Bones' Review of "Kawashima Yoshiko"

(aka The Last Princess of Manchuria)

"Kawashima Yoshiko" is an embellished biopic of one of the most fascinating figures from World War II; though one that Western historians have largely ignored. She is known by many names including her birth name Aisin-Gioro Xianyu, her Chinese name Jin Bihui, her Japanese name Yoshiko Kawashima and her nickname Eastern Jewel among others. She was born in 1907 into the Manchu Qing dynasty of Imperial China which was on the verge of collapse. Sent to be raised in Japan she was later married off to a Mongol prince and by virtue of her own ancestry was considered Mongol as well as Manchu royalty. She became a spy for the Japanese in Shanghai and was highly involved in the establishment of the Japanese sponsored Empire of Manchukuo. She was known for her tenacity, her ability to survive and for wearing masculine attire. In the end she was executed by the Chinese nationalists as a traitor, though of course legends persist (which no serious historian would entertain) that she survived and lived on incognito.

The movie was produced in Hong Kong in 1990 and has a somewhat dated appearance but nothing to interfere with the story. Directed by Eddie Fong and starring Anita Mui as Yoshiko Kawashima the movie clearly took some inspiration from the Bertolucci epic "The Last Emperor". I would guess that for many westerners their only exposure to Eastern Jewel would be her appearance in "The Last Emperor" where she was portrayed as a flamboyant villainess by Maggie Han.  As in that film, the story of this troubled princess is told in flashback. The movie opens with her arrest and trial, tells her story and then concludes with her (supposed) execution. Oddly enough for a film of this sort, a close look at the end credits will show the disclaimer that all characters are fictitious and any similarity to real persons, past or present, is entirely coincidental; a claim which I doubt would hold up in court so to speak. However, the film does take a great deal of artistic license, I think partly because so much of the life of Eastern Jewel remains a mystery and also for purely cinematic reasons such as working in some romance and a few spin-kicking sessions.

There are also a number of popular beliefs put on the screen which, although accepted by many, have never really been proven as definitive fact. For instance, the movie cannot help but perpetuate the story that there was some sort of lesbian fling between Yoshiko and Empress Wan Jung even though there is no proof such a thing ever happened. Likewise, the Empress, at one point, makes a comment about her husband not liking women. The alleged homosexuality of the last Emperor of China, though believed by many, has also never been concretely proven. The movie also hints at the possibility of Yoshiko feigning death at her execution and though it does not show her surviving the fact that the subject is raised at all is somewhat significant. Although the legend exists, it mostly stems from a single source and is not seriously entertained by anyone.

As with any film of this type there are considerable periods of her life that are skipped over entirely to save time and some fiction is inserted, probably for the sake of storytelling and nothing more. At the start of the long flashback that makes up the bulk of the film, we see a very young Eastern Jewel changing from her regal Qing gowns and hairstyle into a Japanese kimono for her journey to Japan. Her father tells her that for the monarchy to be restored they will have to make an alliance with Japan and he charges the small girl with doing her part to make that happen. Throughout the rest of her life it will be her one, overriding goal to restore the Qing dynasty and the Chinese Empire. She is entrusted to a family friend, Naniwa Kawashima who is committed to the glorification of Japan and the independence of Mongolia and Manchuria. He is also, we find out, a vile and wicked man who rapes his teenage adopted daughter after which she cuts her hair short and begins to dress like a man.

Kawashima is distraught and tries to commit suicide, the rape coming on the heels of her being informed that she is to wed a Mongol prince in the interest of forging an alliance between the Mongol and Manchu independence movements. This is all particularly painful as it requires her to breakup with her first love, Masahiko Amakasu, who her adopted father deems unworthy of her as a mere army lieutenant. Yoshiko is married off and goes to Mongolia for a few years and when next we see her she is a divorced and independent woman who spurns her repulsive father and goes to Shanghai to make it on her own. It is there that she meets an operatic actor named Wan Hoi (with the unfortunate nickname of Ah Fook). He comes to her rescue when her purse is snatched by a gang of thieves and Yoshiko becomes rather fixated on him as about the only man in the film who helped her out while expecting nothing in return.

Determined to prove that she can become a powerful figure she decided to cozy up to the local Japanese big shot Commander Tokoyoshi Tanaka who becomes her godfather. Like most, he is smitten with her and admires her zeal and boldness. She accompanies him to welcome her cousin, the last Emperor of China, to Manchuria for the establishment of Manchukuo. When it is learned that Empress Wan Jung has refused to accompany her husband Yoshiko is sent to Tientsin under cover to kidnap her and bring her to Manchuria (an episode with little to no history to support it) which she does after a night of opium and a lesbian dalliance. She threatens to go public if the Empress makes any trouble. She is rewarded, under the name Kam Bik Fai with the rank and position of commander of the Anguo Army in Manchukuo and is decorated by Tanaka.

