Last Princess of Manchuria

by Lilian Lee

  As he waved to her from the dock, she knew she would probably never see him again, this man who had the sense of justice to save her just when she thought she had reached the end. She felt grateful. He had so much integrity he didn't even embrace her in farewell.

  She boarded the ship. The China Sea now separated them. In another ironic twist of fate, the Chinese woman was fleeing to Japan, while the Japanese man stayed on Chinese soil.

  Yamaga turned resolutely and left without looking back, his feelings well hidden.

  Yoshiko stood motionless, her eyes filled with tears. How transient our lives are, she mused. Youth and beauty fade away like the delicate fragrance of spring flowers; all that is good and beautiful seems doomed to wither.

  Throughout her voyage, a tune kept going through her head, so faintly that she couldn't be sure whether there was a radio somewhere on board ship, or if it was just a trick of her memory. It shadowed her like a wandering ghost, and she couldn't shake it off. Who was the singer? Was it Li Hsiang-lan or Hamako Watanabe? The song had a haunting quality, filled with a passionate tremulousness:

  China night, oh China night, Harbor lights in the violet night . . .

  Ten years, she thought. Ten glorious years.

  I dream of spring, I dream of you: The sun shining high in the sky, Roses blazing bright as fire, When we meet by the riverside. But I awaken and you are gone. Oh, spring dream, dream of love.

  Those years were like a dream from which she awakened empty-handed, a failure. She had sacrificed everything over the past ten years, giving and giving until she was bled dry. She felt like a dying sun sinking west over the wilderness, glowing for one last moment before it sinks forever into the abyss. Still, she believed she had her "nation," although, in truth, there was no place she could really call home. She didn't even have a place to rest her tired head.

  20

  It was spring again, late March in Tokyo. Billowing pink clouds of cherry blossoms spread like a giant canopy over the hills and parks of the city. The sky, normally rumbling with bombers, was quiet today and completely cloudless. It looked like a thin piece of silk, decorated with layer upon layer of pale pink petals, and touched with the delicately sweet but vaguely melancholy fragrance of face powder.

  Yoshiko was dressed rather carelessly in a man's kimono. A sloppily knotted blue sash sagged lopsidedly across her hips. She lolled on her back in a grove of stubby trees, one knee bent up, the rest of her body limp. Several empty sake bottles lay off to the side, sprawling drunkenly like their mistress, who squinted up toward the clear and perfumed heavens. The masses of petals looked as though they had been daubed on by some mad finger painter.

  The cherry blossoms bloom first in the south and then travel slowly northward up the length of the island nation, taking about a month in all from the start of the cherry season to its end. Every year it is the same—the profusion of flowers dazzles the eyes, but only for a brief moment. In the blink of an eye, the stunning display is replaced by a scene of desolation.

  Yoshiko had drunk a great deal of sake and felt about ready to burst—she urgently needed to relieve herself. There was no one there for her to impress with her beauty or refinement, she told herself. Wasn't she just like anyone else? Anyway, trying to impress other people was a stupid waste of time, she concluded, and pulled herself up into the thin branches of a cherry tree. Squatting there as she prepared to relieve herself, she honestly didn't care if anyone was watching or not, although as it turned out the park was all but deserted on this particular afternoon. She lifted up the hem of her kimono and started to urinate. As it trickled to the ground, an unpleasantly pungent odor rose into the air.

  A little monkey nimbly sprang away from the rank-smelling patch of grass, although he didn't go very far before he turned around to wink mischievously at his mistress with his tiny bright eyes. Yoshiko was well on her way to being completely drunk, and she clumsily clambered down out of the tree, grinning at her monkey. She collapsed into a heap on the grass, arms and legs flung out every which way, not wanting to get up.

  The monkey sauntered agilely over to her side. She had tamed him until he seemed almost human to her.

  "Ah-fu," she mumbled. "You're the only friend I have, anymore!"

