yoshiko yamaguchi[ 山口 淑子]/ li xiang len [李香蘭]

 

Three years have passed and here I am out of the blue with a new music post that was actually supposed to be posted oh so long ago.
Today's feature is Yoshiko Yamaguchi, or on Chinese Li Xianglen, a Japanese singer and actress active in the 30s and 40s. Ms. Yamaguchi is one of those people with an helluva interesting biography. Born to Japanese parents in 1920 in Manchuria, Yoshiko Yamaguchi started taking music lessons as a therapy (she suffered a bout of tuberculosis). Soon she began acting in movies made by Manchuria Film Production, was billed as Li Xianglan (a name given to her by her Chinese godfather) - which was ofcourse, motivated by political reasons. Political controversies didn't avoid her. 

According to her Wiki entry: " The 1940 film China Nights (支那の夜) also known as Shanghai Nights (上海の夜), by Manchuria Film Productions, is especially controversial. It is unclear whether it was a "National Policy Film" and portrays Japanese soldiers in both good and bad lights. In this film, Li Xianglan portrayed a young woman of extreme anti-Japanese sentiment who came to fall in love with a Japanese man. A key turning point in the film has the young Chinese woman being slapped by the Japanese man, but instead of hatred, she reacts with gratitude. The film was met with great aversion among the Chinese audience as they believed that the Chinese female character was a sketch of debasement and inferiority. 23,000 Chinese people paid to see the film in 1943,^[2] but after the war ended one of her classic songs, "Suzhou Serenade" (蘇州夜曲), was banned in mainland China and continues to be. A few years later when confronted by angry Chinese reporters in Shanghai, Yoshiko apologized and cited as pretext her inexperienced youth at the time of filmmaking, choosing not to reveal her Japanese identity. Though her Japanese nationality was never divulged in the Chinese media until after the Sino-Japanese War, it was brought to light by Japanese press when she performed in Japan under her assumed Chinese name and as the Japan-Manchuria Goodwill Ambassadress. Oddly enough, when she visited Japan during this period, she was criticized for being too Chinese in dress and in language.

Still, in that same period she managed to rise as one of the Seven Great Singing Stars.
However, by the end of WWII, she was under investigation by the Chinese authorities (they suspected she was a Japanese spy), and was banned from using her Chinese name. So she moved to Japan, where she launched her movie career under her Japanese name, and was even featured in Scandal (Shubun (醜聞)) by the acclaimed (and my favorite) movie director Akira Kurosawa. In the movie, she plays a popular classical singer Miyako Saijo who meets a not so known painter played by Toshiro Mifune, who offers her a ride on his motorbike. However, they are spotted by the papparazzi, who work for the tabloid magazine Amour.  As Saijo refuses to grant the photographers an interview, they plot their revenge by taking a picture of the couple having breakfast on a balcony and print it under the headline 'The Love Story of Miyako Saijo'.
The painter sues the magazine and hires a shabby lawyer played by Takashi Shimura. What happens after, I won't tell you, the movie is good, so you should better see it.
In the 50s, she was featured in some Hollywood films, such as Japanese War Bride, and House of Bamboo,and married the renowned Japanese - American artist Isamu Noguchi.
For a short time, she returned to make Chinese movies, but gave up on movies altogether, and returned to Japan, where she worked as a reporter and was even a member of the Japanese Diet for 18 years.

Now, as for this "album", it's actually a selection made by yours truly, as I searched the internet for her songs. Most of the songs are sung in Chinese.
Enjoy!

Download here