The Manchurian Princess

     As I have already mentioned, the purpose of these blogs is to provide information on subjects and areas that were either not covered, or covered insufficiently in The Manchurian Tales.  The book was about the experiences of Russian Koreans, the uhl mao zeh in Manchuria, especially one family.  However, as everyone can see, there is much more to the story of Manchuria than just the experiences of one Russian Korean family!
     In The Manchurian Tales there is a chapter called "The Manchu Princess."  It is about a particular Manchu princess of Jurchen tribe, a daughter of a Jurchen chief who marries a Korean and becomes Russofied.  The Manchurian Princess that I am going to discuss now has nothing to do with Russians, and in fact, is almost the exact opposite of the Princess in The Manchurian Tales.  Rather than Russofied (or Russianized), this one was Japanized.
     She began life as a daughter of a Ching Dynasty official, a minor prince of the ruling Manchu clan of Aisin Gioro and a concubine.  So, she was not even officially a princess.  The Ching Dynasty was overthrown when she was five years old, and three years later, when she was eight, her father "gave" her to a Japanese couple who adopted her.  The whole adoption process is somewhat murky, obviously it was a lot simpler to adopt a child in those days.  There was even some talk that her father sold her to the Japanese, since he had fallen on hard times after the fall of Ching Dynasty.  Her Chinese name was Chin Pi Hui, but she was given a Japanese name by her adoptive parents and became Yoshiko Kawashima.  Yoshiko grew up in Japan and educated in Tokyo, some say she led a very bohemian life style, having numerous affairs with both men and women.  She was a very attractive girl.
     At age 20 she got tired of student life in Tokyo and left, went to Shanghai where she eventually met and married a Mongol prince.  From this point on, her life story reads like a badly written Hollywood script.  Her marriage to the Mongol prince didn't last long, so she divorced him and began living with a Japanese intelligence chief in Shanghai.  This is where she first started her clandestine life as a Japanese spy.  Her lover left Shanghai, but she remained and picked up where she left off with a Japanese Army general.  She then moved to Manchuria and became an agent for the Kwantung Army.  She convinced the Japanese to allow her to form an army of her own to combat the "hoonhoozy" and various guerrilla groups operating in Manchuria.  She formed a 5000 man army made up of former bandits, "hoonhoozy" and as their commander, she led them in combat against anti Japanese guerrillas.  She liked to dress in men's clothing, especially military uniforms.
     It is said that she was instrumental in creating numerous incidents which gave the Japanese the excuse to launch their war against China.  When Japan created the puppet state of Manchukuo and put Pu Yi on the throne, Yoshiko thought that her dream of restoring the Ching Dynasty had come to fruition.  But she soon discovered that the whole business of Manchukuo was nothing but a sham.  She became very disillusioned with the Japanese and fell out of favor.  Actually, the Japanese had no more use for her, so they simply dumped her.
     She was a colorful character, hated by Chinese nationalists and anyone else who was anti Japanese.  The Japanese, on the other hand, viewed her as some sort of a heroic figure.  Many favorable magazine and newspaper articles were written about her and even a movie was made with a top Japanese actress of the era portraying her.  It is said that she was the inspiration for many of the evil comic book characters that were created in America.
     Before the war ended, she fled Manchuria and ended up in Peking (Beijing) but was captured by the Nationalists in 1948, before they lost China to Mao and the communists.  She was tried and hung as a traitor.  Still, after the war more movies were made about her in Hong Kong and in Japan.  Hollywood even had her as the character "Eastern Jewel" in the movie The Last Emperor, and she appeared in different guises, always as a villainous woman in movies about Asia.
     Many view her as a kind of a sad character, a caricature of a heroic woman.  Essentially, the Japanese created her, just as they are supposedly responsible for creating the name Manchuria (not Manchu, Manchu is a native name) and later the sham of a country called Manchukuo.  Actually a sad story of a sad individual, someone who was "given away" by her father and mother, someone who never belonged anywhere.  The Chinese and the Manchus hated her, yet she was a princess, if not by birth then by her first marriage to a Mongol prince.