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User:Cckerberos/Kawashima

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Yoshiko Kawashima
Yoshiko Kawashima, Colonel General of Manchukuo, in uniform
Born(1907-05-24)24 May 1907
Beijing
Died25 March 1948(1948-03-25) (aged 40)
Known forActivity as a spy, portrayal in film, literature, etc.
Aisin Gioro Xianyu
Traditional Chinese愛新覺羅·顯玗
Simplified Chinese爱新觉罗·显玗
Adopted name
Traditional Chinese金璧輝
Simplified Chinese金璧辉
Courtesy name
Traditional Chinese東珍
Simplified Chinese东珍

Yoshiko Kawashima (川島 芳子, Kawashima Yoshiko, 24 May 1907 – 25 March 1948) was a Manchu princess brought up in Japan, who served as a spy in the service of the Japanese Kwantung Army and Manchukuo during the Second World War. Originally named Aisin Gioro Xianyu (愛新覺羅·顯玗) with the courtesy name Dongzhen (東珍, literally meaning "Eastern Jewel"), her Chinese name was Jin Bihui (simplified Chinese: 金璧辉; traditional Chinese: 金璧輝; pinyin: Jīn Bìhuī). She is sometimes known in fiction by the pseudonym as the "Eastern Mata Hari”. She was executed as a traitor by the Kuomintang after the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Adoption and childhood edit

Aisin Gioro Xianyu was born in Beijing the 14th daughter to Shanqi, Prince Su (肅親王) of the Manchu imperial family. Little is known about her mother, the 4th and youngest of Shanqi's secondary wives, but there were rumors at the time that she was of at least partial Japanese descent. Shanqi was known as a reformer within the Qing government and had connections with the Japanese due to his interest in the Meiji Restoration as a potential example for China to follow. Following the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, Shanqi and his family moved to the Japanese-administered territory of Lüshun (Port Arthur).[1]

Xianyu was given for adoption to Kawashima Naniwa in either 1914 or 1915 (sources differ). Kawashima had moved to China in his twenties after becoming convinced that independent Mongolian and Manchurian states serving as a buffer against Russia were necessary to Japanese security. He was drafted to serve as an interpreter for the Japanese army during the Boxer Rebellion where he came to the attention of Shanqi after he successfully negotiated the surrender of the Forbidden City to the Eight-Nation Alliance without bloodshed. Kawashima was granted court rank and hired as a police official under Shanqi. The two became friends and, following the Xinhai Revolution, Kawashima served as Shanqi's representative with the Japanese and managed his family's affairs and finances in Lüshun.[2]

The reasons for the adoption are unclear. Kawashima himself claimed that it was merely because he and his wife were childless, but according to another of Shanqi's children, the adoption was done to strengthen the ties between Kawashima and Shanqi. During Shanqi's time in Lüshun, he and Kawashima had worked towards the restoration of the Qing and in the Manchu-Mongol Independence Movement. However, after Kawashima was ordered to return to Japan in 1913, his lack of formal status made Japanese officials wary of accepting him as Shanqi's representative.[3]

Xianyu, now known as Yoshiko Kawashima, came to live with her adoptive parents in Akabane, Tokyo and attended what would later become Tokyo Gakugei University Koganei Elementary School. The family moved to Kawashima's hometown of Matsumoto, Nagano in 1921. There she became an auditing student at Matsumoto Girls' High School (松本高等女学校). Her time as a high school student was short lived, however. Her father died of diabetes the following year and because she was considered an unruly student, the school was unwilling to grant her long-time leave so that she could attend the funeral in China. She therefore had to withdraw from school. Her mother predeceased her father by a month, reportedly the result of taking an abortifacient. Kawashima Naniwa became the de facto guardian for Shanqi's remaining underage children following his death and sent many to study in Japan or at schools run by the South Manchuria Railway.[4]

1924 was another significant turning point in Yoshiko's life. She shaved her head on October 6 and wrote in her diary that she was "ending her life as a woman forever".[5] She began wearing male clothes as well as referring to herself as male and asking others to do the same. This dramatic change in Yoshiko's behavior has been popularly attributed to a rape or some other sort of sexual relationship with her adopted father, but there is no definitive evidence supporting this. Some of Yoshiko's brothers have said that they support the rape theory, but others who knew the family at the time reject it; Yoshiko herself never made any statements either way. That same year she also made an unsuccessful attempt to kill herself, reportedly due to an unsuccessful relationship.[6]

