日本歌手 演員李香蘭在東京逝世

Yoshiko Yamaguchi, a singer and actress who starred in Japanese propaganda films during Japan’s brutal military occupation of China in the 1930s and ’40s and who, after narrowly escaping execution by the Chinese after the war, helped normalize relations between the nations, died on Sept. 7 in Tokyo. She was 94.

日本歌手、演員山口淑子於9月7日在東京逝世，享年94歲。20世紀三四十年代日本對中國實行野蠻軍事佔領期間，她曾在日本的宣傳影片中擔任主演。戰後她僥倖逃脫了中方的死刑，後亦曾幫助兩國實現關係正常化。

Her death was announced by a family spokesman, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

根據日本報紙《朝日新聞》報道，一名家族發言人宣告了她的死訊。

Ms. Yamaguchi’s life was marked by a series of self-reinventions, most of them forced on her by the same historic events that changed the face of Asia in the 20th century. In recent years, her story became a touchstone for film histories, television dramas, a novel and an opera — all in some way exploring national identity in Asia.

山口淑子的一生充滿一系列自我重塑，其中大部分是受那些改變了20世紀亞洲面貌的歷史事件所迫。近年來，她的故事爲若干歷史題材的電影、電視劇，以及一部小說與一部歌劇提供了素材，而它們的主題都與在亞洲探索國家身份認同有關。

Beginning in 1938, when she was 18, she was a movie star known in China as Li Xianglan, the Chinese pseudonym she assumed to hide her Japanese identity in films promoting Japanese occupation. After the war, she lived as an exile from China, the country of her birth; acted in 1950s Hollywood B-movies under the name Shirley Yamaguchi; and became a cosmopolitan voice for Sino-Japanese détente in the Japanese parliament.

1938年，18歲的山口淑子是一個電影明星，以藝名李香蘭在中國廣爲人知。她以這個中國化名來隱藏自己的日本人身份，參演了若干用來讚美日本佔領的宣傳片。戰後，她被中國驅逐（中國是她的出生地），在50年代使用雪莉·山口(Shirley Yamaguchi)這個名字出演了若干好萊塢B級片；在日本議會中成爲超越民族偏見、緩和中日關係的代言人。

In the United States Ms. Yamaguchi had starring roles in King Vidor’s “Japanese War Bride,” a 1952 film co-starring Don Taylor; “House of Bamboo,” a 1955 film noir directed by Samuel Fuller and co-starring Robert Stack; and a short-lived 1956 Broadway musical, “Shangri-La,” based on the James Hilton novel “Lost Horizon.”

在美國，山口淑子曾出演1952年的《日本戰地新娘》(Japanese War Bride)，該片由金·維達(King Vidor)導演，唐·泰勒(Don Taylor)飾演男主角；以及1955年的黑色電影《竹屋》(House of Bamboo)，由薩繆爾·富勒(Samuel Fuller)導演，羅伯特·斯塔克飾演男主角(Robert Stack)；此外還有1956年曇花一現的百老匯音樂劇《香格里拉》(Shangri-La)，由詹姆斯·希爾頓的小說《遠逝的地平線》(Lost Horizon)改編。

She played her major roles, on and off the screen, in Asia.

在亞洲，無論是銀幕內外，她都扮演着重要的角色。

Born to Japanese parents in Manchuria, the northwest region of China that was invaded by the Japanese in 1931 and held at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilian lives over the next 14 years, Ms. Yamaguchi was an 18-year-old Mandarin speaker when the Manchurian Film Association cast her in the first of a series of Chinese-language propaganda films.

山口淑子出生在滿洲的一個日本家庭，這個位於中國東北部的地區1931年被日本侵略，其後日本的統治持續了14年，數十萬中國人喪命。18歲那年，會說普通話的山口淑子被滿洲映畫協會選中，開始出演一系列中文宣傳影片。

At the time, she wrote in “My Life as Li Xianglan,” her 2004 autobiography, she did not understand the not-too-subtle message in the melodramatic romances she made, like “Honeymoon Express” (1938), “China Nights” (1940) and “Song of the White Orchid” (1942).

