The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  Perhaps my love of this story reveals my peasant roots, deep in the soil of the Mountain of Dread. Okuni may have been right about that, after all. Just as the sun comes up every day to give us light, and just as the seasons will always come and go long after we’re dead, the images we make have a kind of permanence. They are our only shot at immortality. That’s why I cannot kill the movies in my head, however much I try. I’ve wrestled with the angel and lost. For they are part of me, they are what made me. In the isolation of my prison, I finally made peace with myself. For I, too, have a capacity for worship. I worship what religious people call the craven image. This is why Ri Koran will never die. Nor will Yamaguchi Yoshiko, or even Shirley Yamaguchi. Long after my Yamaguchi-san turns to dust, they will live on, wherever there is a film, a screen, and a projector of light.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is a work of fiction based on historical events. Some were invented, others took place, though not always quite in the way they appear in this book. I owe a great debt to Otaka Yoshiko, formerly known as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who graciously allowed me to interview her on several occasions in Tokyo. Her memoir, Ri Koran, Watashi no Hansei (Half My Life as Ri Koran), (Shincho Bunka, Tokyo, 1987) was an invaluable source of information on her extraordinary life in China. It was a conversation I had with her admirable co-writer, Fujiwara Sakuya, whose own memoir, Manshu no Kaze (Manchurian Winds), (Shueisha, Tokyo, 1996) was also of great use to me, that first planted the seed of this novel in my mind. For this I owe him my thanks.

  Donald Richie, novelist, critic, and the most distinguished foreign writer on Japanese cinema, lived through much of the Allied occupation of Japan. His book, The Japan Journals: 1947–2004 (Stone Bridge Press, 2004), offers the best personal account of that period. A mentor, and beloved friend of many years, he taught me much of what I know about Japan.

  Thanks, too, for the excellent guidance of my editors, Vanessa Mobley in New York and Toby Mundy in London. My friend John Ryle was a careful reader of the manuscript and prevented several infelicities from going into print. Jin Auh, Jacqueline Ko, and Tracy Bohan, of the Wylie Agency, have provided constant, much needed support.

  My dearest critic and supporter throughout the process of writing the book was Eri Hotta, my wife, whose encouragement kept me going at all times, especially when writerly anxieties threatened to halt the momentum. I cannot thank her enough.