The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  Her Japanese was so fluent that many people took her for a native of my country. But in fact, Eastern Jewel was the daughter of Prince Su, tenth in line for the Manchu throne. Alas, the prince died young, and Eastern Jewel was adopted by a Japanese patron of the Manchu cause, a provincial worthy named Kawashima Naniwa. Renamed Kawashima Yoshiko, she grew up in Japan, where at the tender age of seventeen she was seduced by her fifty-nine-year-old stepfather, who declared that she, as a Manchu princess, had inherited great benevolence, whereas he, the scion of an ancient samurai clan, was imbued with natural courage, so it was their duty under heaven to produce a child of benevolence and courage. Fortunately, a child was not born from that union. To promote the liberation of Mongolia, and perhaps to ward off scandalous gossip, Yoshiko was married off to a plump young Mongolian prince, whom she detested so much that she fled to Shanghai, where she had a passionate liaison with Major General Tanaka, chief of our Secret Service.

  Eastern Jewel was particularly useful to us because of her close relationship with Emperor Pu Yi, and more particularly with one of his wives, who had given her the run of her mansion in Tientsin, and later in Shinkyo. Tired, perhaps, of being confined to the grounds of his palace in Shinkyo, impatient to occupy, once more, the dragon throne that was rightfully his in Peking’s Forbidden City, the Emperor sometimes behaved like a willful child, refusing to attend official ceremonies or receive official guests from Tokyo. I could understand his feelings. The officials from Tokyo could be very dull company. But an emperor must do his duty, no matter how tedious. However, after a visit from my Eastern Jewel, who knew just how to dose our demands with the right amount of Manchu flattery, he would invariably decide to behave in the manner of his station. I would then report back to Captain Amakasu in Room 202.

  Yet to see my Jewel as a Japanese agent, or even as a spy, as some people still do, is to misunderstand her completely. She was loyal to one cause only, the restoration of the Manchu Dynasty. For that noble goal, she would have been proud to sacrifice everything, even her own life. Far from being anti-China, she was dedicated to the future of her country, but not under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and his shabby gang of money-grubbing officials. Her aim, like mine, was to restore China to its former greatness.

  Eastern Jewel rarely rose before four or five in the afternoon. Her first act, before rising from her bed, was to drink a glass of champagne and feed a handful of nuts to the two pet monkeys who jumped onto her bed from the yellow velvet curtains. These daily rituals always took place in the presence of at least two or three of her young female companions, whom she called her “Chrysanthemums.” Her dependence on them was total. Without her Chrysanthemums, Eastern Jewel wouldn’t rise from her bed. After her glass of champagne, she would retire to the bathroom, attended by the Chrysanthemums. She would reemerge an hour later, smelling sweeter than a Chinese orchid. On most nights, she wore a male army tunic of her own design, in military khaki or black, with a pair of riding britches, a thick brown leather belt, shiny black boots, a peaked army cap, and a long samurai sword. On other occasions, when she was in a less martial mood, a simple black male Chinese mandarin robe with a silk cap would suffice. When she had finished her toilette, she would examine herself in the mirror, striking poses this way and that, leaning on her sword, as though for an official photograph, sometimes with a monkey perched on her shoulder.

  Eastern Jewel had one other peculiar habit. At various stages of an evening, she would sit down, usually in full view of whoever happened to be there for her amusement—myself, her Chrysanthemums, or perhaps one of her favorite Chinese Opera performers—take down her britches or hike up her robe, and stick a needle into her soft eggshell white thigh. It was a gesture of shocking transgression, as though she were taking a knife to a beautiful work of art, and at the same time of delicious sensuality; the sheen of her pale flesh, begging to be touched and kissed, the penetration of the silver needle, the crimson beads of blood, like rubies on white satin. My passion for her was such that I was in a constant state of desire. I was hungry for her love, a slave to her caresses. Just to hear her voice on the telephone would conjure up visions of pleasure, the nature of which delicacy forbids me to repeat in these pages. The baring of her thigh for the injections she craved took place in a private room in the restaurant she owned near Asahi Avenue, staffed by her former Mongolian bodyguards, or indeed anywhere she felt she was among friends. She called her drug “my little sister,” the morphine without which, she often told me, she would surely die.

