The China Lover: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: emperor system, pink movies, crazy foreigner, Eastern Jewel, Kanto Army, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The second novel (following 1991's Playing the Game) from nonfiction specialist Buruma (Behind the Mask, etc.) is based with biographical diligence on the life of the Japanese actress known variously as Ri Koran, Yoshiko Yamaguchi and (in American films) Shirley Yamaguchi. Narrated by gay cinephile Sidney Vanoven, part one is driven by his cultural and sexual fascination with Japan, fired from the moment he arrives during America's postwar occupation. Buruma's colorful evocation of young Sidney's obsessions, which include Ri Koran, is further enlivened by Sidney's fanciful encounters with clueless visiting Americans (including a libidinous Truman Capote). Part two, set before WWII, is narrated by Sato Daisuke, whose shadowy connection to the film industry intersects over the years with Ri Koran's rise to stardom, but their story gets overwhelmed by Buruma's meticulous attention to Japan's invasion of China. Part three, set in more contemporary times, is narrated by a Japanese scriptwriter caught up in the Palestinian struggle—a story reported by an elderly Yoshiko, now host of a Japanese TV talk show. Less would have been more in this competent but overstuffed story. (Sept.)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wendy Law-Yone During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria from 1932 to 1945, the studios of the Manchurian Film Association produced a series of propaganda movies intended for Chinese audiences. These musicals and melodramas -- invariably featuring romance between a beautiful Chinese woman and a handsome Japanese man -- were huge hits in the occupied territories, and their principal box-office star was the doe-eyed singer and actress best known to the Western world as Shirley Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi Yoshiko (as she was known in her early days) was born in Manchuria to Japanese parents and grew up speaking both Mandarin and Japanese. With the advantage of fluent Mandarin, in addition to good looks and a fashionable coloratura, Yamaguchi was perfectly suited to play the leading lady in a succession of movies that catapulted her to fame. She played the part so convincingly -- suppressing her Japanese identity under the Chinese stage name of Li Xianglan (or Ri Koran, in the Japanese version) -- that adoring audiences were totally taken in. After the Japanese surrender, she was arrested by the Chinese government and charged with collaborating with the enemy, a capital crime. Only by producing proof of her pedigree as a bona fide Japanese was she exonerated and allowed to leave for Japan. Though apparently plagued ever after by guilt for contributing to wartime deception, Yamaguchi continued on a steady path to stardom. She went on to make a few B-movies in Hollywood in the 1950s, appeared on Japanese television as a talk-show host venturing as far afield as Vietnam and Palestine, and settled into politics as a member of the Japanese diet for almost 20 years. Ian Buruma's The China Lover is a recreation of Yamaguchi's controversial, eventful and remarkably resilient career through the narratives of three men -- one American, two Japanese -- all of them confidants at different stages of her life. Sato Daisuke is a shadowy special agent for the Military Police in Mukden who has known Yamaguchi since she was a child, and is instrumental in launching her film career in the sinister police state of wartime Manchuria. Sidney Vanoven, a gay film buff from the American Midwest, gets to know Yamaguchi during the U.S. occupation of Japan, when he is part of the censorship team charged with overseeing the production of Japanese movies "to reflect the new spirit of 'individualism' and 'democracy' and 'respect for the rights of men and women.' " Sato Kenkichi is a disaffected student, drifter and soft porn filmmaker -- until he is hired as a script-writer for Yamaguchi's television talk show. As a result of one of their working trips to Palestine, Kenkichi ends up a terrorist in the Japanese Red Army. All three voices belong to convincing fictional narrators, due perhaps to the fact that at least two of them appear to be based on historical figures. Sato Kenkichi is clearly Kozo Okamoto, the JRA agent who participated in the massacre at Tel Aviv's Lod airport in 1972. Sydney Vanoven bears a striking resemblance, in character and career, to Donald Richie, the renowned American Japanophile and film critic, who is credited in the author's acknowledgments. As for the cast of characters representing the Japanese film industry, they present a playful challenge to the reader trying to figure out who is really who. Indeed, half the charm of this retelling of the Shirley Yamaguchi story lies in the sly twists of fact into what may or may not be fiction. What exactly happened and when? Did the notorious Manchu princess and cross-dressing spy known as Eastern Jewel really have a relationship with the young Yamaguchi? Did the American censors' attempt to encourage kissing on the screen really lead to the first kiss in the history of Japanese cinema? And in her mature years, did Yamaguchi really sound like an "airhead out of her depth," as described by her young terrorist friend? In her Hollywood days, Yamaguchi reportedly often asked, at the mention of a celebrity, "Is he knowable?" By the end of the three different memoirs that make up The China Lover, Shirley Yamaguchi, aka Li Xianglan, aka Ri Koran, appears to be unknowable after all -- and that is just right. Our heroine is far less interesting as a person than as a personification. She is, as one of her admirers describes her, "a typical portable shrine"; and revealing how it is made has never been the point of a portable shrine. In a rare departure from his books and critical essays on film, politics, culture and current events, Buruma, a distinguished journalist-scholar and Japanophile, has crafted in The China Lover a fascinating fictional biography -- not only of an iconic film star, but of film as an expression of a nation's culture and psyche. How fitting that he has put into practice at least two of the techniques of Japanese movie-making he mentions: "keeping a distance even in scenes of great emotion" and leaving things "open-ended, like life."
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; 1St Edition edition (September 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201943
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201943
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #314,965 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sex, lies and japanese film, September 24, 2008

