all about her, including who was responsible for her new title of "Commander Chin." Was that why he mocked her?
I'll show you that I'm a good woman! she'd once told him; but now these words came back to mock her. Shame turned to anger, and she left the reception shortly after, determined to put him, and all that he reminded her of, far behind her. She leapt onto the back of a fast horse and galloped over the open country around Hsinching. When she was high up in the saddle, astride her tall stallion, no one could touch her. Surveying the world from her lofty perch, she felt above everyone. She was incomparable!
So what if she was evil and would stop at nothing as she clawed her way to the top! There was no going back, now. She banished Yamaga, and everybody else, from her mind. She was above them all.
13
Yoshiko was back in Shanghai, a place she loved, the place where she first made a name for herself. The situation in Manchukuo was developing according to Japanese plans, but Japan was still worried about possible opposition from the League of Nations. For this reason, Uno sent Yoshiko back to Shanghai on another important mission—the task of instigating the events that later became known as the Shanghai Incident.
Anti-Japanese sentiment among the citizens of Shanghai was seething just beneath the surface, and underground resistance organizations proliferated. Yoshiko bribed a worker at the Mit-sutomo Company's towel factory to lead a raid against the monks of the Japanese Buddhist Sanmyo Temple. There were casualties.
Next, she incited a group of some thirty Japanese monks to go to the factory and seek reprisals. What started as a dispute between a few individuals gained size and momentum until, in the end, the factory was burned to the ground, a thousand workers were killed or injured, and a supposed hotbed of anti-Japanese feeling was dealt a harsh blow. International attention was focused on Shanghai as China and Japan faced off, and the eyes of the world were distracted from Japan's consolidation of territory in the Northeast. Meanwhile, Japan launched a military invasion in the South. Yoshiko thought herself very clever, exempt from the dangers of these troubled times, a perfect spy.
In Shanghai, Yoshiko shed her military uniform and once again became the graceful dancer who charmed the city. Night after night, she went out, abandoning herself to the pleasures of Shanghai's nightlife. Youthful, excited blood coursed through her veins—it seemed she couldn't stop dancing. But throughout those days and nights, with their endless rounds of drinking and dancing and endless strings of parties and dance partners, she was hard at work gatherin
g valuable information from those same men whose company seemed to delight her so.
She learned many things. The Nineteenth Route Army was fighting in isolation. Chiang Kai-shek was on the verge of retiring. She knew who was steadfast in his resistance to Japan; whose allegiance could be bought; who was a counterspy. Nationalist China's Kuomintang-controlled banks were on the brink of collapse. China desired a cease-fire. These rumors and many like them were channeled through Yoshiko to her bosses. The Japanese had only to send this one girl to do their bidding, and their investment came back tenfold.
Yoshiko wondered at times if she were just a Japanese errand girl, serving their interests; but she persuaded herself that her interests and those of Japan were identical. She didn't have to make excuses to anyone!
With her mastery of both Chinese and Japanese, she moved freely between those two worlds; and she changed guises just as freely, slipping from European dresses to kimonos to cheongsams to slinky evening gowns that trailed the ground. Sometimes she was a woman, sometimes a man. It was this fact of her persona that Japanese officers found especially seductive. These veterans of many long years of warfare counted men as well as women among their conquests. Yoshiko reminded them of one of the Kabuki actors who portray female characters onstage—every Japanese man's secret ideal. Ever so subtly, they were aroused by her.
Men who had never seen her were so intrigued by the wild tales of "Venus in a Suit" that they ached with the desire just to catch a glimpse of her. Because of the intensity of this desire, those who met her tended to fall easily under her spell. Men flocked to her, and her circle of contacts grew ever wider. She might turn up among the spectators at the annual sumo championships at Tokyo's National Stadium; or, dressed in a tasteful and costly pale pink kimono, on the arm of a general. She might be seen on the second floor of the Shiseido Building in the Ginza, holding hands and sipping tea with a millionaire businessman. At other times, Yoshiko was^spotted cruising around Shanghai in a flashy sedan, clad in a man's brown suit and overcoat, a beret rakishly tipped to one side.
A coterie of tall, strapping young men waited on her hand and foot in her luxurious mansion. They claimed to be her bodyguards, but they served her more intimately. She no longer cared what anybody thought, and she did as she pleased, not even bothering to get out of bed before one or two in the afternoon. She lolled around in silk pajamas, conducting all manner of business from her boudoir.
One day a handsome young fellow, smartly turned-out in a suit and hat, came to call. It was an honor to have a personal audience with Yoshiko.
"The job's finished," she said, handing him a photograph. "This particular agent provocateur is of no use to us anymore."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, backing toward the door and bowing repeatedly.
"Report to me at the theater in several days' time."
"I'll see to it myself, Commander Chin!"
"Good. By the way, my patron, Mr. Uno, is out of town right now. Why don't you come out dancing with me tomorrow night?"
