Yoshiko Yamaguchi

A recording of a 1950 concert performance in Sacramento, California, was discovered by a professor from the University of Chicago in 2012. The concert included six songs and was performed before an audience of Japanese Americans, many of whom had likely been interned during World War II. Speaking in 2012 about the concert, Yamaguchi said, "I sang with hope that I could offer consolation to the Japanese Americans, as I heard that they had gone through hardships during the war." She died at the age of 94 in Tokyo on September 7, 2014, exactly ten years after one of her fellow Seven Great Singing Stars, Gong Qiuxia.

In 1969, she became the host of The Three O'Clock You (Sanji no anata) TV show on Fuji Television, reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, Yamaguchi became very active in pro-Palestinian causes in Japan and personally favored the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1974, she was elected to the House of Councilors (the upper House of the Japanese parliament) as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, where she served for 18 years (three terms). She co-authored the book, Ri Kōran, Watashi no Hansei (Half My Life as Ri Kōran). She served as a Vice-President of the Asian Women's Fund. As part of the 1993 fall honors list, she was decorated with the Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class.

She returned to Japan and after retiring from the world of film in 1958, she appeared as a hostess and anchorwoman on TV talk shows. As a result of her marriage to the Japanese diplomat Hiroshi Ōtaka, she lived for a while in Burma (modern Myanmar). They remained married until his death in 2001.

She was credited as Shirley Yamaguchi in the Hollywood movies, Japanese War Bride (1952), House of Bamboo (1955), and Navy Wife (1956). She was once nicknamed The Judy Garland of Japan.

After becoming a journalist in the 1950s under the name Yoshiko Ōtaka (大鷹 淑子, Ōtaka Yoshiko), she was elected as a member of the Japanese parliament in 1974, and served for 18 years. After retiring from politics, she served as vice president of the Asian Women's Fund.

In the 1950s, she established her acting career as Shirley Yamaguchi in Hollywood and on Broadway (in the short-lived musical "Shangri-La") in the U.S. She married Japanese American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, in 1951. Yamaguchi was Japanese, but as someone who had grown up in China, she felt torn between two identities and later wrote that she felt attracted to Noguchi as someone else who was torn between two identities. Li spent in Vancouver, Canada between 1953 and 1954. They divorced in 1956. She revived the Li Hsiang-lan name and appeared in several Chinese-language films made in Hong Kong. Some of her 1950s Chinese films were destroyed in a studio fire and have not been seen since their initial releases. Her Mandarin hit songs from this period include "Three Years" (三年), "Plum Blossom" (梅花), "Childhood Times" (小時候), "Only You" (只有你), and "Heart Song" (心曲 – a cover of "Eternally").

In spite of the acquittal, the Chinese judges still warned Li to leave China immediately or she would risk being lynched; and so in 1946, she resettled in Japan and launched a new acting career there under the name Yoshiko Yamaguchi, working with directors such as Akira Kurosawa. Several of her post-war films cast her in parts that dealt either directly or indirectly with her wartime persona as a bilingual and bicultural performer. For example in 1949, Shin-Toho studios produced Repatriation (歸國「ダモイ」), an omnibus film which told four stories about the struggles of Japanese trying to return to Japan from the Soviet Union after having been taken prisoner following the defeat. The following year, Yamaguchi starred with actor Ryō Ikebe in Escape at Dawn (曉の脫走), produced by Toho and based on the novel Shunpuden (春婦傳). In the book, her character was a prostitute in a military brothel, but for this film her character was rewritten as a frontline entertainer who falls into a tragic affair with a deserter (Ikebe). In 1952, Yamaguchi appeared in Woman of Shanghai (上海の女), in which she reprised her pre-war persona as a Japanese woman passing for Chinese who becomes caught between the two cultures.

At the end of World War II, Li was arrested in Shanghai by the Kuomintang and sentenced to death by firing squad for treason and collaboration with the Japanese. As tensions subsequently arose between the Kuomintang and the Communists, she was scheduled to be executed at a Shanghai horse track on December 8, 1945. However, before she could be executed, her parents (at the time both under arrest in Beijing) managed to produce a copy of her birth certificate, proving she was not a Chinese national after all, and have her childhood Russian friend, Lyuba Monosova Gurinets, smuggle it into Shanghai inside the head of a geisha doll. Li was cleared of all charges (and possibly from the death penalty).