By	Seth Faison (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An engrossing, wonderfully-written historical novel. Here's the premise: In 1940, at the height of Japan's military aggression during World War II, a movie called "China Nights" won the hearts of countless Japanese soldiers and patriots who were riveted by the stirring singing voice of the young girl who plays a Chinese orphan rescued by a Japanese officer who both loves and beats her. The singer became enormously popular, a symbol of subservience to Japan's self-image of benevolent but iron rule over Asia.

After Japan lost the war, the singer was accused of treason for helping her wartime captors. To escape execution, she revealed a secret -- that she was actually Japanese and had followed orders to pretend to be Chinese. She escaped to Japan and reinvented herself as a successful film actress, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, though she used the first name Shirley when she made it to Hollywood and Broadway.

Ian Buruma, a film buff and an accomplished writer of nonfiction about Asia, delivers a lushly rendered piece of historical fiction. Buruma conveys the exhilaration and devastation of Japan's military folly and its resulting moral hangover through the lens of the film world at the time. With a sharp yet generous eye, Buruma explores the moods and sensibilities of the movie business in wartime Shanghai and postwar Tokyo.

His novel seems to revel in and see through the filmmaking and its role in shaping memory and history. It's a cinematic story, in topic and form, made richer by the fertile emotional terrain of its fallible protagonists.

The story begins in Manchuria, narrated by a cultural official named Sato, whose day job is to promote cultural events that win over Chinese hearts and minds and whose nighttime pursuits satisfy a prodigious appetite for bedding Chinese actresses. As a Japanese patriot, Sato sneers at the haughty European colonials and is thrilled by news of Pearl Harbor.

Yet Sato is fascinated by the mysteries and challenges of life in a foreign culture, which fuel and soothe his restless nature. He also observes the realities of war with stark clarity, seeing Japan's military police as sadistic thugs whose real goal is to profit from illicit schemes and lawlessly exercise power over the helpless.

"The China Lover" overflows with intriguing characters, particularly Amakasu, a shadowy official who supervises Japan's propaganda efforts in China. I kept visualizing the oily haired fixer supreme who called the shots in the film "The Last Emperor" and put a pistol to his temple at the end.

Eventually, I put this novel down to look him up and discovered that Amakasu was indeed a true historical figure.

The second part of the book shifts to postwar Tokyo and is narrated by a young American soldier, Sidney, who works in the film censor's office, a perfect vantage point for watching a golden era of filmmaking begin to germinate. Buruma seems to know every nook and cranny of this landscape. Akira Kurosawa, Frank Capra, Truman Capote and others make charming, understated cameo appearances that give the story power.

In Tokyo, Yamaguchi refuses to acknowledge her wartime past and personifies Japan's painful mixture of denial, humility and determination to work her way out of previous moral failings of the war, all under the eye of a MacArthur-led occupation by the Americans. Those swirling pressures seem to get funneled into the creativity of film studios, with palpable results. "It was the natural flow of images, the beautifully timed cuts, and the camera work, which was intimate without being intrusive," Buruma writes. "There were few close-ups, and no false glamour. Here was life itself being discreetly but closely observed."

After a tempestuous marriage to a headstrong architect, Yamaguchi remarries and moves abroad, effectively disappearing from the public eye. Yet she reappears in the 1960s and reinvents herself again, this time as a TV journalist for a daytime program aimed at Japanese housewives, "What a Weird World: Yoshiko Yamaguchi Reports From the Front Line."

She ventures to Vietnam and Beirut to report on war and terrorism and focuses on the moral crimes she sees. The third section of this novel is improbably yet persuasively narrated by a Japanese terrorist who is jailed in Beirut in the 1970s when a band of Japanese radicals gets caught. (Yamaguchi later became a member of parliament for the conservative ruling party. She still lives in Tokyo.)

This novel, while finely drawn and true to the spirit of the history it covers, falls short in a couple of places. The character of Yamaguchi comes across as earnest and sincere, but she is just not as compelling as the narrators, who each see the moral compromises in others and in themselves. She feels flat in comparison. And though the characterization of each narrator is distinct, their voices all sound suspiciously like . . . Buruma's. It's a trade-off: Buruma's sharp insights and historical perspective tumble off the tongues of each narrator, and I was grateful for them, but sometimes they feel too smart for the mouth from which they spring.

