Jasmine

by Noboru Tsujihara

  Xie saw everything in a dual aspect. Was this simply old age? A twilight state in which things appeared twofold by nature? No. He had studied and mastered the art from youth. A required subject for survival in this country. First, the duality inherent in the city of Shanghai itself. Then ideological duality – the Kuomintang-Communist alignment, the Sino-Japanese collaboration. Cinematic light and shadow; the Chinese language and the Japanese language; fact and fiction. Xie himself had assumed these dualities, thereby surviving a harsh regime.

  In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, his two sons had become Red Guards and attacked his duality head-on. He was censured, dragged to criticism meetings, physically assaulted. The boys were twelve and thirteen. Later they became embroiled in an internal struggle in the Red Guards. The elder boy was murdered, the younger one stuffed in a garbage can which his tormentors beat continuously with wooden sticks. He was released on the fifth day, a wreck.

  Revolution was something you were better off avoiding if you could. With every revolution, the country got worse. At the end of the world, if God handed out awards for the three harshest prisons ever devised by human beings, China’s labour camps would be a shoo-in.

  In the world of politics, barbarians won. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were barbaric, brutal bumpkins – poles apart from Wang Jingwei and Zhou Enlai, both of whom had been wounded. A sniper’s bullet got Wang Jingwei in the back, lodging near his spine, and Zhou Enlai was badly injured falling off a horse, so that his left arm hung useless. Wang died after suffering excruciating pain from that bullet wound, making an early exit from the stage of history. Just as well: sooner or later Japan was bound to lose, and he’d have been tortured to death as the worst traitor of them all. Nobody ever took seriously his talk of peace between Japan and China. Castles in the air.

  Though certainly no glorious war wound, Zhou Enlai’s injury had a curious effect on people. After the war, he took to posing for the camera with his right arm bent somewhere near his navel, and everyone assumed that this arm was crippled. The word spread: Premier Zhou gave his right arm to put food on our plates. And yet it was his left arm that was immobile. Miraculously, he managed to hang onto the premiership of the People’s Republic of China to the bitter end. How did he do it? Was it thanks to his good looks and his bad arm? A mystery.

  Xie shook his head to rouse himself from this train of thought. He glanced at his companion, reflecting that he was about the age his sons would have been if they had lived. Then, in a slow, deliberate way, he began to talk about Waki Tanehiko.

  “Shanghai is smack in the East Asia monsoon zone, so we get a lot of sudden showers. But people here hate carrying umbrellas. Japanese are much fonder of them, aren’t they?”

  “I wonder. I hardly ever carry one, myself. Getting wet doesn’t bother me.”

  “When it rained, your father would make a dash for it, no umbrella, going from the front of this hotel to Hamilton House across the street in only fifteen steps. He was proud of that – fifteen steps. Only in a baoyu, a real downpour, would he have the hotel porter escort him over. An Indian with a little moustache and a turban. The perfect servant. He’d hold up an umbrella as big as a beach parasol, with stripes like a barber pole. Blue and white and red. If your father was going home, he’d stand in front of Hamilton House and signal by raising an arm, and the porter would charge over with the umbrella.”

  Aki absorbed this before asking, “Why did it take my father an extra five years to go back to Japan after the war ended?”

  Xie Han picked up a little pine nut in his fingertips, held it up as if to peer through it in the faint light, and then placed it between his lips and rolled it around. The skinny, round-faced bartender was polishing a glass with a cloth, creating sharp squeaking sounds.

  “Do you know the word hanjian?”

  The squeaky sounds overlapped neatly with the word. Aki nodded noncommittally. Hanjian, he thought: someone who sold out his country by collaborating or colluding with the Japanese.

  “As soon as Japan lost the war, what do you think became of the Chinese working at Huaying, the film studio that was a pet project of the Japanese military?”

  “Arrested? And, okay, my father was Han Langen, the Chinese comedian …”

  Starting the year after Japan’s defeat, the traitors’ trials took place over a period of two years and five months, from April 1946 to September 1948, in the high courts of cities across the land: Nanjing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Hebei, Tianjin, Ji’nan, Amoy.

