21 Facts About Yoshiko Yamaguchi

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was a Japanese singer, actress, journalist, and politician.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was born on February 12,1920, to Japanese parents, Ai Yamaguchi and Fumio Yamaguchi, who were then settlers in Fushun, Manchuria, Republic of China, in a coal mining residential area in Dengta, Liaoyang.

Fumio Yoshiko Yamaguchi was an employee of the South Manchuria Railway.

From an early age, Yoshiko Yamaguchi was exposed to Mandarin Chinese.

Fumio Yoshiko Yamaguchi had some influential Chinese acquaintances, among whom were Li Jichun and Pan Yugui.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi later used the former name as a stage name and assumed the latter name while she was staying with the Pan family in Beijing.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi later received schooling in Beijing, polishing her Mandarin, accommodated by the Pan family.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi made her debut as an actress and singer in the 1938 film, Honeymoon Express, by Manchuria Film Production.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was billed as Li Hsiang-lan, pronounced Ri Koran in Japanese.

In spite of the acquittal, the Chinese judges still warned Li to leave China immediately or she would risk being lynched; and so in 1946, she resettled in Japan and launched a new acting career there under the name Yoshiko Yamaguchi, working with directors such as Akira Kurosawa.

In 1952, Yoshiko Yamaguchi appeared in Woman of Shanghai, in which she reprised her pre-war persona as a Japanese woman passing for Chinese who becomes caught between the two cultures.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was Japanese, but as someone who had grown up in China, she felt torn between two identities and later wrote that she felt attracted to Noguchi as someone else who was torn between two identities.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi revived the Li Hsiang-lan name and appeared in several Chinese-language films made in Hong Kong.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi returned to Japan and after retiring from the world of film in 1958, she appeared as a hostess and anchorwoman on TV talk shows.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi co-authored the book, Ri Koran, Watashi no Hansei.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi served as a vice-president of the Asian Women's Fund.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was considered by many Chinese in the post-World War II period to be a Japanese spy and thus a traitor to the Chinese people.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi had always expressed her guilt for taking part in Japanese propaganda films in the early days of her acting career.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was one of the first prominent Japanese citizens to acknowledge the Japanese brutality during wartime occupation.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was credited as Shirley Yamaguchi in the Hollywood movies, Japanese War Bride, House of Bamboo, and Navy Wife.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was once nicknamed The Judy Garland of Japan.