"Yes, ma'am!" he replied, and went out.
Outside of Yoshiko's room, the young man ran into Yoshiko's personal secretary, Chizuko, a young Japanese woman who saw to every detail of Yoshiko's life with care and devotion. She was accustomed to her mistress's wild behavior, and she didn't even bat an eye anymore. She had a report to make to Yoshiko.
"Miss Yoshiko, I have completed a detailed account of Mr. Yamaga's activities since his arrival here in Shanghai."
Yoshiko looked up.
"Put on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for me first."
The notes floated lightly up, filling the room, and Yoshiko gave a long stretch. She felt as though she were entering a dreamworld, where moonlight glimmered through the melody and sprinkled down onto her body ever so lightly, covering her in moonbeams.
What had he been up to these past few days? Where had he gone? Whom had he seen? Was he happy? Was he depressed?
The thrill of spying on her former lover gave her butterflies, but none of this excitement showed in her voice.
"All right. You may proceed," she directed Chizuko.
Chizuko began:
Yamaga was depressed for a while after an unhappy love affair, but later he went to Peking and took up cultural propaganda work along with a Chinese name, Wang Chia-heng. In 1930, he married Kiyoko, the only daughter of a reporter, in Peking, and three years later Kiyoko gave birth to a daughter, Hiroko. With the founding of Manchukuo, Yamaga was transferred to the Northeast, where he was put in charge of propaganda and published a newspaper, organized a theater troupe, and produced other performing-arts events. He was a man of some power and influence, with mansions in Hsinching, Peking, Shanghai, and Tientsin. Recently, he had been busy preparing to set up a film studio in Manchukuo, the purpose of which was to further spread pro-Japanese propaganda in the region, and he went around searching for "suitable" young women whom he could turn into stars. But he was just a front man. The real power behind the scenes was Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu.
Yamaga's work brought him into contact with an extravagant crowd of movie people and bohemians. He went with a fast crowd and lived high, and had a reputation as a womanizer. A bevy of starlets, all craving fame and fortune, vied for his attention, affectionately addressing him as "Daddy Wang."
Starlets. Affairs. Power. "International Friendship."
Chizuko continued her report, but Yoshiko heard nothing but a long string of women's names, twisting and turning, snaking around her mind—Li Li-hua, Chen Yun-shang, Chou Manhua, Chen Yen-yen—which was which? They all sounded alike. Which ones had he actually slept with?
Yamaga had followed her advice and pulled himself together after all. A part of her had wanted to see him stumble and fall, spiritually and physically, because of her. Instead, he got back on his feet and became a great success! Gripped by a deep-seated jealousy, Yoshiko tightened her jaw.
"That will be all," she told Chizuko sweetly.
The record played on, stubbornly spinning around and around, filling the room with a sickly-sweet romanticism that hemmed her in with her anger. But didn't she have affairs, too?
In the throes of passion, she always moaned, "Leave it alone. Nobody touches that. Nobody." She jealously guarded her left breast and its secret.
Men would hold her tight; and she seemed so delicate and vulnerable.
"Is it because your heart is on the left side?" some would wonder.
"Is there a scar from your old wound?"
Each had his own theory, and each wanted to know why, but she restrained their curious hands, saying:
"You mustn't!"
If they used just a little force, they could overpower her, and then they would see it: a tiny red mole on her left breast. It winked temptingly in the flickering lamplight, its unattainability exciting them further. They mounted her ecstatically, drunkenly, madly, using their hands, their tongues, and even their teeth to try to excite this mark of her beauty.
But her charms were more than skin-deep, and a night spent with her was something no man could ever forget. Still, she saved this one tiny part of herself. Was she saving it for Yamaga?
He no longer cared a bit for her!
Yoshiko looked pallid but wrote it off as just a lack of sleep.
One night shortly afterward, Yamaga had gone out with a beautiful young Shanghainese actress. He brought her home, and they embraced, kissing passionately in the dark outside his mansion. Locked in this tight embrace, he still somehow managed to open the door with a free hand and switch on the light. The couple's eyes met with a shocking scene. The house was in total disarray—everything they saw was shattered, ripped, or otherwise broken to pieces. Bits of torn-up photographs were strewn about—mostly photos of Yamaga and various starlets—among shredded love letters addressed to "Daddy Wang," smashed cameras, shattered vases, and broken glass. Ruined clothing littered the floor—suits, kimonos, and even his undershirts and shorts, all ripped to shreds. Nothing had been spared. Not one thing in the
entire house was left whole.
Yamaga and his companion were agape, but an even bigger shock still awaited them. In the midst of this devastation, sitting on the sofa as though it were her own, was Yoshiko Kawashima. With her feet up and her arms draped across the back of the couch, she gazed at them disdainfully. The arrogant curl of her lip told them that she had been waiting for quite some time.