  Since we shared a passion for dancing, we would frequent her favorite nightclubs on the rue de Paris, and after that, if we felt the urge, an opium den, not my usual one but a smaller place just outside the Native City. Or we would go to a brothel in the early hours of the morning on the rue Pétain in the French Concession, where we paid the owner, a fat Lithuanian Jew, to let us watch through a peephole as White Russian girls were being ravished by Japanese officers, a spectacle that Eastern Jewel found particularly arousing, especially if the men were a bit rough in their amorous attentions. She marveled at the beauty of the Russian skin. “So white,” she would whisper in my ear, as she gripped my hand, “so perfectly white, like Siberian snow.” I was struck less by the whiteness of the Russian skin than by the fact that the officers remained fully clothed, apart from their legs, exposed after they lowered their trousers, as though in a lavatory. Were they ashamed to show their dark Asian skin, I wondered, even to a Russian prostitute?

  Eastern Jewel wanted her nights to last forever. The early hours of the morning, when the city was still in deep slumber, and the only sounds were of the creaking wheels of the night soil collectors’ carts, had a tonic effect on her. That is when she was most fully alive, and allowed me to make love to her. Even though the jibbering monkeys could be rather a distraction, making love to Eastern Jewel was unlike possessing any other woman—and I had had plenty of them. She was skilled in all the erotic arts, as one would expect from such a worldly creature, but that was not what made loving her so peculiarly exciting. I don’t quite know how to put this, but once this proud Manchu princess had discarded her military uniform, taken off her black shiny boots, put aside her sword and cap, she was so soft, so yielding, so vulnerable, so womanly, and yet so mysterious. No matter how much she tried to pose as a Japanese named Kawashima Yoshiko, when I made love to Eastern Jewel, I felt as though I were penetrating the flesh of China. Alas, however, the feeling was as fleeting as a bolt of lightning, for after we had made love, it was as if she were no longer there, out of my grasp, like the fox woman in a ghost story. I loved her more than any woman before, or since. But I never really felt that I knew her at all.

  Until one day in the late fall of 1937. We were attending a function together at the mansion of Baron Mitaka, an amiable old nobleman, who represented our government as consul general in Tientsin. We didn’t actually arrive together, since we had to be discreet. Emperor Pu Yi was one of the guests, along with the ambassadors of all the major Western powers. Eastern Jewel and I kept apart for the most part, but she happened to be standing next to me when the baron was handed a scroll by one of his staff members, a nervous young man with thin red hands. The baron’s many decorations twinkled like stars in a bright winter night. He held the scroll in his outstretched arms, in the old-fashioned manner, and read his speech about our peaceful intentions in Asia. “His Imperial Highness, the Japanese Emperor,” he began, standing to attention as the words rolled off his tongue, “whose benevolent intentions have never been in doubt, desires nothing less than eternal peace and prosperity for all under his celestial roof . . .”

  As the baron spoke in his pompous English accent acquired during a stint in London, I tried to read the expressions on the faces of our guests. Emperor Pu Yi blinked his eyes without betraying any emotion. The foreign diplomats tried to look superior, as was their habit in the company of Asians, but I couldn’t read anything more in their inscrutable European faces. Our Chinese friends, including Emperor
Pu Yi’s court chamberlain, and the governor of the Tientsin Bank, nodded as the baron spoke of “the common culture of our yellow races” and “our ancient spiritual traditions,” “China, our great teacher,” “samurai spirit” . . . “Sun Goddess” . . . “Peace . . .” But when the baron was still speaking forty-five minutes after he began, even the attention of our closest friends showed signs of flagging. “The zest for hard work and the natural sense of mutual cooperation nurtured by our rice-growing civilization,” went the baron, and I could see the British ambassador whispering in the ear of his French colleague, laughing in his supercilious European way, laughing at us, no doubt, for being “uncivilized,” I daresay. The baron, however, showed no sign of coming to a close. I tried to see how much more there was on his scroll. “Five thousand years of civilization . . . reinvigorated by the discipline and youthful energy of modern Japan . . . Asia will rise . . .”

  As I listened to the words, I felt a hand lightly brush mine. Eastern Jewel looked into my eyes with a tenderness that made my heart leap. “You are one of us,” she whispered. I was so moved that I had to restrain myself from taking her hand into mine and kissing it. “Of course I am,” I whispered back. “We are one, you and I.”

