The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  I was more than used to female temper tantrums. Chinese girls, especially, were given to thunderous rages. I had seen it all: crying, screaming, cursing, running away with my money. But this was the first time my entire wardrobe had fallen victim to a jealous fury. What made this especially irritating was that this act of wanton destruction was based on a complete fantasy. I may have spread my affections around a little liberally at times, having my pleasure where I could find it. I was a man, after all. But I couldn’t feel guilty about something I had not done. And this was the woman who knew me better than anyone, including my mother. How could she have misjudged me so badly? I could only put it down to the madness of true love.

  15

  SHINKYO WAS FREEZING as usual in March. Snowdrifts kept even the Asia Express from arriving on time. And this, I can tell you, was a very rare occurrence. So rare, indeed, that this little story had a sad ending. The driver of our train took personal responsibility for our tardy arrival and threw himself in front of the express train from Dairen. At least he was given the posthumous satisfaction of an honorable mention in the next day’s papers. Perhaps this accident affected me more deeply than I thought, but my mind was not at ease.

  Amakasu had summoned me to Shinkyo for a meeting. Normally, I would have been happy to visit the Manchurian studios and catch up on the latest gossip. But this time I felt something particularly oppressive in the wintry air. Compared to Shanghai, the wide avenues of the Manchukuo capital looked deserted. It was as if only policemen and soldiers ventured out into the cold, loitering in drunken groups at night. The natives stayed in their homes on the outskirts of town.

  It was the second time I attended a meeting of the Ri Koran Fan Club. On this occasion there were more people in the large, overheated room at the Yamato Hotel. The usual members, including Kishi and Yoshioka, were there, rubbing their hands around the fireplace in large, overstuffed leather chairs, but also a high-ranking officer of the Kempeitai, whom I didn’t recognize. I’m not, as a rule, fond of our military policemen. We all lived in fear of them, even if we were in the Kanto Army. This young fellow, named Toda, looked particularly smug, pulling at the crease of his trousers and patting his brown leather boots with a look that managed to convey impatience and limitless self-satisfaction.

  I knew I had to have been called in for a reason, but the gentlemen took their time to come to the point. Kishi spoke about the usual humdrum business of state: the need for harsher measures to raise the production in our factories and mines, to crack down on banditry, and so on and on. Colonel Yoshioka was asked how the Emperor was doing. Very well, he said, laughing for no apparent reason. Except that His Majesty had been showing unfortunate yearnings to leave his compound. He was bored. His wives were a constant source of irritation. And he couldn’t very well watch Charlie Chaplin films all day. Thank goodness for the poppy, said Yoshioka, for His Majesty could always be pacified after a pipe or two. “Courtesy of the Manchukuo government, I trust?” offered Kishi, baring his prominent teeth in a grin that looked more like a snarl. Yoshioka’s nostrils widened alarmingly.

  Amakasu got up from his chair to change the record, and offered me a drink. Peering into his own whiskey glass, he said he had to broach an embarrassing topic. All eyes were now on me. I braced myself. “It has been brought to our attention,” he said, “that you are having an affair with Ri Koran.” I began to protest, but he held up his hand. “No need,” he said, “no need. We know you wouldn’t do anything so foolish. The information comes from an unreliable source, indeed from a woman who is giving us nothing but trouble, a woman with whom, I believe, you do enjoy intimate relations.”

  I was astounded that my Eastern Jewel would go so far to do me damage. Wrecking my clothes was one thing, but this could have ruined me. The Kempeitai officer, who spoke in a provincial Kansai accent, began to lecture me. His hand had shifted from his trousers to his belt buckle, as though to check whether it was still there. He puffed out his chest like a pigeon. I couldn’t bear the man. But there was nothing I could do. I had to listen to this youngster telling me that my liaisons with native actresses were lowering the tone of our mission in Asia. Every man was entitled to a bit of fun, he declaimed, but intimate affairs were a different matter. We Japanese had to be seen to be above that kind of beastliness. We had responsibilities, after all. We were not here for our pleasure, but to offer leadership and discipline. All the while, the sweet voice of Ri was crooning away in the background. “China nights, nights of our dreams . . .”