  Huaying’s operations were taken over by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, and all the company’s Chinese workers, actors, and production staff became targets of the hunt for traitors; many were arrested and imprisoned. The managing director and three honorary directors had all held key positions in the puppet government of Wang Jingwei and so were sentenced to death. Xie Han received a sentence of three years in prison.

  Xie said, “There was an actress named Li Xianglan. That was her Chinese name, but she was actually Japanese. You must have heard of her.”

  Just then a man entered the bar. He was wearing a rumpled, dark blue suit and a big, loud, red-and-blue striped necktie that looked out of place. He sat down at the other end of the bar and ordered coffee in a quiet voice. After being served, he slurped his drink noisily.

  “The first two people in the Far East to see Citizen Kane were probably Tanehiko and me.” The change of subject was so abrupt that Aki was a bit startled. “August 1941.”

  “The same year as Pearl Harbor,” said Aki. “Amazing that you could see Citizen Kane in Shanghai so soon.”

  “The New York premiere was in May. Which means that Shanghai movie fans saw the film before almost anyone else in the world, New Yorkers excepted. It was splendid. Orson Welles was only twenty-five. A young man like us.”

  Aki had never seen Citizen Kane.

  Xie quickly scribbled something on the back of a paper coaster and slid it over the counter to him, his face turned innocently towards a corner of the ceiling.

  He’s from the Public Security Bureau, foreign affairs section. Let’s switch to Japanese.

  Aki gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “Citizen Kane played in the Grand Theatre, Shanghai’s top venue,” Xie remembered. “That’s also where Li Xianglan earlier held a song recital produced by Huaying, in May 1945. The event was billed as a ‘Fragrance of the Night Fantasia,’ after her signature song. It was a big hit. For three days she sang twice a day, afternoon and evening, before sellout crowds. Tickets sold at a premium.”

  “That’s your connection?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The link between Orson Welles and Li Xianglan.”

  “Yes, indeed. The Grand Theatre. For Welles’s movie the theatre was almost empty, for her there was standing room only.”

  Aki sensed that the guy at the end of the bar was all ears. “You know, her Japanese name is Yamaguchi Yoshiko,” he said. “She’s married to a foreign diplomat in Tokyo now. She herself is a member of the House of Councillors… Now there’s a woman who was a Japanese and became famous as a Chinese actress. I guess you could say my father was a male version of her. Not as big a star, of course.”

  “Never was any demand for his work. He never achieved any popularity at all,” said Xie with apparent approval. “Anyway, as I was saying before, we were all caught together and put in Tilanqiao Prison in the Hongkew district. Your father, me, Li Xianglan…”

  Aki’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “You have to realize, except for those of us in the film business, everybody thought she was Chinese. To escape the charge of treason she had to prove she was a bona fide Japanese national. Kawakita ran around and finally managed to track down a copy of her family registry in Beijing. So in February 1946, she was cleared by a military court. A fate just the opposite of Kawashima Yoshiko’s.”[1]

  “The Oriental Mata Hari.”

  “Exactly. Executed in 1948, in Beijing.”

  Just a
s they were getting back to Aki’s father, the customer at the end of the bar stood up. “Well, if it isn’t Mr Xie!” he called out with phony surprise, as if he’d just noticed them. He came over. “How’s your latest movie shaping up?”

  Xie Han twisted around to answer. “Fine, thanks,” he told the man, giving him an easy smile.

  “Your companion is Japanese, I see.”

  Aki turned to the man as well, to find his eyes fixed on him.

  “People in Japanese firms that left China are gradually coming back, aren’t they? Your Chinese is excellent, sir. Are you here on business?”

  Aki shook his head, then turned to the bartender. “I’d like some kind of cocktail. What can you make me?”

  “You name it. Pretty much anything.”