她曾出演許多戲劇性的愛情電影，比如1938年的《蜜月快車》、1940年的《支那之夜》和1942年的《迎春花》，在2004年的自傳《我作爲李香蘭的人生》(My Life as Li Xianglan)中，她說自己當時對於這些電影中的露骨信息，並不太理解。

In each film Ms. Yamaguchi played essentially the same role: a downtrodden but beautiful Chinese woman who initially spurns help from a handsome Japanese sailor or soldier, then falls in love with him. (In “China Nights,” after she is slapped and hurled into a wall by one exasperated Japanese savior, she pleads: “Forgive me! It didn’t hurt at all to be hit by you. I was happy, happy! I’ll be better, just watch.”)

在這些影片中，山口淑子其實扮演的是同一個角色：一個備受欺凌但非常美麗的中國女人，一開始蔑視一個英俊的日本水手或士兵所提供的幫助，之後愛上了他（在《支那之夜》中，她被惱怒的日本救星掌摑，又被推到牆上，她懇求道：“請原諒我！被你打一點都不痛。我很快樂，快樂！我會變得更好，你看着吧。”）

The Japanese owners of the film studio knew that Ms. Yamaguchi was Japanese, and a Japanese citizen, but presented her as Chinese to suit the underlying allegory of the films: An oppressed China, resisting the occupation at first, soon embraces Japan as its rescuer.

滿洲映畫協會的日本老闆們知道山口淑子是日本人，也有日本國籍，但他們把她作爲中國影星推出，以便配合電影中的隱喻：被壓迫的中國一開始抵抗日本的佔領，很快就接受了日本，把它視爲救星。

“I thought my films were simple romances,” Ms. Yamaguchi told The Boston Globe in 1991. “I thought I was working for the good of the Manchurian people.”

“我以爲我的電影只是簡單的愛情故事，”1991年，山口淑子在接受《波士頓環球報》(Boston Globe)採訪時說。“我覺得我是在爲滿洲人民做好事。”

After Japan’s defeat, the Chinese authorities arrested her for treason amid calls for her execution. As nationalist and Communist forces fought in China’s civil war, she spent nine months in prison before she could produce a copy of her birth certificate, proving she was not Chinese but Japanese.

日本戰敗後，中國當局在對她施以極刑的呼聲中以叛國罪將其逮捕。中國國共內戰期間，她在監獄度過了九個月，之後提供了一份出生證明，證明自己不是中國人，而是日本人。

Her Japanese citizenship legally absolved her of treason. But in ordering her deported to Japan, a Chinese judge condemned her wartime role as “a Chinese impostor who used her outstanding beauty to make films that humiliated China and compromised Chinese dignity.”

日本國籍使她從法律上得以免除叛國罪。但在遣送她回日本時，一名中國法官譴責她在戰爭中的角色是“一個冒牌中國人，利用出衆的美貌拍攝侮辱中國、有損中國尊嚴的電影”。

Ms. Yamaguchi, who settled in Japan in 1946, openly apologized for what she said had been her unwitting role as a propaganda tool during the war. And she was one of the first prominent Japanese citizens to acknowledge the history of Japanese brutality during the occupation, an episode for which many Japanese nationalists still refuse to apologize.

1946年，山口淑子在日本定居，公開就她在戰爭期間無意中充當了宣傳工具而道歉。她也是第一批承認日本在佔領中國期間殘暴行爲的著名日本人士，很多日本民族主義者至今仍拒絕爲那段歷史道歉。

She later campaigned for greater public awareness of that history and advocated paying reparations to so-called comfort women, Korean women who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military during the war. (Japanese leaders later apologized to the women.)

