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Yoshiko Kawashima

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Yoshiko Kawashima
Born(1907-05-24)May 24, 1907
DiedMarch 25, 1948(1948-03-25) (aged 40)

Yoshiko Kawashima (川島芳子, Kawashima Yoshiko, May 24 1907 - March 25 1948) was a Manchu princess brought up in Japan, who served as a spy in the service of the Japanese Kwantung Army and Manchukuo. Originally named Aisin Gioro Xianyu (愛新覺羅•顯玗) with the courtesy name Dongzhen (東珍, literally meaning "East Jewel"), her Chinese name was Jin Bihui (金璧輝). 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.

Biography

Aisin Gioro Xianyu was born in Beijing as the 14th daughter to Shanqi, the 10th son of Prince Su (肅親王) of the Manchu imperial family. Adopted by Naniwa Kawashima, a Japanese espionage agent and mercenary adventurer after the Xinhai Revolution, she was renamed Kawashima Yoshiko, and was raised and educated in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan. When she was 17, she began wearing menswear after failing an attempt at suicide. According to one theory, the reason why she began wearing menswear is said that she had been raped by her foster father. She has been targeted for sensational rumors, so it is difficult to clarify the truth. However, it is possible that she was transgender, who sometimes practice cross-dressing.

Espionage career

In 1927, Kawashima married Ganjuurjab, the son of Inner Mongolian Army General Jengjuurjab, leader of the Mongolian-Manchurian Independence Movement based in Ryojun. The marriage ended in divorce after only two years, and Kawashima moved to the foreign concession in Shanghai. [1]While in Shanghai, she met Japanese military attaché and intelligence officer Ryukichi Tanaka, who utilized her contacts with the Manchu and Mongol nobility to expand his network. She was living together with Tanaka in Shanghai at the time of the Shanghai Incident of 1932.

After Tanaka was recalled to Japan, Kawashima continued to serve as a spy for Major-General Kenji Doihara. She undertook undercover mission in Manchuria, often in disguise, and was considered "strikingly attractive, with a dominating personality, almost a film-drama figure, half tom-boy and half heroine, and with this passion for dressing up as a male. Possibly she did this to impress the men, or so that she could more easily fit into the tightly-knit guerrilla groups without attracting too much attention" [2]. [3]

Kawashima was well-acquainted with former Qing Emperor Pu Yi who regarded her as a member of Royal Family and made her welcome in his household during his stay in Tianjin. It was through this close liaison that Kawashima was able to persuade Pu Yi to return to the Manchu homeland as head of the newly Japanese-created state of Manchukuo.

After the installation of Pu Yi as Emperor of Manchukuo, Kawashima continued to play various roles and, for a time, was mistress of Major General Hayao Tada, who was chief military advisor for Pu Yi. She formed an independent counter insurgency cavalry force in 1932 made up of 3,000-5,000 former bandits to hunt down anti-Japanese guerilla bands during the Pacification of Manchukuo, and was hailed in the Japanese newspapers as the Joan of Arc of Manchukuo. [4] In 1933, she offered the unit to the Japanese Kwantung Army for Operation Nekka, but it was refused. The unit continued under in existence under her command until sometime in the late 1930s. [5]

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 November 11, 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 and executed as a traitor (Hanjian) by the Nationalist Government under her Chinese name (Jin Bihui). [6]

Kawashima has been depicted in numerous movies from 1932 until the present day by many actresses. She was also featured in the movie The Last Emperor, where she appeared as "Eastern Jewel", played by Maggie Han.

Anita Mui played Kawashima Yoshiko in a 1990 Hong Kong-produced film.

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)

An eight-year-old Kawashima Yoshiko makes a cameo appearance in the PlayStation 2 game Shadow Hearts: Covenant, as Yoshiko Kawashima. A character in the previous game was also named Yoshiko Kawashima, though she was another person altogether and, in the second game, was portrayed as the namesake for the historical figure.

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, by Maureen Lindley, is a 2008 novel about the life of Yoshiko Kawashima (a.k.a. “Eastern Jewel”).

In the end of 2008 their will be a Japanese Drama called "Danso no Reijin ~Kawashima Yoshiko no Shogai~," that's going to be Played by Kuroki Meisa as Kawashima.

References

  • 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)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 1874622213.
  • Grant De Pauw, Linda (200). Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN: 0806132884.
  • Lee, Lillian (1992). The Last Princess of Manchuria. William Morrow & Co;. ISBN 0688108342.{{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 0812239121.

Notes

  1. ^ Yamamuro, Manchuria Under Japanese Domination, pp.98
  2. ^ Deacon, A History of Japanese Secret Service, 1982, p.151
  3. ^ Grant, Battle Cries and Lullabies, pp.260
  4. ^ Woods, Princess Jin
  5. ^ Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun vol. 1, p.31.
  6. ^ Session 139

LINDLEY, Maureen (2008), The private papers of Eastern Jewel,Bloomsbury,ISBN:978-0-7475-9116-0

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