  Much to my relief, Amakasu changed the subject. But the relief was only temporary. Kawashima Yoshiko, Amakasu said, was becoming a problem for us, a real menace in fact. Apart from her lies about Ri Koran, she had been causing trouble in other ways. It seemed that she had been blabbering about politics in a most inconvenient manner, shooting her mouth off about us Japanese forcing opium on the Chinese people, and so forth. She had even approached some deluded Japanese idealists about starting a party in favor of Chinese independence. This was a most delicate time for our mission in Asia, and it went without saying that we had to put a stop to this kind of thing. “We will have to get rid of her,” said the Kempeitai officer, who had shifted his attention to the shiny tips of his boots, turning them this way and that. “And since you know her better than anyone,” he continued, “and you have to make up for your unfortunate behavior, we have chosen you to take care of our problem.” An unpleasant grin lit up his face. “After all, you have a bone to pick with her now. So it shouldn’t be too hard for you to get your own back, now would it?”

  I looked at Amakasu, who refused to return my gaze. Kishi and Yoshioka were softly talking to one another about something else. I was beside myself. A refusal was out of the question. And yet the idea of murdering someone I loved so dearly, even though she had tried to do me harm, was unconscionable. Now that the official business had been concluded, the members of the Ri Koran Fan Club decided to have some gaiety. More drinks were ordered and the men sang a song celebrating the beauties of Suzhou. Sometime after midnight, Amakasu, red-faced and roaring drunk, conducted with his chopsticks, as the rest of us, standing on the long dinner table, sang “Coo Coo Goes the Pigeon.” It was one of the most unpleasant evenings of my life.

  I was not a fool. I could see the hypocrisy around me. Eastern Jewel was speaking the truth about our opium trade. But she failed to see the big picture. I still believed in our mission, despite men like Kishi or the Kempeitai officer. Even when I wore Chinese clothes, I was still a Japanese. I loved China, perhaps more than I loved Japan, but I knew that my country offered the only hope for a better Asia. Even if I disagreed with some Japanese policies, or the petty little officials entrusted to carry them out, my duty was clear.

  And yet I couldn’t do it. I lacked the moral courage to kill a woman I loved. I didn’t even have the guts to pay someone else to do the job. And so I did nothing. Back in Shanghai, I canceled all my social engagements and neglected my professional duties. For three days and three nights I dropped out of our sordid world and stretched out on a comfortable bed in an obscure corner of the French Concession, trying to focus my gaze on a slender Chinese girl with melancholy eyes cooking the black, sticky stuff of my dreams over a bright blue flame, before placing it with her expert fingers into the bowl of my pipe to take me to the sweet land of oblivion.

  16

  THERE WAS A man in Peking, a born fixer. I had had dealings with him before, and did not care for him. A petty gangster in the 1920s, Taneguchi Yoshio had worked himself up ten years later as the self-appointed head of the Japanese Fascist Party and had even contrived to have a meeting with Mussolini in Rome. The photograph of him, beaming like a schoolboy in his black uniform, shaking hands with the Duce, had been printed in all the Japanese papers. He was unscrupulous, greedy, rough with the local women, just the kind of Japanese I despised. But he did know his way around China. If you needed to smuggle antiques, diamonds, or weapons, Taneguchi was your man. If someone needed to be el
iminated, quickly and without fuss, Taneguchi would get the job done. If secret meetings between people who couldn’t afford to be seen together had to be arranged, Taneguchi would manage it. There were even rumors that he, Taneguchi, was the liaison man between the Japanese army and General Chiang Kai-shek, our arch enemy. Taneguchi, in short, knew everything and everyone, including Eastern Jewel, who had been his lover at one time. I had reason to believe he still viewed her with some affection and was hoping that he might see a way out of my dilemma. I knew the risk of taking this man into my confidence, and found it humiliating to ask him for favors, but at that dire moment in my life I didn’t know where else to turn.