Following these incidents, Kawashima sent Yoshiko back to her brother Xianli who was living in Shanghai. To maintain his relationship with the family, Kawashima adopted Lianlü (廉鋁), a daughter of Shanqi's eldest son and successor Xianzhang, naming her Renko Kawashima.[7]

Marriage edit

In 1927, Yoshiko married Ganjuurjab, the 24 year old second son of Babujab, the deceased leader of the Manchu-Mongol Independence Movement. According to Xianli, the two had been childhood friends in Toyko, and Yoshiko asked for him to agree to the match after she exchanged a series of letters with Ganjuurjab. But her niece Renko suggests that Yoshiko was not positive about the arrangement. The marriage was held at the Yamato Hotel in Lüshun and was attended by a number of important Japanese military officers, including Col. Daisaku Kōmoto, who arranged the assassination of Zhang Zuolin the following year. [8]

Yoshiko initially moved with Ganjuurjab to Inner Mongolia. However, she soon returned to Lüshun after being unable to adjust to the rural lifestyle and fighting with his mother who found her an unsuitable bride. The marriage ended after only two years and resulted in no children, reportedly because Yoshiko had had herself sterilized before hand. After the failure of the marriage, Yoshiko returned to her brother in Shanghai[9]

Espionage career edit

There she met Japanese Ryukichi Tanaka, a military attaché and intelligence officer at the Japanese legation. They began a relationship the following year.[10] In 1931, Yoshiko was asked by Major-General Kenji Doihara, Seishirō Itagaki, Chief of the Intelligence Section of the Kwantung Army, and Tanaka to smuggle Empress Wanrong from Tianjin following Pu Yi's escape to Dalian.[11]

Yoshiko's most significant contribution came during the 1932 January 28 Incident (also known as the Shanghai Incident). According to Tanaka's postwar testimony at the Tokyo war crime trials, he was ordered by Itagaki to cause an incident in Shanghai to draw attention away from Japanese actions in Manchuria. He achieved this by asking Yoshiko to enflame the workers of the Sanyou Factory, which were known for their communist activities, against a nearby Nichiren temple. She did so on January 18, leading dozens of workers to attack five Japanese monks as they passed in front of the factory. Three of the monks were seriously injured, one of whom died on January 24. Following this Tanaka also used Yoshiko to pass money to Japanese nationalist groups in the city, who then burned the workers' factory.[12]

Over the following weeks, the situation in Shanghai worsened until armed conflict broke out on January 28. During the conflict, Yoshiko surveyed Chinese military positions and issued reports to Gen. Kanichiro Tashiro, chief of staff of the Japanese forces involved. She also gathered information while acting as a socialite at dance halls and night clubs.[13]

Following the establishment of Manchukuo in 1932, Yoshiko's relationship with Tanaka gradually worsened. He asked Itagaki to arrange a position for Yoshiko as the chief of Wanrong's attendants, but she returned to Shanghai a month later after arguing with Pu Yi. Itagaki then asked her brother Xianli, who was working as Ma Zhanshan's secretary, to bring her to Dalian. Tanaka himself was recalled to Japan later that year.[14]

Yoshiko now began a relationship with Gen. Hayao Tada, Chief Military Advisor to Manchukuo. In February 1933 she adopted the Chinese name Jin Bihui (金璧輝) and became commander of the Manchukuo Ankoku Army (安国軍), also known as the Teikoku Army (定国軍), for Operation Nekka, the invasion of Rehe Province. This appointment and the army's activities received wide coverage in Japanese newspapers, earning her the nickname "The Joan of Arc of Manchukuo", but this was primarily for propaganda purposes; her role in direct military operations was limited.[15][16]

Following her use for propaganda in Operation Nekka, Yoshiko's reputation within the Japanese military suffered. She became depressed, and Tada had her sent back to Japan later that year.[17]

Media Reputation edit

Kawashima became a well-known and popular figure in Manchukuo society, making appearances on radio broadcasts, and even issuing a record of her songs. Numerous fictional and semi-fictional stories of her exploits were published in newspapers and also in the pulp fiction press. However, her very popularity created issues with the Kwantung Army, as her utility as an intelligence asset was long gone, and her value as a propaganda symbol was compromised by her increasingly critical tone against the Japanese military's exploitative policies in Manchukuo as a base of operations against China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and she gradually faded from public sight.

