This nice photo shows actress and singer Li Xianglan, aka Li Hsiang-lan, and based on her name you’d guess she’s Chinese, but she was actually Japanese and her real name was Yoshiko Yamaguchi. Early in her career the Manchukuo Film Association noted that she had grown up in Manchuria and was fluent in Mandarin, so they decided to hide her Japanese origin, which made it possible for her to star in Japanese films posing as Chinese. The purpose was to make films promoting certain Japanese ideologies, disseminated onscreen by someone the Chinese public saw as one of their own. In other words, at a time when Japan had invaded and occupied part of China, she starred in propaganda films.
The ruse wasn’t perfect. People Xianglan worked with figured out she was Japanese, but the Chinese public didn’t know until 1946, when she was arrested after the Second Sino-Japanese War as a collaborator. She avoided execution only by revealing her Japanese identity to the Chinese court. It’s a long and interesting story, but we won’t get into it here. We’ll note, though, that her tale didn’t end there. She became a journalist in the 1950s using the name Yoshiko Otaka, and was elected to the Japanese parliament in 1974, where she served eighteen years. Quite an autobiography. The photo above was made to promote her 1957 film Shénmì měirén, aka Lady of Mystery. Indeed.
