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.
Early in her career, the Manchukuo Film Association concealed her Japanese origin and she went by the Chinese name Li Hsiang-lan (), rendered in Japanese as Ri Kōran. This allowed her to represent China in Japanese propaganda movies. After the war, she appeared in Japanese movies under her real name, as well as in several English language movies under the stage name, Shirley Yamaguchi.
After becoming a journalist in the 1950s under the name , 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.
Early life
She was born on February 12, 1920, to Japanese parents, and , who were then settlers in Fushun, Manchuria, Republic of China, in a coal mining residential area in Dengta, Liaoyang.
Fumio Yamaguchi was an employee of the South Manchuria Railway. From an early age, Yoshiko was exposed to Mandarin Chinese. Fumio Yamaguchi had some influential Chinese acquaintances, among whom were Li Jichun () and Pan Yugui (). By Chinese custom for those who became sworn brothers, they also became Yoshiko's "godfathers" (also known as "nominal fathers") and gave her two Chinese names, Li Hsiang-lan (Li Xianglan) and Pan Shuhua (). ("Shu" in Shuhua and "Yoshi" in Yoshiko are written with the same Chinese character). Yoshiko later used the former name as a stage name and assumed the latter name while she was staying with the Pan family in Beijing.
As a youth Yoshiko suffered a bout of tuberculosis. In order to strengthen her breathing, the doctor recommended voice lessons. Her father initially insisted on traditional Japanese music, but Yoshiko preferred Western music and thus received her initial classical vocal education from an Italian dramatic soprano (Madame Podresov, married into White Russian nobility). She later received schooling in Beijing, polishing her Mandarin, accommodated by the Pan family. She was a coloratura soprano.
Career in China
Yoshiko made her debut as an actress and singer in the 1938 film, Honeymoon Express (), 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 (). 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.
The Chinese actors who appeared in the Manchuria Film Production movies were never informed that she was Japanese, but they suspected she was at least half-Japanese as she always ate her meals with the Japanese actors instead of the Chinese actors, was given white rice to eat instead of the sorghum given to the Chinese, and was paid ten times more than the Chinese actors were. Though in her subsequent films she was almost exclusively billed as Li Hsiang-lan, she appeared in a few as "Yamaguchi Yoshiko".
Many of her films bore some degree of promotion of the Japanese national policy (in particular, pertaining to the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere ideology) and can be termed "National Policy Films" (). While promoting Manchurian interests in Tokyo, Li would meet Kenichiro Matsuoka, future television executive and son of Japanese diplomat Yōsuke Matsuoka, about whom she would write in her biography, Ri Kōran: My Half Life, to be her first love. Although she had hopes of marriage, he was still a student at Tokyo Imperial University and not interested in settling down at the time. They would meet again after the war, at which time Kenichiro attempted to rekindle the relationship, but by then, Li was already involved with the artist, Isamu Noguchi.