Kawashima Yoshiko
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kawashima Yoshiko (May 24, 1907 - March 25, 1948) (川島芳子) was a Manchu princess brought up as a Japanese and executed as a Japanese spy by the Kuomintang after the Second Sino-Japanese War. Originally named Aisin Gioro Xianyu (愛新覺羅·顯紓)with the courtesy name Dongzhen(東珍, literally meaning East Jewel), Kawashima Yoshiko also had another Chinese name, Jin Bihui (金壁輝). She is sometimes known as the eastern Mata Hari.
She was born as the 14th daughter to Shanqi, the 10th of hereditary Prince Su (肅親王) of the Manchu imperial family. Given to a Japanese Ronin Naniwa Kawashima as an adopted daughter after the Xinhai Revolution by Prince Su, she had been renamed as Kawashima Yoshiko, receiving education in Japan. When she was 17,she began wearing menswear after failing an attempt at suicide. According to one theory, the reason why she began wearing manswear is said that she had been raped by her foster father.
She was part of the Manchurian Royal Family in Manchukuo. She has been targeted for sensational rumors, so it is difficult to clarify the truth.
[edit] Espionage Career
Eastern Jewel was sent back to Manchuria and became an undercover agents for Japan. She often disguised herself as a man and was described as:
"strikingly attractive, with a dominating personality, almost a film-drama figure, half tom-boy and half heroine, and with this passion for dressing up as a male. Possibly she did this to impress the men, or so that she could more easily fit into the tightly-knit guerrilla groups without attracting too much attention" (A History of Japanese Secret Service, 1982, p.151).
In Shanghai, during a New Year's party, she met Major General Takayoshi Tanaka of the Shanghai Special Service Organ. General Tanaka was working closely with the mastermind spy in China, Major-General Kenji Doihara. Eastern Jewel was able to play an effective espionage role with many of Doihara's spy network in China. She was well acquainted with Emperor Pu Yi and had the boy-emperor inviting "Eastern Jewel to consider his home her home as long as she remained in Tientsin". It was through this close liaison that Eastern Jewel was able to persuade the boy-emperor Pu Yi to return his homeland Manchuria, and finally his installation as the Emperor of the newly Japanese-created state of Manchukuo.
After the installation of Pu Yi as the Emperor of Manchukuo, Eastern Jewel continued to play various roles and, for a time, was mistress of Major General Hayao Tada, who was chief military advisor for the Emperor Pu Yi. She formed an Anti Bandit Force in 1932 made up of 3-5,000 former bandits to hunt down bandits and guerilla bands in Manchukuo. In 1933 she offered the unit to the Japanese for Operation Nekka, but it was refused The unit continued under in existence under her command until sometime in the late 1930's when she lost her influence with the Japanese.(Rays of the Rising Sun vol. 1, p.31.).
Eventually she disappeared from view. Her later activities supposedly included taking a percentage of ransoms paid by wealthy merchants on kidnapping activities after securing their release. Finally on November 11, 1945, a news agency reported that "a long sought-for beauty in male costume was arrested in Peking by the Chinese counter-intelligence officers." Shortly after she was arrested by the Chinese, she was tried and executed.
Most Chinese consider her a betrayer (or Hanjian,ie,Han traitor, which is untrue in that she is not a Han Chinese), while some Manchurians consider her as a heroine.
[edit] Portrayal
Her story was featured in the movie The Last Emperor, where she appeared as "Eastern Jewel", played by Maggie Han.
Anita Mui played Kawashima Yoshiko in a 1990 Hong Kong-produced film.
An eight-year-old Kawashima Yoshiko makes a cameo appearance in the PlayStation 2 game Shadow Hearts: Covenant. A character in the previous game in the series also had the name Kawashima Yoshiko, though she was another person altogether and, fictionally, was apparently the namesake for the "real" one.
