MANCHU PRINCESS, JAPANESE SPY: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army | By Phyllis Birnbaum - Pacific Affairs (UBC Journal) (2024)

Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. x, 252 pp. (Illustrations.) US$24.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-231-15219-8.

Alongside soldiers and bureaucrats, Japanese efforts to dominate China involved individuals from many walks of life. Among the more colourful was Kawashima Yoshiko. Born Aisin Gioro Xianyu, she assumed several names in a high-profile life that ended in her 1948 execution. As a public personality she is discussed in detail in Japanese biographies and memoirs, and here we have the fullest study of her life in English, one that sifts Japanese materials. In doing so, Phyllis Birnbaum interrogates her sources as well as her subject in order to assess Kawashima in all her flamboyant and contradictory glory.

Kawashima was born a Manchu princess, the fourteenth child of a prince of the prestigious first rank, just before the Qing dynasty’s fall. Fleeing to Lüshun after the revolution, the family lived in a kind of exile, antagonistic to the new Republic. The family also accepted Japanese aid, and Kawashima was sent to live in Japan with an adoptive father in 1912, the “continental adventurer” (tairiku rōnin) Kawashima Naniwa. Birnbaum considers his life before proceeding with his adopted daughter’s life in Japan, a methodology repeated in considering other significant personalities with whom Kawashima interacted or could identify. These include the aristocrat Saga Hiro, the writer Muramatsu Shōfū, General Tanaka Ryūkichi, right-wing businessman Sasakawa Ryōichi, and the actor Yamaguchi Yoshiko (Ri Kōran). Contextualizing sources helps Birnbaum puzzle through the implications of their views of Kawashima, though Birnbaum also strays into territory only tenuously connected to her subject, such as a brief consideration of Japanese rural settlers with whom she would have had little in common (“Starting Over in Manchukuo”). The result is an episodic account of Kawashima Yoshiko’s life and times, one that tries to narrow the uncertainties about her life. This is difficult given the multiplicity of views evident in the materials, including contradictory stories offered by Kawashima herself.

For Birnbaum, Kawashima Naniwa’s exploits perhaps helped propel Yoshiko into a life of adventure, but at the same time the author notes a quirky personality evident early on. Mixing with conspiring continental adventurers and criminals exposed her to garrulous opportunists as a youth, and she continued to consort with writers, military adventurers, and other travellers as her quirks became more outlandish. Before turning twenty, for example, she shaved her head to escape gendered expectations—possibly because of rape—and returned to China. Her hair remained short thereafter, and she often chose to dress in men’s attire. After a short-lived marriage in 1927 to a Mongolian independence fighter, she split her time between China and Japan, often in dance halls, trying to find a social niche. This she famously discovered during the Manchurian Incident, beginning September 18, 1931 when the Japanese Kwantung (Guandong) Army took control of the region on behalf of the empire. Returning to China she helped spirit Puyi’s wife Wanrong out of Tianjin and allegedly supported the Japanese Army when fighting broke out in Shanghai by reconnoitering Chinese officers. She was also reported to have been involved in subduing the Chinese warlord Su Bingwen in northwestern Manchuria and given her own command of troops in the Japanese occupation of Rehe (Jehol). Although hard evidence for these exploits is negligible—making one query this book’s subtitle—the public avidly consumed published reports of her activities and Kawashima’s own boasting helped swell her reputation.

As a person raised in both the Chinese and Japanese worlds, Kawashima understandably felt an inclination to aid both. Disliking Chinese warlords and Nationalist officials, she gravitated to those in the Japanese military willing to take a firm stance in China. The forthright Kawashima, moreover, had no problem defending her actions publicly, and evidently enjoyed being in the spotlight. Outlandish behaviour was perhaps a way of ensuring continued public attention, but financial issues seem also to have pressured her to seek new opportunities and new lovers. In addition to a lavish lifestyle she had also become a drug addict. Kawashima, however, soured on the Japanese military, given police censorship of her activities and an increasingly heavy hand exercised by Japanese officials in Manchukuo. Her public criticisms became more trenchant, and Birnbaum reports that some in the Japanese military considered assassinating her. After war broke out in 1937 she offered to help negotiate peace between China and Japan, but was ignored. Dejected and increasingly isolated, Kawashima left Japan for Beijing with her three pet monkeys. There she awaited the end of the war, and did go into hiding upon Japan’s capitulation. Denounced as a traitor (hanjian), she was arrested and unable to defend herself given her reputation and notoriety among the Chinese. The public record was used against her and she was unable to claim Japanese citizenship and thus repatriation because it turned out that Kawashima Naniwa never formally adopted her. Birnbaum suggests ultimately that Kawashima acquiesced and awaited her execution with equanimity, but also reports rumours that at the last second she may have been spirited away to live out her final years in peace.

Birnbaum’s study reads well, but the references are frustrating. Instead of numbered references, the author identifies sources by repeating a phrase in the endnotes, identifying only sources of direct quotations. Not all quotes, moreover, are referenced in the back, presumably meaning that they were taken from the last reference noted—but some do not seem appropriate. Elsewhere, references to significant issues discussed in the text are entirely omitted, such as early Japanese efforts to support Manchu and Mongol independence from China (20). She also oddly lists the main personalities involved on the first page as “main characters,” as in a drama. Despite these qualms, the book does shed light on a controversial figure and deserves to be adopted by university libraries holding materials on this turbulent era.

Bill Sewell
Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada

MANCHU PRINCESS, JAPANESE SPY: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army | By Phyllis Birnbaum - Pacific Affairs (UBC Journal) (2024)

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