The China Lover / Ri Kouran
The China Lover is the 2008 novel by Ian Buruma, a Dutchman now living in New York and teaching at Bard College. I’ve included the novel as the introduction to this article because the book jackets cover art are really eye catching.
The subject of the novel, or maybe it should be called a historical-fiction book based on real life events, is Yoshiko Yamaguchi who was also known as Shirley Yamaguchi, Li Xianglan, and Ri Kouran. Yoshiko was born in Manchuria in 1920 to Japanese parents.
Following the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese had set up a puppet Manchurian government. By the late 1930′s, she’d grown into a very pretty and talented young woman who soon caught the eyes of the Japanese working there. Yamaguchi wanted more than anything else to be a singer and a movie star. The Japanese believed they had struck gold with this talented young woman, because she was fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese. Her movie career began and her career seemed to be fast tracked. But there was a problem.
Yamaguchi, was asked to pose as a Chinese girl by her Japanese handlers. Though born in China, and raised in China, she was Japanese. She was even given a Chinese name, Li Xianglan, to attract the Chinese audiences.
The agent makes a pitch to the director