  Ah-fu scratched his cheeks quizzically and opened his eyes so wide that they looked like little saucers. He had a very expressive face, but he never smiled, even when he was beside himself with joy. Not even the dimple of a smile ever touched his face. Only people can smile, although they smile far too rarely.

  Yoshiko was smiling to herself just then, as a breath of spring breeze puffed by and cherry blossoms rained down on her, covering her chest with crimson tears. The flowers were dying already, giving up their brief and wistful lives.

  As the sun sank slowly, somebody walked up to where Yoshiko lay. It was Naniwa Kawashima. His thin silhouette was like a skeleton, as he leaned on his staff in the dying light, a very old man.

  Yoshiko opened her eyes and saw his shadow stretching across the grass. She didn't want to see him. Still, every other man she'd ever known had drifted away, and he was still there! Life was strange, indeed. The only man still at her side was the one she hated the most, the one whom she had tried with all her might to wash from her memory, scrubbing so hard sometimes she bled.

  He was so old and decrepit that it seemed almost inconceivable that long ago he was a lean and vigorous activist and thinker, a central figure in the Manchurian-Mongolian Independence Movement, a man of great ambition, a crafty and slippery operator. Even he, once as hard as steel, couldn't resist the predations of time. He was as doomed to wither as the fragile cherry blossoms. At any moment, he could be trampled underfoot, ground into the mud, unnoticed and unmourned.

  Yoshiko recognized that she was no different from him in this respect—but that recognition was quickly followed by denial. She refused to believe it, but it was there, right before her eyes. She shut her eyes tight, wanting to block it all out. Kawashima turned toward the setting sun, and she thought she heard him moaning, low and sorrowful, on the wind:

  "Human beings are as fragile as glass. Just one tiny touch, and we shatter to bits, irreparable. . . ."

  Yoshiko climbed up out of the mass of crushed petals to stagger home. Ah-fu hopped onto her shoulder, needing her as much as she needed him. He was like family to her, her most intimate and beloved companion. She didn't trust people anymore—he alone was dependable. When she poured her heart out to him, he always listened attentively, not missing a thing. He was the guardian of her soul, which she had given him a piece at a time, until the pieces came together and formed the image of a woman of great courage and nobility, capable of great things but born at the wrong time. This was the story she told him, and he seemed to believe her. She loved him deeply, without fear, knowing he would never turn on her. His sharp, animal odor filled her lungs as she breathed in.

  Cherry blossoms gave way to wisteria, those harbingers of summer. These in turn gave way to the red leaves of autumn, which blazed on the hills for weeks on end, more beautiful than any flowers. Yoshiko's monkey became slightly ill, and she took him up to the hills, where she let him loose to find the medicinal grasses he needed to cure himself.

  Winter arrived, and fine snow dusted the earth like pure white face powder. Yoshiko was reclining, completely naked and up to her chest in the steaming water of a hot spring. Snowflakes were sifting down in endless spirals, only to be instantly annihilated in the scalding water.

  Yoshiko bowed her head and regarded her frail body. Her bones were plainly visible, although she hadn't grown so thin that they stuck out too sharply. Her skin was still pale and unblemished, but not her hands. A woman's hands can never lie, least of all to the woman herself. Blue veins snaked over the backs of her hands, looking like faded indigo dye printed on white cloth. With the blood of so many people on them, it seemed odd that all that remained now was a bleached blue and white.

  She was thirty-six years old. Half of her life
was behind her, but it wasn't over yet. How long did she have? she wondered.

  Her breasts, still small and perfectly shaped, floated half-submerged in the water, the tiny red mole bobbing as if on an invisible string. It was still the same blood-red teardrop that had undone so many men. Was she ruined as well? Were there no more great missions for her to carry out? Would she live out the rest of her days like this?

