The China Lover (10 page)

   17   

B
ECAUSE OF THE
war, the outskirts of Shanghai were reduced to rubble. From the window of my train it resembled a huge garbage dump. But human resilience is an amazing thing. The people of China are used to living with catastrophe. Out of bits of straw, scraps of corrugated iron, the odd brick, or whatever remained of what once had been a densely populated area, people had fashioned housing of a kind. Rows and rows of straw huts, no more than shoulder-high, leaned against the banks of a stinking canal filled with every kind of waste that humans and animals can produce: excrement, dead dogs, bloody rags, and cans filled with toxic waste from a nearby chemical factory. Even from a moving train, I could see the bloated rats, as well as stray dogs, rooting in the filth. Families cooking their scraps of food kicked away the rats only when they upset the children, and sometimes they couldn’t be bothered even then. Some people were dressed in old newspapers. Kids ran along the tracks with nothing but bits of straw wrapped around their blackened feet. They were lucky to have both feet. Some people were scuttling around on their stomachs, propelling themselves forward with their arms, like crabs. When we stopped for a short while near the North Railway Station, I noticed, to my surprise, a young girl dressed in fur, scratching my window, begging for food. At least, I
thought
it was fur, until I took a closer look, and realized she
was naked under a matted curtain of her own hair. She would not have survived for very long, and is probably happier dead than alive.

But that’s China, where life always goes on, like the Yellow River, relentlessly, slowing down here and there almost to the point of stagnation, only to gush forth again in bursts of violent activity. Such scenes of misery as I saw from the train put me in a melancholy mood, for they gave me a sense of great weariness. Trying to change China seemed as futile as attempting to push an ocean liner off course with one’s bare hands. Any such endeavor is bound to end in failure. That is the grandeur of China; and the terrible burden of five thousand years of history. China shows up the puniness of all human aspirations, including our own mission to build a New Asia. I took no pleasure in such thoughts. I desperately wanted us to succeed. For chaos and bloodshed would be our only legacy, if we failed.

Our police had at least restored order in the center of Shanghai, reducing crime, making it safe for people to go about their daily business. Films still opened at the Grand. Dancing went on all night at the Park Hotel. People still gambled away their money at the Race Club. Whatever happened in the world, the hedonistic spirit of Shanghai was irrepressible.

My main guide and companion in Shanghai was a man who was in every sense the opposite of Taneguchi. Kawamura Keizo, boss of the Asian Pictures Company, was a man of culture, who spoke many languages, including fluent German and French, and was respected by the Chinese. Asian Pictures was Japanese-owned, but specialized in high-quality local films made by the finest Chinese directors. It was, in so many ways, what Manchuria Motion Pictures should have been. Films made by Asians for Asians, which actually appealed to local audiences. They had a lightness of touch sorely lacking in the heavy-handed propaganda pictures favored by Amakasu, who, not surprisingly,
did not like Kawamura at all. Of all Japanese I knew in those years, Kawamura came closest to understanding the Chinese mind.

A tall, handsome fellow, with a shock of wavy hair and a taste for fine English suits, Kawamura was intimately acquainted with every pleasure the city had to offer. Quickly bored with official business, he would call me in the afternoons to meet at the Great World tower for some relaxation.

The Great World on Yangjingbang West Street was a giant pagoda of pleasure. At the bottom of the tower was a cinema with room for one thousand people. Pretty whores in
qi pao
s with slits up to their armpits lingered in the lobby from morning till late at night. We started on the first floor, feasting on Shanghainese dumplings, and slowly began our ascent up to “paradise,” as the locals called the summit, sampling the delights of every floor: bathing in scented steam on the first; foot massage and earwax-picking on the second; acrobats, tightrope walkers, and musicians on the third; peepshows of naked girls and theatrical performances of an indelicate nature accompanied by delicious Suzhou pastries on the fourth; exquisite stimulations by expert young girls, various games of chance, and a store specializing in “rubber goods” on the fifth; and so on, up to the top, where Chinese beauties offered every imaginable pleasure, while an orchestra played film tunes, including, I am pleased to recall, some of Ri Koran’s songs. Chinese visitors to this palace of delights, who had been unable to resist the temptation to spend all their money on girls or games of chance, would sometimes jump from “paradise” all the way into the teeming streets below. Locals called the steps leading to a wooden platform jutting out from the top of the tower “the stairway to heaven.”

Though Kawamura had made films with most of the top Chinese movie stars, his greatest wish was to entice Ri to work for his Shanghai studios. He wanted to make her as popular in China as she was in Japan.
Naturally, Amakasu was highly reluctant to let her go, even for one film. In a fit of unforgivable rashness, I agreed to see what I could do for my friend to change Amakasu’s mind.

Just when the cold spell was finally breaking in April, Ri arrived in Shanghai from Japan, where she had been shooting scenes for a new picture, entitled
Suzhou Nights
. We met in my favorite restaurant on Hankow Road, where we had a luncheon of fried eel and hairy crabs. I noticed that she kept stooping to scratch her legs. “Oh, that,” she said, when I enquired about it; “a little souvenir from the homeland.” They had been shooting a scene in a pond near Tokyo, which bore a passing resemblance to the lakes of Suzhou. The director was well known as a hard taskmaster. Poor Ri had spent hours standing up to her waist in the pond, waiting for the camera to roll, and had been set upon by leeches. She also brought another piece of news, which was much more startling. She had had an encounter with the other Yoshiko, my Jewel. When I heard this, it was as if a block of ice slid down my spine.