After the end of the war, on 11 November 1945, a news agency reported that "a long sought-for beauty in male costume was arrested in Peking by the Chinese counter-intelligence officers." In 1948, Kawashima was tried as a traitor (Hanjian) by the Nationalist Government under her Chinese name (Jin Bihui).[18] She was executed by a shot into the back of her head.[19]

Legacy edit

 
Yoshiko Kawashima (left) with Ryukichi Tanaka (right) the man who put her on the Intelligence payroll at the time they lived together

Kawashima has been depicted in numerous movies from 1932 until the present day by many actresses. She was featured in the movie The Last Emperor, where she appeared as "Eastern Jewel", played by Maggie Han. A film titled Sen'un Ajia no Joō about her was released in Japan in 1957.[20] Anita Mui played Kawashima Yoshiko in a 1990 Hong Kong-produced film, The Last Princess of Manchuria. She is a prominent character in the 2007 drama Ri Kouran, which tells the story of the life of Yoshiko Yamaguchi, also known as Li Xianglan (李香蘭). She was portrayed by Japanese idol Rei Kikukawa.

More scholarly and peer-reviewed research exists on Kawashima Yoshiko in English in Dan Shao's Princess, Traitor, Soldier, Spy: Aisin Gioro Xianyu and the Dilemma of Manchu Identity and in Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire, edited by Mariko Asano Tamanoi.[21]

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, by Maureen Lindley, is a 2008 novel about the life of Yoshiko Kawashima. Kawashima was featured as a character in Ian Buruma's novel The China Lover, released in 2008.

Meisa Kuroki portrays Kawashima in the 2008 Japanese drama Dansō no Reijin: Kawashima Yoshiko no Shōgai. An eight-year-old Kawashima Yoshiko makes a cameo appearance in the PlayStation 2 game Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

References edit

  1. ^ Kamisaka 38-44, 59-60, 69
  2. ^ Kamisaka 45-46, 49, 51
  3. ^ Kamisaka 66-68
  4. ^ Kamisaka 71, 75, 83, 85-87
  5. ^ 「永遠に女を清算した」 Kamisaka 90
  6. ^ Kamisaka 90-93
  7. ^ Kamisaka 96-97
  8. ^ Kamisaka 102-103
  9. ^ Kamisaka 104-107
  10. ^ Kamisaka 112-114
  11. ^ Kamisaka 118-119
  12. ^ Kamisaka 120-122
  13. ^ Kamisaka 124-125
  14. ^ Kamisaka 133-134
  15. ^ Kamisaka 134-138
  16. ^ Woods, Princess Jin
  17. ^ Kamisaka 142
  18. ^ Dan Shao
  19. ^ Foreign News: Foolish Elder Brother, TIME, Monday, Apr. 05, 1948
  20. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ryoichi-sasakawa-1592324.html
  21. ^ Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005.

Bibliography edit

  • Deacon, Richard (1986). A History of the Japanese Secret Service. ISBN 0-425-07458-7: Berkley Publishing Company. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |location= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  • Jowett, Philip (2005). Rays of the Rising Sun, Volume 1: Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45, China and Manchukuo. Helion and Company Ltd. ISBN 1-874622-21-3.
  • Grant De Pauw, Linda (200). Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3288-4.
  • Lee, Lillian (1992). The Last Princess of Manchuria. William Morrow & Co;. ISBN 0-688-10834-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  • Woods, Willa Lou (1937). Princess Jin, the Joan of Arc of the Orient. World Publishing Company. ASIN: B00085H5CI.
  • Yamamuro, Shinichi (2005). Manchuria Under Japanese Domination. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3912-1.
  • Lindley, Maureen (2008), The private papers of Eastern Jewel, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0-7475-9116-0
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