Japanese songstress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who posed as Chinese, dies aged 94
Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko "Shirley" Yamaguchi, who was nearly executed in China at the end of the second world war, has died aged 94 after a life as dramatic as her films.
Yoshiko Yamaguchi
1920-2014
Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko "Shirley" Yamaguchi, who was nearly executed in China at the end of the second world war, has died aged 94 after a life as dramatic as her films.
Yamaguchi, who was born to Japanese parents in pre-war Manchuria, where her father worked for the railway, entertained Chinese and Japanese audiences posing as a Chinese under her assumed identity Li Hsiang-lan.
The actress, who formally went by the surname of her late husband and diplomat Hiroshi Otaka, died of heart failure at her home in Tokyo on September 7, her family said yesterday.
"She always stayed home in recent years because of her old age but led a normal life," a family member said.
Yamaguchi was long regarded as Chinese after making her debut in the 1938 movie Honeymoon Express. Some of her films were seen as pro-Japanese propaganda, including China Nights (1940), in which she starred with Japanese heartthrob Kazuo Hasegawa. She later expressed regret over them.