  “I always knew you were different from them,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m yours, only yours.”

  “A glorious future for a New Asia . . .” went the baron.

  “Come to our side,” whispered Eastern Jewel into my ear.

  “I already am,” I replied. “I’ll always be with you.”

  She nodded briefly and turned away.

  “A toast to His Imperial Highness . . .”

  5

  IN 1938, NOT long after the Fall of Nanking, Eastern Jewel asked me to introduce her to her namesake, the other Yoshiko, who by that time had made quite a name for herself. Most Japanese in China knew Ri Koran’s songs by heart (“Ah, Our Manchuria!,” “Chrysanthemums and Peonies,” and so on) but no one knew that she was then also a student at a Chinese mission school in Tientsin. Her father, as always, had gotten himself into a financial scrape (too much money on the wrong horse at the Mukden Jockey Club), and had been obliged to put his daughter in the care of another of his Chinese friends. Her new surrogate father, Mr. Pan, was a businessman of immense wealth, who had studied in Tokyo, and was friendly to us. He had many concubines and a private army, and was high on the list of pro-Japanese Chinamen whom our enemies would like to dispose of. He called Yoshiko his favorite “daughter,” and had her painted by a celebrated Japanese artist as a typical young Chinese beauty in a silk dress.

  Whenever I was in Tientsin, I kept an eye on Yoshiko, as I still called her, to make sure she was all right. I even gave her pocket money from time to time, pretending, for her sake, that it was from her father, who was in no position to provide for her in any way at all.

  You could say I was her official mentor, but I looked on her more as my daughter. One day, during her summer holidays, at one of our regular lunches, she opened her heart to me. She was dressed simply in her light blue Chinese school uniform, looking adorable as usual, her eyes radiating young innocence, as she puckered her plump little mouth to receive a sweet dumpling from my chopsticks. But I could tell from a slight frown that something was troubling her on this occasion. We normally spoke in Japanese, but Yoshiko sometimes switched to Chinese, if the Japanese word did not come to her readily.

  “I’m so confused, Uncle Sato,” she said.

  “What about, my precious?”

  “I keep hearing rumors at school about bad things we Japanese do to the Chinese.”

  “What bad things, my sweet?”

  “They say we are invading their country and killing many Chinese patriots.”

  I tried to reassure her, explaining that rumors were not to be trusted. There were so many rumors, almost all untrue. A few had some basis in fact, to be sure. But how could I make this darling girl understand that painful medicine was sometimes required to cure serious ills? So I told her, in all sincerity, that we were in China to help the Chinese people, that we aimed to liberate Asia. But as I spoke, I realized that these words might have sounded hollow, like the slogans on Manchukuo Radio. She didn’t look entirely convinced. It was hard, she said, for her to know what was true. I felt for her, for it was indeed sometimes hard to tell truth from falsehood in China. Even I, whose business it was to find the truth, sometimes felt as though I were sliding along the icy surface of a lake in the middle of a moonless night.

  “I love China,” she said. “I’ve never even been to Japan. But my Chinese mother scolds me for behaving too much like a Japanese. She tells me how to move like a Chinese, striking me when I bow in the Japanese manner. Then, when I go back to Mukden, my mother scolds me for not behaving like a proper Japanese girl. Please, Uncle Wang, tell me what to do.”

  She was both, I said, this time with more conviction. She was a child of Manchukuo. We were living at the birth of a New Asia, I explained. One day, in a better world, without stupid prejudices—a world without war and greed and imperialism, a peaceful world in which all races would be treated as equals—then and only then would people appreciate her for who she was.

  However, the poor thing still looked confused. Why did she have to conceal that she was Japanese? How could she explain to her schoolmates that her Chinese stepfather, whom they called a traitor just because he had Japanese friends, was really a kind and decent man? How was she to behave when all the others went off to march in a demonstration against Japan? Her childlike purity of heart moved me profoundly. As I looked into her moist dark eyes, I wanted to do something to comfort her, dry her tears, and put her mind at rest. But how could she possibly understand adult society and its political complexities? She was, really, too good for this world.