後來她爲公衆更好地認識那段歷史進行宣傳活動，並倡導對戰爭期間被日軍強迫做性奴隸的韓國婦女，即所謂“慰安婦”進行賠款（日本領導人後來曾對那些婦女道歉）。

As “Ri Koran,” a Japanization of Li Xianglan, Ms. Yamaguchi began re-establishing her film career in Hong Kong and Japan in the late 1940s. She appeared in a dozen Japanese films, including Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film “Scandal,” in addition to her work in Hollywood, before retiring from acting in 1957. She married Hiroshi Otaka, a Japanese diplomat, the same year. He died in 2001. A previous marriage, to the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, ended in divorce. Information about her survivors was not available.

20世紀40年代末，山口淑子以“Ri Koran”，即“李香蘭”的日文拼法在香港與日本重新開始自己的電影事業。1957年息影之前，她出演了十幾部日本電影，其中包括1950年黑澤明的《醜聞》，此外還在好萊塢拍片。息影那一年，她與日本外交官大鷹弘結婚，後者於2001年逝世。此前她與日裔美國雕塑家野口勇的婚姻以離婚告終。她在世親人的信息無法獲得。

Ms. Yamaguchi became a talk-show host on Japanese television in the 1960s under her married name, Otaka Yoshiko. She was elected to the upper house of the Japanese Parliament in 1974, and served until 1992. As chairwoman of that body’s foreign affairs committee in the 1980s, she was among the legislature’s most effective proponents of improving relations with the People’s Republic of China.

20世紀60年代，她使用婚後的名字大鷹淑子在日本電視脫口秀中擔任主持人。1974年，她當選日本參議院議員，任期至1992年。80年代，她擔任參議院外務委員會委員長，在參議院中，她是改善中日關係最積極的支持者。

Ms. Yamaguchi was born on Feb. 12, 1920, in Fushun, a coal mining region of Manchuria, where her father, Fumio, was a Beijing-educated Japanese linguist and teacher of Mandarin. She began singing on the radio at 13 as Li Xianglan (Fragrant Orchid), the stage name that would later became the masquerade that haunted her life.

山口淑子於1920年2月12日生於中國東北的煤礦城市撫順。她的父親山口文雄是一個在北京受教育的日本語言學家，在滿洲擔任教師。她13歲開始以李香蘭爲名在廣播中唱歌，這個藝名後來成爲在她人生中縈繞不去的僞裝。

Ms. Yamaguchi’s shape-shifting persona and instinct for survival became the topic of film histories and inspired two Japanese television dramas, a 2008 novel by Ian Buruma (“The China Lover”) and an opera, “Ri Koran,” about Ms. Yamaguchi’s protean life during the occupation of Manchuria.

山口淑子變化的表面形象與求生的本能成了若干歷史電影和兩部日本電視劇的題材，此外還有伊恩·布魯瑪(Ian Buruma)2008年的小說《中國戀人》(The China Lover)與歌劇《李香蘭》，這部歌劇是關於山口淑子在日軍佔領滿洲期間多變的生活。

The opera, produced by a Japanese theater company with her cooperation, became a political phenomenon in Japan when it was first staged in 1991, mainly for its depiction of Japan’s wartime aggressions. Many Japanese raised in the 1950s and after knew little about them. A Chinese production, titled “Li Xianglan,” had a successful run in Beijing in 1992.

這部歌劇由一個日本劇團與她合作打造，於1991年在日本上演，因其對日本戰爭期間的侵略行爲的描述而成爲政治話題。許多在20世紀50年代期間及之後長大的日本人對這些侵略行爲幾乎一無所知。中國製作的版本《李香蘭》1992年在北京登臺，大獲成功。

Ms. Yamaguchi told interviewers that as a young woman she considered China her “home country” and Japan her “ancestral country.” She had always loved them both, she told The Globe in 1991, and never fully recovered from the war between them.

山口淑子在接受採訪時說，她年輕時認爲中國是“家鄉”，日本是“祖國”。1991年接受《波士頓環球報》採訪時，她說自己一直熱愛這兩個國家，並且一直未從中日戰爭的創傷中恢復。

“The war, in my mind, is never over,” she said.

“在我心中，那場戰爭從未結束，”她說。