  Yoshiko caught a glimpse of her own tired and ravaged face reflected on the surface of the water. Even a flower had to bloom brightly until the end, before it could earn the right to bow out gracefully. After her return to Tokyo, what had she done but hide herself away in her room day and night, idling away the months without purpose? In the spring, she climbed the hills to admire the flowers, and in the winter she rode the train up to the hot springs. It was an aimless and dispirited existence. Would her remaining days be one long, slow death? Was Princess Hsien-tzu, the fourteenth daughter of Prince Su, just an ordinary woman in the vast sea of humanity?

  Never! Yoshiko leapt up suddenly, naked from head to toe, and dashed off, water streaming off" her body. At the inn, Ah-fu, the monkey, watched her uncomprehendingly as she made a phone call, still stark naked and too full of feverish energy even to throw on a robe.

  The person she was phoning was Katsuko Tojo, the wife of Japan's prime minister, Hideki Tojo. At one time, she and Yoshiko were quite close—Yoshiko avidly courted her friendship, and the two became very familiar.

  If Yoshiko were to come out of retirement, she needed to find a backer. It was 1943, and the Pacific War was at a height, with U.S.-Japanese relations at an all-time low. The Japanese people were tasting the bitter fruit of a war waged against themselves, while China's long-suffering masses struggled to survive in their war-torn homeland. Yoshiko could claim either nation as her "homeland." She wished with all her heart for an end to the fighting and dreamed of a day when Japan and China would be united. If only she had wings to fly back to China on a mission of peace and speak to General Chiang Kai-shek. She honestly believed she could convince him if given the chance.

  She waited for the operator to put her call through. At last Katsuko answered.

  "Madam Tojo," she said hopefully. "This is Yoshiko—do you remember me?"

  There was silence on the other end.

  "It's Yoshiko," she said more urgently, her heart pounding. "I know it's been a long time since we last saw each other. . . . Yes, that's right. Yes ... I'd like to return to China. Sino-Japanese peace talks can't go forward without an intermediary, and since I'm quite familiar with the Nationalist government, I'm confident that I— Oh, no. I never said I'd retired. . . ."

  Although the woman on the other end of the line treated her perfunctorily, Yoshiko was riding high on a wave of self-confidence and didn't even notice the other woman's indifference. She plunged on, headlong, in a final, desperate attempt to sell herself.

  "Please, just give me this one last chance! Tell Mr. Tojo, and send me—"

  A loud buzzing sound in the receiver told her she had been cut off.

  "Hello? Madam Tojo?"

  Nobody was interested in Yoshiko anymore. Nobody.

  Even if Tojo were interested in using Yoshiko (which he wasn't), he certainly wouldn't have been interested in her proposal. The great general Hideki Tojo had no intention whatsoever of holding any kind of peace talks. Japan's mission was to establish the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere by bringing China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Siam, and all the rest of Asia under its control. From there, it would branch out to control the entire world.

  Yoshiko Kawashima was just a pawn on this world political chessboard. It didn't matter to her masters whether she lived or died, but they had let her live, and now she was scoffing at their generosity by meddling in matters that didn't concern her. Her feelings were like wild horses—once they were let loose to run, they galloped away, out of control. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She hadn't changed at all. Maybe it was something in her blood, a fatal flaw with which she was born. She could easily live out the rest of her life quietly, forgetting her past and keeping to herself. But she couldn't fight her nature. Unable to break free, unable to run away, she was bound to history. She couldn't forget who she was or what she had done. She hurled herself back into the web, unable or unwilling to accept that she was out of her depth.

  Yoshiko booked passage on a ship bound for China. One day, dressed in a cheongsam, dark glasses, and a scarf that whipped in the cutting wind, she came to Tung—hsing Lou, her old Tientsin stomping ground.

  It was in ruins. The big sign that once hung so proudly from the front of the building was just a broken old board; the building itself was a mere heap of rubble. Crumbled bricks and broken tiles, some bearing traces of bloodstains, were all that remained of the once-imposing restaurant. It was absurd even to think of rebuilding it.