  Taneguchi’s compound in the center of Peking, in a short alley between Wang Fu Jing and the Forbidden City, was guarded by White Russians. He trusted them for some reason. I believe he spoke a bit of Russian. I was ushered into his office by a young Japanese who packed two pistols under his armpits. Taneguchi, dressed in a blue suit and a tie pinned to his white shirt with a fat shiny pearl, was on the phone. He was a short man, with thick lips and tiny eyes, which tended to disappear from view entirely after he had had a few drinks. His small stature was accentuated by the fact that he seemed to have no neck; his round pink face emerged straight from his narrow shoulders, like a turtle’s head. He didn’t so much speak on the phone as grunt. The entire conversation consisted of grunts. Behind his desk, on the wall, was a gold-framed calligraphy in bold, showy, masculine brushstrokes. They were the Chinese characters for sincerity, loyalty, and benevolence. On the opposite wall, behind my chair, as though about to leap at my neck, was the stuffed head of a tiger.

  I thanked Taneguchi politely for the meeting. He told the young man with the pistols to bring us two cups of green tea. The young man padded off to the kitchen in a pair of light blue woolly house slippers. After I had told Taneguchi my story, he cocked his head and said, more to himself than to me, and not without a hint of fondness: “She’s a troublemaker, that one.” All I was asking of him was to get her out of the country. A leering smile creased his fat face. “So she’s getting in the way of your love life?” No, I said, that wasn’t the point. He waved away my objection with his right hand, which looked surprisingly dainty for someone so stout. “Yes, well,” he said, “we might still need her one day.” He couldn’t promise anything, but mentioned a place in Kyushu where she might lie low. It would buy her some time. He had friends. They would protect her, at least for a while. I would be in his debt forever, I said. “Yes, you will be,” he replied, sizing me up like a shrewd peasant at a country market. As soon as I returned to my hotel room, I ran a hot bath and soaked in it for a long time, as though I were covered in slime.

  17

  BECAUSE OF THE war, the outskirts of Shanghai were reduced to rubble. From the window of my train it resembled a huge garbage dump. But human resilience is an amazing thing. The people of China are used to living with catastrophe. Out of bits of straw, scraps of corrugated iron, the odd brick, or whatever remained of what once had been a densely populated area, people had fashioned housing of a kind. Rows and rows of straw huts, no more than shoulder-high, leaned against the banks of a stinking canal filled with every kind of waste that humans and animals can produce: excrement, dead dogs, bloody rags, and cans filled with toxic waste from a nearby chemical factory. Even from a moving train, I could see the bloated rats, as well as stray dogs, rooting in the filth. Families cooking their scraps of food kicked away the rats only when they upset the children, and sometimes they couldn’t be bothered even then. Some people were dressed in old newspapers. Kids ran along the tracks with nothing but bits of straw wrapped around their blackened feet. They were lucky to have both feet. Some people were scuttling around on their stomachs, propelling themselves forward with their arms, like crabs. When we stopped for a short while near the North Railway Station, I noticed, to my surprise, a young girl dressed in fur, scratching my window, begging for food. At least, I thought it was fur, until I took a closer look, and realized she was naked under a matted curtain of her own hair. She would not have survived for very long, and is probably happier dead than alive.

  But that’s China, where life always goes on, like the Yellow River, relentlessly, slowing down here and there almost to the point of stagnation, only to gush forth again in bursts of violent activity. Such scenes of misery as I saw from the train put me in a melancholy mood, for they gave me a sense of great weariness. Trying to change China seemed as futile as attempting to push an ocean liner off course with one’s bare hands. Any such endeavor is bound to end in failure. That is the grandeur of China; and the terrible burden of five thousand years of history. China shows up the puniness of all human aspirations, including our own mission to build a New Asia. I took no pleasure in such thoughts. I desperately wanted us to succeed. For chaos and bloodshed would be our only legacy, if we failed.

  Our police had at least restored order in the center of Shanghai, reducing crime, making it safe for people to go about their daily business. Films still opened at the Grand. Dancing went on all night at the Park Hotel. People still gambled away their money at the Race Club. Whatever happened in the world, the hedonistic spirit of Shanghai was irrepressible.