  So I counseled patience. History cannot be made overnight. Chinese wisdom tells us to take the long view. Future generations would understand our good intentions. We had to work together to overcome cultural misunderstandings. But I realized then that she should not be allowed to stay at her Chinese school for much longer, or indeed with her Chinese family. It was far too dangerous. She could easily end up being consumed by the anti-Japanese flames fanned by agitators.

  And, besides, I wasn’t at all sure I liked the idea of the two Yoshikos meeting. My young protégée seemed too innocent of the ways of the world to be exposed quite yet to Eastern Jewel’s particular brand of sophistication. No one was more devoted to Eastern Jewel than I, but she was too complicated. Their meeting might lead to all kinds of misunderstandings. Yoshiko knew so little, and Eastern Jewel so much. I sensed danger, and so I kept delaying my promised introduction. But I couldn’t watch her day and night. I was her minder, not her bodyguard.

  I suppose it was inevitable. They were introduced by Colonel Aizawa, the military attaché, at a party in Eastern Jewel’s restaurant. Apparently, my Jewel, dressed on that particular night in one of her black mandarin robes, looked Yoshiko up and down approvingly, after they had been introduced, and said: “So, you’re Japanese after all. But how utterly charming.” She then took her arm, and said: “From now on, I want you to think of me as your big brother.”

  Yoshiko received phone calls almost daily from then on, usually from one of the Chrysanthemums, to meet Eastern Jewel at the restaurant, or at some unsuitable nightclub in the foreign concessions. And the seventeen-year-old girl, no doubt flattered by the attention of this great seductress, became an adoring pupil. She was given several Chinese qi paos by Eastern Jewel, who loved to dress her up as though she were a doll, made for her “brother’s” personal amusement. I was furious, for I still felt responsible for the child.

  One night, close and thundery, I found myself in one of my least favorite places, the ballroom of the Astor House Hotel, where foreigners pretended to be in London or Vienna, dancing in their stiff evening clothes and looking down their noses at the few Orientals who were no doubt supposed to feel privileged to be there.
Well, I did not. My presence was entirely professional, to do with a small business matter with the German military attaché. And then I saw them, on the dance floor, in the midst of the Britishers and their powdered wives, who looked like shuffling white ghosts, as the lights flickered every time lightning struck in the skies outside. Eastern Jewel in a military uniform, a monkey on her shoulder, and dear little Yoshiko in a mandarin robe were dancing the waltz together. Round and round they went, staring into one another’s eyes like two young lovers, oblivious to the foreigners, who sniggered quite brazenly.

  I made up my mind there and then that this rot would have to be stopped. I would have to get Yoshiko back to Manchukuo, if only to protect her purity, which was, for some reason I barely understood myself, more precious to me than anything.

  6

  SHINKYO, THE CAPITAL of Manchukuo, was everything that Tientsin was not. Built from scratch on the foundations of a small Manchurian trading town which the Chinese used to call Changchun, it may have been lacking in pseudo-Western glamour, compared to Tientsin or Shanghai, but that was precisely its virtue. Wherever they go, Westerners impose their own architecture. Just look at the Bund in Shanghai. It’s nothing but a stage set, trying to resemble London or Chicago. Shinkyo was nothing like that. For Shinkyo was actually an anti-colonial city, a counter-Western metropolis, the capital of a multiracial Asian state. And there was nothing quaint about it, either. Planned by the most progressive architects and engineers from Japan, Shinkyo was a marvel of mathematical precision; its straight boulevards laid out like sun rays from Great Unity Square, in the center of town, which had perfect views of the Kanto Army headquarters with its traditional Japanese roof, the Kempeitai building and the head office of the Municipal Police. At one end of Great Unity Avenue was the Shinkyo Yamato Hotel, and at the other South Lake, with the brand-new Manchuria Motion Picture Association Studios on its shore. Shinkyo had the finest new department stores, first-class hospitals, and spacious new homes equipped with flush toilets which made even Japanese from Tokyo marvel at their modern efficiency. Shinkyo was spotless, the cleanest city in the world. Whenever a person was caught littering or spitting, he would be arrested. This might seem a bit heavy-handed, and I confess that I sometimes missed the greater liveliness of Mukden, but civilization can only come as the result of education, and softhearted educators are seldom effective. I was proud of Shinkyo. We had achieved something unique there, the beginning of a modern Asian Renaissance.