  This was the monkey's first time in these strange surroundings. He crouched warily on her shoulder, hardly daring to move as he stared, wide-eyed, at the desolation around him.

  Picking up her suitcases, Yoshiko started walking down the street. Even with Ah-fu as a companion, she was still alone. Where could she go? She might as well go to Peking.

  As she walked along, deep in thought, a crude voice stopped her short.

  "Hey! You!" the voice yelled. "Bow when you see a soldier of the Imperial Army!"

  Trembling with suppressed rage, she stood stubbornly, rooted to the ground. Was this to be the fruit of her labors, the only repayment for her sacrifices?

  Slowly, ever so slowly, she took off her dark glasses and looked the cocky young Japanese soldier right in the eye. He was very young, a new enlistee, one of the men brought in to replace the previous generation. She faced him mutely for a long while. It was a standoff. He was determined to see her bow, but she didn't budge.

  At last Yoshiko spoke, her voice weary but firm and clear:

  "Do you realize who I am?"

  21

  "Do you realize who I am?"

  The words echoed in the packed courtroom, weary but firm. As arrogant as ever, Yoshiko seemed to be looking down her nose at all present. They were beneath her notice. Of course, at that very moment she was a captured spy, a criminal, and worthless in their eyes as well. She had lived a full life, this woman, caught between two nations, two loyalties. Was there truly any crime in that?

  Her smile was like ice.

  "The people I associated with were all big shots. Are they also being interrogated by a bunch of nobodies like yourselves? I don't know whether to laugh or cry! None of your government officials, even Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself, are my equals!"

  The magistrate shifted uncomfortably—at some level what she said was true.

  She raised her chin high. Was she throwing down a gauntlet? She was a princess, and she expected to be treated like one. It was lost on her that in comparison to the powerful forces of history, she was nothing.

  The magistrate was trying to establish a chronology of her life. He produced a tall stack of photographs, which he placed, one by one, before her. Reading off the names of the people in the pictures, he asked her:

  "Do you remember these people now?"

  She saw the face of almost every man she had ever known. There were a lot of them. He kept on reciting the names, but she cut him off midsyllable.

  "There's no point in your making me look at these things again, Your Honor," she said sarcastically. "I don't know any of these people!"

  Next, the judge took out a large pile of documents.

  "These depositions all pertain to your tenure as commander in chief of the Pacification Army. Ten prisoners have testified to serving under you. Furthermore, we have written evidence that you once commanded several thousand soldiers, brutally murdered members of the resistance, instigated several bloody riots, and directly or indirectly caused the deaths of countless numbers of your own countrymen."

  Seized by a sudden inspiration, she quickly demanded:


  "When was all this supposedly going on?"

  "Starting in the twentieth year of the Republic—that is, 1931—and continuing for ten years, altogether."

  Yoshiko let out a harsh cackle, as though she had just heard a particularly ridiculous joke.

  "Ha!" she blurted out. "That's a good one, Your Honor! I was born in Japan in the fifth year of the Taisho reign—that's 1916 to you Chinese. Do you know how to add? In 1931, I was fifteen years old, just a child! How could I have led thousands of soldiers to battle? How could a girl of fifteen do all those horrible things?"

  "Why does the accused deliberately falsify her age?" the judge demanded severely. "Is she attempting to conceal her crimes?"

  The year was 1946, and anyone could see that Yoshiko was a woman of about forty, haggard and thin, her face lined with wrinkles that could never be erased. Even if she were speaking the truth, nobody would have believed her. She fooled no one but herself—everyone else saw through her little ruse. Sitting behind bars as the evidence of her guilt piled up around her made her desperate—the end of the road was near. She was sinking fast, but still she refused to give up, clutching at any splinter of hope with her last ounce of strength. Even if it was a million to one, she wouldn't let any chance for survival slip by.