  My main guide and companion in Shanghai was a man who was in every sense the opposite of Taneguchi. Kawamura Keizo, boss of the Asian Pictures Company, was a man of culture, who spoke many languages, including fluent German and French, and was respected by the Chinese. Asian Pictures was Japanese-owned, but specialized in high-quality local films made by the finest Chinese directors. It was, in so many ways, what Manchuria Motion Pictures should have been. Films made by Asians for Asians, which actually appealed to local audiences. They had a lightness of touch sorely lacking in the heavy-handed propaganda pictures favored by Amakasu, who, not surprisingly, did not like Kawamura at all. Of all Japanese I knew in those years, Kawamura came closest to understanding the Chinese mind.

  A tall, handsome fellow, with a shock of wavy hair and a taste for fine English suits, Kawamura was intimately acquainted with every pleasure the city had to offer. Quickly bored with official business, he would call me in the afternoons to meet at the Great World tower for some relaxation.

  The Great World on Yangjingbang West Street was a giant pagoda of pleasure. At the bottom of the tower was a cinema with room for one thousand people. Pretty whores in qi paos with slits up to their armpits lingered in the lobby from morning till late at night. We started on the first floor, feasting on Shanghainese dumplings, and slowly began our ascent up to “paradise,” as the locals called the summit, sampling the delights of every floor: bathing in scented steam on the first; foot massage and earwax-picking on the second; acrobats, tightrope walkers, and musicians on the third; peepshows of naked girls and theatrical performances of an indelicate nature accompanied by delicious Suzhou pastries on the fourth; exquisite stimulations by expert young girls, various games of chance, and a store specializing in “rubber goods” on the fifth; and so on, up to the top, where Chinese beauties offered every imaginable pleasure, while an orchestra played film tunes, including, I am pleased to recall, some of Ri Koran’s songs. Chinese visitors to this palace of delights, who had been unable to resist the temptation to spend all their money on girls or games of chance, would sometimes jump from “paradise” all the way into the teeming streets below. Locals called the steps leading to a wooden platform jutting out from the top of the tower “the stairway to heaven.”

  Though Kawamura had made films with most of the top Chinese movie stars, his greatest wish was to entice Ri to work for his Shanghai studios. He wanted to make her as popular in China as she was in Japan. Naturally, Amakasu was highly reluctant to let her go, even for one film. In a fit of unforgivable rashness, I agreed to see what I could do for my friend to change Amakasu’s mind.

  Just when the cold spell was finally breaking in April, Ri arrived in Shanghai from Japan, where she had been shooting scenes for a new picture, entitled Suzhou Nights. We met in my
favorite restaurant on Hankow Road, where we had a luncheon of fried eel and hairy crabs. I noticed that she kept stooping to scratch her legs. “Oh, that,” she said, when I enquired about it; “a little souvenir from the homeland.” They had been shooting a scene in a pond near Tokyo, which bore a passing resemblance to the lakes of Suzhou. The director was well known as a hard taskmaster. Poor Ri had spent hours standing up to her waist in the pond, waiting for the camera to roll, and had been set upon by leeches. She also brought another piece of news, which was much more startling. She had had an encounter with the other Yoshiko, my Jewel. When I heard this, it was as if a block of ice slid down my spine.

  While staying at a hotel in Kyushu, Ri received a phone call: “Your big brother needs to see you.” Worried by the tone of Jewel’s voice, she agreed to meet her at once. Jewel came over dressed in a man’s kimono. Looking frantic, she reached into her bag and handed over a sheaf of papers, bound in silk, and covered in her handwriting. “Please read it,” she said. “This is my life. Only you understand me. So you must play me. This must be your next film.” Ri was so taken aback that she had no idea what to say. She had never seen Eastern Jewel like that, twitching with anxiety. “Please,” she said, “I beg of you. You must do it. It’s my last chance.” Before Ri was able to hand back the manuscript, Jewel was gone. Listening to the account, I silently thanked Taneguchi. At least Eastern Jewel was safe for the time being. The thing is, despite what she had done, I still loved her. The film was of course never made. Ri quickly handed over the manuscript to me, as though it were scorching her hands. And I consigned it to my fireplace. It was an act of love, not betrayal. For I could well imagine Eastern Jewel’s fate if those pages had fallen into the wrong hands.