Yoshiko Yamaguchi obit

Yoshiko Yamaguchi, 94, Actress in Propaganda Films, Dies

She was not on the list.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi, a singer and actress who starred in Japanese propaganda films during Japan’s brutal military occupation of China in the 1930s and ’40s and who, after narrowly escaping execution by the Chinese after the war, helped normalize relations between the nations, died on Sept. 7 in Tokyo. She was 94.

Her death was announced by a family spokesman, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

Ms. Yamaguchi’s life was marked by a series of self-reinventions, most of them forced on her by the same historic events that changed the face of Asia in the 20th century. In recent years, her story became a touchstone for film histories, television dramas, a novel and an opera — all in some way exploring national identity in Asia.

Beginning in 1938, when she was 18, she was a movie star known in China as Li Xianglan, the Chinese pseudonym she assumed to hide her Japanese identity in films promoting Japanese occupation. After the war, she lived as an exile from China, the country of her birth; acted in 1950s Hollywood B-movies under the name Shirley Yamaguchi; and became a cosmopolitan voice for Chinese-Japanese détente in the Japanese Parliament.

In the United States Ms. Yamaguchi had starring roles in King Vidor’s “Japanese War Bride,” a 1952 film co-starring Don Taylor; “House of Bamboo,” a 1955 film noir directed by Samuel Fuller and co-starring Robert Stack; and a short-lived 1956 Broadway musical, “Shangri-La,” based on the James Hilton novel “Lost Horizon.”

She played her major roles, on and off the screen, in Asia.

Born to Japanese parents in Manchuria, the northeast region of China that was invaded by the Japanese in 1931 and held at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilian lives over the next 14 years, Ms. Yamaguchi was an 18-year-old Mandarin speaker when the Manchurian Film Association cast her in the first of a series of Chinese-language propaganda films.

At the time, she wrote in “My Life as Li Xianglan,” her 2004 autobiography, she did not understand the not-too-subtle message in the melodramatic romances she made, like “Honeymoon Express” (1938), “China Nights” (1940) and “Song of the White Orchid” (1942).


Filmography

Year , Title , Role

1938, Mí yùe kuài chē / Honeymoon Express (蜜月快車), Bride

1939, Byakuran no uta / Song of the White Orchid (白蘭の歌), Li Xue Xiang

富貴春夢 / Fùguì Chūnmèng,

冤魂復仇 / Yuānhún Fùchóu,

東遊記 / Dōngyóu Jì,

1940, Vow in the Desert (熱砂の誓い), Li Fangmei

Monkey King (孙悟空), Oriental Woman

China Nights (支那の夜), Chinese orphan

Toyuki, Liqin, typist

1941, Suzhou Night (蘇州の夜),

Kimi to boku (君と僕),

Tǐe xǔe hùi xīn (鐵血慧心),

君と僕,

1942, Yíng chūn hūa (迎春花),

Eternity (萬世流芳),

黃河,

1943, Chikai no gassho (誓ひの合唱),

Sayon's Bell (サヨンの鐘), Sayon

Fighting Street (戦ひの街),

1944, Yasen gungakutai (野戦軍楽隊), Ai Ran

Watashi no uguisu (私の鶯),

Noroshi wa Shanghai ni agaru, Yu Ying

1948, The Bright Day of My Life (わが生涯のかゞやける日),

Koun no isu,

情熱の人魚,

1949, Repatriation (帰国ダモイ),

Human Patterns (人間模样),

Shooting Star (流星),

果てしなき情熱,

1950, Scandal / Shubun (醜聞), Miyako Saijo 西条美也子

Escape at Dawn (暁の脱走), Harumi

初恋問答,

Women's Fashion (女の流行),

1952, Fuun senryobune (風雲千両船),

Woman of Shanghai (上海の女), Li Lili (Singer)

Sword for Hire (戦国無賴), Oryo

Foghorn (霧笛),

Japanese War Bride, Tae Shimizu

1953, The Last Embrace (擁抱), Yukiko Nogami

1954, The United States Steel Hour, Presento

土曜日の天使,

1955, House of Bamboo, Mariko

Jīn Píng Méi (金瓶梅), Pan Jinlian

The Red Skelton Hour, Guest vocalist

1956, The Legend of the White Serpent (白蛇傳), Madam White

Navy Wife, Akashi

1957, Shénmì měirén / The Lady of Mystery (神秘美人),

Robert Montgomery Presents (The Enemy), Hana

1958, Yí yè fēng líu / The Unforgettable Night (一夜風流), Ge Qiuxia

A Holiday in Tokyo (東京の休日), May Kawaguchi

Ankoru watto monogatari utsukushiki aishu (美しき哀愁　アンコール・ワット物語),