While staying at a hotel in Kyushu, Ri received a phone call: “Your big brother needs to see you.” Worried by the tone of Jewel’s voice, she agreed to meet her at once. Jewel came over dressed in a man’s kimono. Looking frantic, she reached into her bag and handed over a sheaf of papers, bound in silk, and covered in her handwriting. “Please read it,” she said. “This is my life. Only you understand me. So you must play me. This must be your next film.” Ri was so taken aback that she had no idea what to say. She had never seen Eastern Jewel like that, twitching with anxiety. “Please,” she said, “I beg of you. You must do it. It’s my last chance.” Before Ri was able to hand back the manuscript, Jewel was gone. Listening to the account, I silently thanked Taneguchi. At least Eastern Jewel was safe for the time being. The thing is, despite what she had done, I still loved her. The film was of course never made. Ri quickly handed over the manuscript to me, as
though it were scorching her hands. And I consigned it to my fireplace. It was an act of love, not betrayal. For I could well imagine Eastern Jewel’s fate if those pages had fallen into the wrong hands.

Kawamura’s parties were legendary in Shanghai. He lived in a large comfortable villa just off the Avenue Joffre, furnished in the European style. Many people had passed through those rooms, including Marlene Dietrich, with whom he was rumored to have had an affair, even though her Jewish lover, Josef von Sternberg, had been his guest in the same house. Kawamura worshipped von Sternberg. He pointed at the chair in his study on which the great director had once sat. Before lowering himself on that hallowed seat himself, Kawamura lovingly polished the shiny leather surface with his handkerchief. “The master,” he murmured, like a priest in prayer.

So when Kawamura invited me to a party when Ri was in town, it seemed like a good opportunity to introduce them. The sitting room was already full of Chinese when we arrived. Zhang Shequan, head of the Ming Xing Studios, was there with his latest mistress, a young hussy named Jiang Qing, who later joined the Communists in the caves of Yanan. Bu Wancang, the famous director, was talking to Ding Ling, the novelist. And Xu Yen, the playwright who had been cautioned by our censors on many occasions, was in a corner, laughing at Zhao Dan’s jokes. Zhao, surrounded by a group of admirers, did an imitation of a typical Japanese army officer, barking orders in mock Japanese. The one who laughed loudest was Kawamura. But I noticed how the laughter died on everyone’s lips as soon as I approached with Ri. Memories of the “slapping scene” had not yet faded. It was highly awkward, not because I felt embarrassed by the malicious mimicry, but because of Ri. Politics always confused her. And she took rejection so badly.

People were openly complaining about the pettifogging ways of Japanese censors and the many restrictions on life in the city under Japanese control. None of this fazed Kawamura as he went about the
room, beaming at his guests, making sure everyone was comfortable. It seemed to me that he was actually encouraging this kind of talk. I had heard Chinese speak like this before, of course, and couldn’t help agreeing with some of their complaints, but I didn’t think it was advisable to expose Ri to this kind of thing. She had suffered enough as a student in Peking. Besides, she might be compromised. I decided that we should leave, despite Kawamura’s offer of more champagne and assurances that “we are among friends.” When I insisted, he leaned toward me, with a faint odor of alcohol and cigar smoke on his breath, and said: “My dear fellow, our people have no idea how much we Japanese are loathed here. It’s all our own fault, you know.”

I was startled by Kawamura’s cynicism. Not that he was entirely wrong. But I still believed in our ideals. Without faith in what is right, life becomes as meaningless as a permanent cocktail party. So I dragged Ri away from Zhao Dan and Zhang Shequan, who seemed to have overcome their reservations and were crowding her into a corner, like two tomcats waiting to jump on their prey. She was enjoying the attention too much, the poor child. For her own sake, I had to bring this to a close.

I never said anything to Amakasu about the party, or about Kawamura’s behavior, because he was a good man, who genuinely cared about China. Every basket of peaches contains some rotten ones, and it’s those few who spoil everything for the rest. So it was in China. I felt this keenly whenever I saw a bunch of Kempeitei officers swagger into a Chinese shop and take what they wanted without paying. I felt it every time I crossed the Garden Bridge to Broadway Mansions, and saw the natives being forced to stand in long lines for hours and hours on frosty winter days, in the pouring rain or steaming summer heat, only to be beaten up for the smallest infringement of rules they barely understood. When an old man was slapped in the face in front of his own family for failing to bow deeply enough to one of our soldiers, the Chinese
said nothing, but I could see the loathing in their eyes. I saw a small boy in rags being whipped by two soldiers because he tried to hide a sweet potato, just one, to feed his hunger. He was just an urchin, no more than five years old. A few Japanese civilians hurried along the bridge, pretending not to see anything. I could hear the pitiful screams of the boy’s mother, but I did nothing, for I too hurried along to the other side.

It was at moments like this that I tried to think of the many good Japanese who loved China as dearly as I did. Men like Kawamura, whose films were the building bricks for a new Asian civilization. Or Ri’s father, the old gambler, whose heart was still in the right place, despite his vice. Or even Amakasu, who may have had iron running through his veins, but whose dedication to a New Asia I never doubted. And of course Ri herself, whose trust in humanity could still lift my heart. She didn’t know this, but in moments of despair just thinking about her gave me the courage to carry on. For she had a pure heart, this young Japanese woman who lived and performed under a Chinese name. She restored my faith in Japan, and in our mission in Asia. But love needs to be reciprocated if it is to bear fruit. We badly needed the trust of our Chinese friends. And here I have to say that Kawamura was right. Their trust was constantly undermined by the stupidity of our own people.