In 1943, Li appeared in the film Eternity. The film was shot in Shanghai, commemorating the centennial of the Opium War. The film, anti-British in nature and a collaboration between Chinese and Japanese film companies, was a hit, and Li became a national sensation. Her film songs with jazz and pop-like arrangements, such as her "Candy-Peddling Song" (賣糖歌) and "Quitting (Opium) Song" (戒菸歌), elevated her status to among the top singers in all Chinese-speaking regions in Asia overnight. Many songs recorded by Li during her Shanghai period became classics in Chinese popular music history. Other noteworthy hits include "Evening Primrose / Fragrance of the Night" (夜來香), "Ocean Bird" (海燕), "If Only" (恨不相逢未嫁時), and "Second Dream" (第二夢). By the 1940s, she had become one of the Seven Great Singing Stars.

The 1940 film, China Nights (中國の夜), 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" as it portrays Japanese soldiers in both a positive and negative light. Here, Li played a young woman of extreme anti-Japanese sentiment who falls 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. After the war, one of her classic songs, "Suzhou Serenade" (蘇州夜曲), was banned in China due to its association with this film. A few years later, when confronted by angry Chinese reporters in Shanghai, Li 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 the 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. When she landed in Japan in 1941 for a publicity tour, dressed in a cheongsam (or qípáo) and speaking Japanese with a Mandarin accent, the customs officer asked her upon seeing she had a Japanese passport and a Japanese name, "Don't you know that we Japanese are the superior people? Aren't you ashamed to be wearing third-rate Chink clothes and speaking their language as you do?"

Yoshiko made her debut as an actress and singer in the 1938 film, Honeymoon Express (蜜月快車), by Manchuria Film Production. She was billed as Li Hsiang-lan, pronounced Ri Kōran in Japanese. The adoption of a Chinese stage name was prompted by the film company's economic and political motives — a Manchurian girl who had command over both the Japanese and Chinese languages was sought after. From this she rose to be a star and the Japan-Manchuria Goodwill Ambassadress (日滿親善大使). The head of the Manchukuo film industry, General Masahiko Amakasu, decided she was the star he was looking for: a beautiful actress fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese, who could pass as Chinese and who had an excellent singing voice.

Yamaguchi was considered by many Chinese in the post-World War II period to be a Japanese spy and thus a traitor to the Chinese people. This misconception was caused in part by Yamaguchi passing herself off as Chinese throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Her Japanese identity not being officially revealed until her post-war prosecution nearly led to her execution as a Chinese traitor. She had always expressed her guilt for taking part in Japanese propaganda films in the early days of her acting career. In 1949, the People's Republic of China was established by the Communist Party, and three years later, Yamaguchi's former repertoire from the Shanghai era in the 1930s and 1940s (along with all other popular music) was also denounced as Yellow music (黃色音樂), a form of pornography. Because of this, she did not visit China for more than 50 years after the war, since she felt that the Chinese had not forgiven her. Despite her controversial past, she influenced future singers such as Teresa Teng, Fei Yu-Ching, and Winnie Wei (韋秀嫻), who covered her evergreen hits. Jacky Cheung recorded a cover of Kōji Tamaki's "行かないで" ("Ikanaide") and renamed it "Lei Hoeng Laan." (Both the original version and subsequent remake do not have any actual references to Li Hsiang-lan. The Chinese title instead refers to the unknowable quality and identity of the singer's lover.) In January 1991, a musical about her life was released in Tokyo, which generated controversy because its negative portrayal of Manchukuo upset many Japanese conservatives.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi (山口 淑子, Yamaguchi Yoshiko, February 12, 1920 – September 7, 2014) was a Japanese singer, actress, journalist, and politician. Born in China, she made an international career in film in China, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States.

She was born on February 12th, 1920 to Japanese parents, Ai Yamaguchi (山口 アイ, Yamaguchi Ai) and Fumio Yamaguchi (山口 文雄, Yamaguchi Fumio), who were then settlers in Fushun, Manchuria, Republic of China, in a coal mining residential area in Dengta, Liaoyang.