It is then that she rediscovers her first love Amakasu who is by then running the Manchukuo motion picture studios and has a reputation as a hard partying playboy who prefers Chinese women. Yoshiko, now Commander Kam Bik Fai, confronts him and, though he denies it, believes he is not completely over her, offering his preference for Chinese women as proof. She is irate when he will not forgive her for leaving him long ago but she also refuses to give up the position she has attainted and insists that she is not working for the Japanese but for herself. Tanaka then sends her back to Shanghai to gather intelligence and divert the attention of the League of Nations. While there she notices Wan Hoi while attending the opera (in a very surreal scene with the music and imagery as it is) and arranges for him to come to her house for a private performance. After he discovers she is the same woman he helped earlier there seems to be a possibility for romance. Yoshiko reaches out to him, but he is repelled by her association with the Japanese Kwantung Army and her lifelong mission to restore the Chinese Empire. He proclaims himself loyal to the republic and storms out. She will not be turned though as she blames the revolutionaries for tearing her away from her family, for ruining her life and steering China into chaos.

In a drunken rage later that night she buys off his entire opera troupe and forces them all to come perform for her. Rather than see his comrades suffer Wan Hoi goes along for a while but storms out when Yoshiko becomes sick from her drunken stupor. However, from her state it is obvious she is more depressed than anything else that the one good man she knows will not return her feelings. She returns to Manchukuo and is giving her troops a pep talk on the campaign in Jehol when she is shot by an assassin. She survives but is sent to Tientsin away from the action, allegedly for her own safety. Yoshiko, however, suspects Tanaka may have arranged the assassination attempt himself to get rid of her for making too great a spectacle of herself. She is unable to find out for sure and so goes to Tientsin and opens a restaurant as a front for the underground headquarters of the Anguo Army. She is not well though and takes morphine injections because of the pain incurred by her wound which caused spinal inflammation, though her assistant tells the guests she was wounded in battle rather than by an assassin from the ranks.

At the opening party for her restaurant Wan Hoi barges in and shoots one of the attending dignitaries. Other student rebels emerge and a shoot out ensues until Japanese troops arrive to kill or capture them all. Wan Hoi is taken but Yoshiko comes to his rescue and takes him to her own house with the story that she wishes to personally interrogate him. As he was wounded in the shootout, she cares for him and even pulls a gun on Commander Tanaka when he came for a surprise visit while Wan Hoi was trying to leave. However, the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary cannot be reconciled and the two part ways yet again.

By 1940, Tanaka declares that Japan has all but won and that Yoshiko is unnecessary and too unpredictable to be further tolerated so he sends Amakasu to assassinate her, not knowing of their previous relationship. Since parting from Wan Hoi, Yoshiko has become dejected. She knows that perhaps the only thing the nationalists, communists and the Japanese have in common is that they all now want her dead. She asks to go to a temple to pray and Amakasu is about to shoot her but cannot go through with it and instead arranges for her to be smuggled out of the country and back to Japan while reporting to Tanaka that she is dead. After a brief scene showing her living in drunken loneliness with her incontinent adopted father in Japan the movie cuts back to the trial where it all started. She claims that she is Japanese and cannot be considered a traitor by China. When that does not work she claims to be younger than she is and that she is not even the woman they think she is. However, her papers sent from Japan by her adopted father prove her identity. She rages that for a lifelong liar the old man picked a hell of time to start being honest -probably because he feared prosecution as a war criminal himself.

It is at this point that the film makes one last flirtation with fiction. While in prison, awaiting execution Wan Hoi sneaks in to see her and offers to save her life. The guards will fire only blanks and she must act as though she is shot when they fire after which he and his comrades will come and take her away to live out the rest of her life in secret. This seems to leave the possibility open for a somewhat happier ending, however, in all fairness she seemed to reject his offer and the movie ends with what at least appears to be a successful execution. That aside though, the movie takes plenty of other liberties with the truth, though again, in all fairness it must be said that the multitude of legends, stories and dime store novels written about Yoshiko Kawashima makes it rather difficult to be entirely accurate even for scholars. However, given the subject matter I thought it was about as fair as could be expected and the liberties taken with the truth were, on the whole, probably no more or less than most other movies about historical subjects. Yoshiko was portrayed as a villain of sorts but also as a victim and the implication is that much of her actions were her own survival methods, her own way of dealing with the pain and powerlessness she felt. On the whole I thought it was a good effort, not exactly on par with some of the other grand spectacles of Hollywood, but given the time and place it originated I think they did make a noble effort in the epic biopic genre. The next film on her life might do better, but until then I would recommend this movie to anyone with an interest in the period or those who like scheming, romantic dramas and do not mind reading subtitles.