  The man backed off, paying his respects to Xie Han as he went. Just as he seemed in danger of knocking into a table, he turned around and headed for the exit, then stopped and, facing them again, said confidentially, “By the way, they say Liu Hong made it to Jiangsu.” Looking in their direction, he backed out through the double doors and disappeared.

  Xie said to the bartender, “Wang, old fellow, I’m a little hungry. Make me a sandwich?”

  “Yes, sir. What about the other gentleman’s cocktail?”

  “I’d like a gimlet,” said Aki. “Can you do that?”

  “You bet,” said Wang with a wink.

  It was ready in no time. Sipping his gimlet, Aki murmured in Japanese, as if to himself, “Liu Hong. Li Xing’s boyfriend. I wonder if public security knows she’s missing?”

  “Who can say?” Xie shrugged.

  Wang produced a sandwich, which Xie began to eat with gusto. Mouth full, he mumbled, “Who do you think that guy was spying on, you or me? Almost certainly you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Of course it’s you. No doubt about it. After all, he’s in their foreign affairs section. The rest of us know we’re under constant observation everywhere we go, anyway. No need for such heavy-handed reminders.”

  Aki shook the crushed ice in his glass. It might just be true. At a time of domestic crisis, a Japanese national travelling by sea enters the country alone, with no clear purpose. Immigration isn’t likely to overlook that.

  “Funny,” said the old director. His eyes had a slight squint. “He looked like the fellow playing Han Langen.”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “You don’t look much like your father, do you?”

  “I’m told I take after my mother.”

  “That must be it.” He paused. “That guy might’ve been able to understand Japanese, for all I know. Well, we didn’t say much of anything. Wait a minute – maybe he knows something about your dad that we don’t, maybe that’s why he’s following you – no, I’m joking.

  He propped his cheeks on both hands, so that his voice came out muffled. “Let’s get back to the past. Now, thanks to Kawakita, Li Xianglan was able to show that she was Japanese and get safely back to Japan – but your father wasn’t keen on proving his Japanese nationality.”

  Surprised, Aki raised his eyes, and happened to meet the bartender’s gaze. Xie’s words rang inside his head. While waiting for whatever came next, he wondered how old this bartender might be. He looked young, but there was something older about him, too. It might be those deep furrows in his forehead.

  “He wanted to become Chinese… while staying Japanese.” Xie’s voice was still muffled. “And so he used both names, Waki Tanehiko and Han Langen. Not just as private name and professional name, either. There was more interplay between the two identities. He couldn’t really separate them. You could say he was defined by the very ambiguity of his position, of his attitude. When they arrested him, I doubt if he was able to make a choice on the spot.”

  “What happened at his trial?”

  “He was perfectly calm. Kawakita worried about your father, too, but saving the big star, Li Xianglan, was a higher priority. As was only natural. But your father went out of his way to refuse Kawakita’s help, politely but firmly. He got indicted as the Chinese Han Langen, but he remained ambivalent throughout the trial. His attitude must have had a negative effect on the judge. Here’s the proof. Except for the Chinese executives, the other actors, directors, and crew from Huaying were all let go, one after another. I was sentenced to three years for making ‘slave movies.’ Only Han Langen got a five-year term. He did time for treason as a Chinese, then went back to Kobe as a Japanese. Which seems logical enough, too… By the way, that cocktail of yours looks pretty good. Wang, old fellow, make me one, too.”

  A slight distance away, Wang swung the cocktail shaker energetically.

  “How old is he?” asked Aki.

  “About your age. He was in my son’s class in middle school.”

  “Then why do you call him old fellow?”

  “That’s what we always called him. Look at his face – it’s always been that way.”

  Wang calmly set the gimlet in front of Xie Han, who took a sip and smiled appreciatively before commenting, “If the charge of espionage had held, your father’s punishment would have been far more severe.”

  Aki quickly finished off his drink.” Double agent?”

  “Yes. In the movie, that is. How it really was, there’s no way of knowing. Although as far as Zheng Pinru is concerned, her trial established that she definitely was a double agent.”

