Japanese film idol Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who was known as Rikoran and symbolized Japan’s dreams of Asian conquest, has died at age 94.
Known as Shirley Yamaguchi in the U.S. and one of biggest Japanese film stars during and after World War II, Yamaguchi died of heart failure on September 7, according to Japan’s public television NHK .
Born to Japanese parents in northern China in 1920 and raised in Japan’s wartime puppet state Manchukuo, Yamaguchi was adopted by a Chinese friend of his father and was renamed “Xianglan,” or “Fragrant Orchid,” when she as 13.
She debuted as a Chinese singer Li Xianglan Rikoran in Japanese and starred in Chinese-language films made by Japanese-run Manchurian Cinema Association, many of them propaganda movies.
During its militaristic march across Asia in the first half of the 20th century, Japan operated coal mines and railroads and forced China’s last emperor, Pu Yi, to be head of a puppet government in Manchuria, which the Japanese called Manchukuo.
Widely believed to be Chinese, she was a star in Asia, particularly in Japan.
“Yue Lai Xiang,” one of her best known songs, is still popular among Chinese singers. In the movie “Song of the White Orchid,” she depicted a young Chinese woman who falls in love with a Japanese man after her family is killed by the Japanese.
Chinese authorities arrested Yamaguchi after the war and accused her of being a Chinese traitor. But a friend produced family records proving her Japanese origin that saved her from execution. She apologised for her duplicity and was allowed to leave China.
She also appeared in two Hollywood films and on Broadway during the 1950s.
After her first marriage to Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi ended in mid-1950s, Yamaguchi married Hiroshi Ohtaka, who was Japanese ambassador to Burma, now Myanmar. She occasionally appeared on television, and in 1974, she was elected to Parliament’s Upper House as a member of the governing Liberal Democratic Party until 1992.