Like many historic events, Japan's aggression in Asia during World War II is often remembered by the way we saw it depicted on film, whether in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Letters From Iwo Jima" or even in the black-and-white clips of old newsreels. Buruma knows the persuasive pull -- and the misleading simplicity -- that film can have on memory and history. His novel takes us deep into events of the 20th century and shows us with vivid strokes what it felt like.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great characters, history, and culture, January 24, 2009

By	Mary Reinert (Nevada, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you like intricate plots, interesting characters, foreign settings, and historical accuracy, this is a book for you. I knew absolutely nothing about Japanese/Chinese relations or Manchuria during the war and I must admit I had to reread chapters in the first part of the book to gather an understanding of the history of the times, but after that I was totally pulled in.

The first chapter is so compelling and demonstrates the effect stories and imagination can have on the human condition. And then as the book unfolds, one begins to see how stories (movies) can have an effect on an entire nation; are they stories for the imagination or propaganda or both.

Although Ri Koran (or Shirley Yamaguchi or whatever her name could be) is the center of the story, the three men that tell her story at three different times in her life are the most interesting. They provide perfect foils to her personality as she evolves from someone who is knowingly manipulated to someone who manipulates those around her. All of this set in three different parts of the world in vastly different circumstances.

I loved this book. I loved the fact that real historical characters play a part (Truman Capote comes to mind), and the authenticity of the historical events as they unfolded in China, Japan, United States, and Lebanon. There are so many characters in this book and so many little unique connections between them, it was a fascinating read.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The amazing story of Ri Koran/Shirley Yamaguchi/Yoshiko Yamaguchi, September 7, 2009

By	J. I. Uitto (Brooklyn, NY, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The China Lover: A Novel (Paperback)

A work of fiction, this interesting novel follows the real-life Japanese star Yoshiko Yamaguchi through the eyes of three men who are all captivated by her. The first part of the book takes place in China during the Japanese occupation before and during the Pacific War. Born in 1920 in the Japanese puppet state, Manchukuo, Yamaguchi is fluent in both her native language and Chinese. Blessed with exotic beauty and a lovely singing voice, she is soon to be used by the Japanese military propaganda machinery as a singer and actor in movies propagating the benevolence of the occupation to the occupied lands. By design of her militaristic masters she is required to hide her Japanese origins and ends up playing the part of a Chinese woman falling in love with handsome and good Japanese officers over and over again. Her rising star and success in Mukden and Shanghai under the name Ri Koran is witnessed by a kindly Japanese man working as producer in the film industry who knows her real identity. Highly critical of his militaristic compatriots, Mr. Sato's fortunes wax and wane in the treacherous wartime China but he remains always protective of Ri Koran who herself grows used to her own power over men of many walks of life.

Once the war is over, the heroine returns to Japan with dreams of hitting the big time in USA. She reinvents herself as Shirley Yamaguchi, playing the role of a beautiful Japanese woman this time falling in love with American soldiers in the movies. Her transformation is observed by a young homosexual fan from Ohio serving in the film censorship department of General MacArthur's occupation forces. He watches Shirley's debut on the Ed Sullivan show in a New York apartment in a party where the famous Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi is present. In real life, Noguchi and Yamaguchi fell for each other and were married in 1951. The second part of the book circles around Yamaguchi's American ambitions, her tumultuous marriage with Noguchi in the coastal former capital of Kamakura, and the decadent world of occupation Tokyo where the often moronic American officers try to change the country's culture in their own moralistic ways (one can't help noting a certain resemblance to later doomed projects to democraticise Iraq and the rest of the Middle East).

In the third and final part of the book, Yoshiko Yamaguchi has again transformed herself. Having married an up-and-coming diplomat, Yamaguchi renewed her commitment to the plight of the developing countries and oppressed people around the world turning herself into a popular TV journalist. Her intentions as pure as always and her heart in the right place, she again naively allowed powerful men to manipulate herself. She was charmed by men like Yasser Arafat, Kim Il Sung, Colonel Gaddafi, even Idi Amin, whom she met through her wide travels as a journalist. This time her story is related through a Japanese Red Army member lingering in a Lebanese jail.

Ian Buruma, a professor at New York's Bard College and a renowned scholar of Japanese and Chinese cultural history, has crafted a very interesting story that weaves fact and fiction into a seamless whole. He manages to relate the story to the big historical narrative of Japan from the 1930s to the 1970s, incorporating much of fascinating detail and real-life events (the iconic Noguchi comes across as a self-centred idealist). One of the themes of the book relates to movies, a topic that Buruma knows intimately. Apart from the protagonist being an actress in her first career, all three men whose stories the fiction part of the book tells are movie buffs. Each one of them makes clever cameo appearances in the section that follows their story, but never again do they meet with Yamaguchi: she is done with them by that time. The book also has a constant erotic overtone, without ever becoming overtly explicit (well, not too crudely explicit at least).

Yoshiko Yamaguchi's life has been a long and eventful one. She reinvented herself several times, from a Chinese singer and actress to a Japanese-American one, to a TV journalist and, finally, to a national politician in Japan. In 1974 she ran successfully for the Japanese Diet, where she was initially sponsored by the notoriously corrupt prime minister and money politician Kakuei Tanaka. The question whether she was indeed always manipulated by powerful men or whether she used them for her own purposes is probably moot. Most likely, both are true. She is still alive and living in Tokyo at the age of 89.