THE CHINA LOVER
Ian Buruma, The Penguin Press, US$26.95
Ian Buruma’s The China Lover is a noteworthy addition to the large number of books reflecting the West’s love affair with China. A fictionalised biography, the novel chronicles the life of Manchurian-born Japanese Yoshiko Yamaguchi who became a celebrated singer/actress known as the Chinese star, Ri Koran. Buruma recreates her intriguing life during the 50 years of Japan’s tumultuous modern history when she passed herself off as Chinese while assisting the war effort to promote Japan’s Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity’s Sphere policy.
A fascinatingly evocative rendition of one woman’s life as she kept reinventing herself, Yamaguchi’s career started in her teens when her entrancing voice captured the hearts of the Chinese as well as the Japanese occupiers of that country. Hired by Japan’s propaganda machine to make films that fostered Japan’s imperial rule, her dramatic turn in China Nights where she sang the title song of the same name immortalised her image as a dramatic actress.
Though not as intrusively propagandist as “Tokyo Rose”, Yamaguchi nevertheless had to flee to Japan at war’s end when the Chinese discovered she was actually Japanese and not one of them. Later, she went to the US and dabbled in Hollywood films (as Shirley Yamaguchi), then married the celebrated Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. Their tempestuous marriage ended in divorce, after which she returned to Japan to become a TV journalist.
Yamaguchi’s life is narrated by three different characters in the novel during various stages of her life. Now 88 and married to a Japanese diplomat, she lives in Japan after serving in the Upper House of Councillors of the parliament.
With his intimate knowledge of Japanese culture and politics, Buruma has created an extraordinary blend of historical facts with a romantic fiction that makes this fascinating woman’s life truly memorable.
Isabel T Escoda