  “Which side do you suppose my father was actually spying for?” Aki asked, aware of himself being drawn deeper into the web of duality that Xie Han had introduced. Everything appeared double. Shanghai, his father, Xie himself. And weaving through his thoughts were two Li Xings: one on the wharf, dimly visible in the rain, the other in the spotlight, surrounded by golden, dancing specks of dust.

  “The truth? Who’s to say? Only he knew, of course, and he never would have told. Everyone who knew his real character is dead, friend and foe alike: Ding Mocun, Zheng Pinru… and Zhou Enlai.”

  “You’re kidding! I wasn’t expecting that name to pop up.”

  “They must have met somewhere along the line. Zhou set up the communist secret agency in Shanghai, and later kept close track of the Party’s secret operations through an underling.”

  The clean-cut, intelligent features of the Zhou Enlai that the world knew overlapped with those of a special operative bent on murder and deceit.

  “The crushed ice is what makes this so good,” said Xie Han, and asked Wang for his recipe.

  Wang obviously knew his stuff: “It should be made with lime, but since there are no limes in Shanghai, I make do with lemon.”

  “It’s true,” said Aki, “lime does taste better. But you have quite a knack. This is excellent.”

  The bartender’s eyes crinkled with pleasure at the compliment.

  Everyone in the know was dead, Xie had said, but this wasn’t quite true. He himself was alive… The director mulled the two names over: Waki Tanehiko and Han Langen. By now he felt they represented two separate friends of his. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get the two to converge in a single personality.

  The fellow had spoken Mandarin as easily as if it were his mother tongue. Wrote it, too. That alone qualified him as a spy. And he hadn’t seemed to belong wholeheartedly to either camp, had seemed rather to enjoy the ambiguity of his position. Xie remembered a film in which Han Langen had played the part of a Japanese youth. Though he wasn’t a great actor, on that occasion his performance had been riveting.

  The director’s thoughts continued to run on. Tanehiko had had no principles. Not communism, not cosmopolitanism, not patriotism. What did he have, then? A kind of neutral detachment. Yet how could someone like that fall in love, father a child? A child sitting here now, grown up. What about him? He claimed to take after his mother, not his father. Probably true.

  Turning to Tanehiko’s son, he said, “The indictment was for being a Japanese spy – that was a shock. The same as a death sentence. If he could have proved he was spying not
for the Japanese, but for the Comintern, or for Chinese communist counterintelligence, he might have been spared. But in those days, Shanghai was completely under Chiang Kai-shek’s control. There was no one, and nothing, to vouch for him.”

  Aki was quiet, listening intently.

  Records of the military trials, especially the traitors’ trials, were lost in the turbulent shift from Chiang Kai-shek to Mao Zedong. Yet the traitors’ trials were the focus of attention among Shanghainese, covered daily by all the papers in full detail. When Huaying film stars were subpoenaed, the Shanghai High Court was filled with a horde of fans. Xie Han had been in prison at the time, but after his release, he’d been able to read all the newspaper accounts thanks to a friend who saved them.

  “…And yet the Japanese spy and Chinese comedian Han Langen didn’t get the death penalty,” said Xie in conclusion. Abruptly he stopped talking, and with his lips pursed, he rolled his eyes upwards and shook his head. Then, taking a toothpick, he stuck it in one section of his sandwich.

  Aki grew impatient. “Why not?”

  “Wang le,” said Xie Han. Meaning, I’ve forgotten. He stuffed the sandwich in his mouth, with the toothpick sticking out. Chewing, he continued to speak as if reading from a script.

  “What is the defendant’s name?”

  Han Langen. In Japanese, Waki Tanehiko.

  “Where was the defendant born?”

  Wang le.

  “When and where did the defendant first meet Major-General Kagesa Sadaaki in the Bureau of Military Affairs of the Japanese War Ministry?”

  Wang le.

  “Where were you on 8th May of the 28th year of the Republic?”