YOSHIKO: What will you do?
TANAKA: I’ll survive of course.
—KISHIDA RISEI, FROM THE PLAY FINAL NEST, TEMPORARY LODGING
In testifying at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial after the Second World War, Tanaka Ryūkichi always insisted upon the purity of his motives. Of course there was much speculation about why he decided to appear at this trial: Tanaka, a major general in the Imperial Japanese Army, cooperated with U.S. Occupation authorities and testified, with enthusiasm, against his military colleagues. Defense lawyers questioned why he had chosen to present wide-ranging evidence, bolstered by his breathtaking memory for detail, that would surely doom his former associates. Accused of turning against his fellow officers in retaliation for being denied a wartime post or to escape indictment himself, Tanaka rejected any suggestions of base intent.
“My expressions in the tribunal,” he explained in his high-minded fashion, “are for the purpose of giving expression, giving voice to the cause why Japan has met her present fate and … [to] let the truth be known to the people in order to set this country aright and also to let … these truths [be known] to our posterity.” Much later he claimed that he’d testified only to absolve the emperor of Japan of any responsibility for the war and thereby prevent the emperor’s prosecution for war crimes.
Seeking to undercut the devastating impact of Tanaka’s insider accounts, defense lawyers raised doubts about this star witness’s sanity. Was it not true, one lawyer inquired, that when Tanaka was a staff officer in the Kwantung Army, he was hospitalized for emotional collapse? Tanaka hastened to assure the court that he had not lost his wits at that time but instead suffered from mere “gas intoxication.” Then what about the two months he had spent in the hospital after his resignation from the army? That, Tanaka reported, was only a forty-six day stay in the hospital, where he was treated for insomnia. He conceded that hospital officials would not let him out as quickly as he had wished, and so he resorted to bribery.
“Yes, I spent quite a bit of money, because I wanted to get out of the hospital as soon as possible—by giving away theater tickets and buying fruits.” In between these remarks, he managed to work in a declaration on a loftier subject: “However, the other disease with which I was afflicted—that is, serious anxiety over the state of affairs of my country—that disease was not cured.”
Tanaka appeared before the tribunal a number of times, sometimes for the defense and sometimes for the prosecution. He strove to implicate his former rivals and clear the names of those fortunate defendants he still considered friends. His smooth delivery, complete with all those very specific names and places, left him open to charges that he was a “professional witness.” “He testified glibly and often on a great variety of matters,” one lawyer complained.
He acknowledged good friends sitting in the dock, and then proceeded, with what seemed eagerness, to do his best to convict them. He appeared as a “happy and smiling warrior,” but the key to all of Tanaka’s testimony is that he is an exceedingly unhappy warrior—a man of intelligence, but of jealousy and consuming ambition, who had natural aspirations for promotion and recognition, who left the Army because of illness, and who could not bear the fact that another man was appointed to the position he aspired to.
Perhaps nothing so undercut the witness’s testimony as a defense lawyer’s allusion to Major General Tanaka’s activities during the war. At the trial, Tanaka was called upon to swear that Tōjō Hideki—a wartime prime minister and Tanaka adversary—had attended the meeting that resulted in forcing prisoners of war to work in labor camps. Without any hesitation, Tanaka corroborated his old boss’s leadership role at this gathering, thus making Tōjō responsible, indisputably, for the brutal treatment of POWs—one of the crimes for which Tōjō was later hanged.
After Tanaka finished incriminating Tōjō, the defense would not let him step down from the witness stand so fast.
“General, aren’t you known by the people in Japan as ‘The Monster’?”
When objections were raised about the relevance of this line of questioning, the lawyer responded, “I think it is very relevant. … Here’s a man that has come and testified here, that has admitted he is the head of the kempeitai and isn’t even indicted. I think the Tribunal should know the type of man that is testifying for the prosecution.”
Tanaka was at pains to distance himself from any Japanese military group responsible for countless evil acts. Though he conceded his role as head of the Military Service Bureau, he denied that he had anything to do with the day-to-day doings of the kempeitai, the savage military police. “We handled affairs pertaining to the gendarmerie, or kempeitai, but not to supervise or control that organization. … The gendarmerie was under the control and supervision of the war minister and the war vice minister.” By preening here as nothing more than a military clerk, he strove to exonerate himself while simultaneously heading back for another go at Tōjō, who had also been the war minister.
Tanaka’s “sybaritic and unsavory character,” as well as his manner of speaking—he shouted each time he spoke in court—contributed to an impression that he had most likely participated in the same kind of vile acts that would eventually get his comrades executed by the Allies’ court. He had made his way up through the officer ranks in the Japanese army, serving for long periods in China. He was noted early on for his skill in strategy, honed by his vicious instincts.
“To put it bluntly,” Tanaka once told a Japanese journalist, “you and I have basic differences in the way we view the Chinese. You seem to treat them like human beings. I think of them as pigs.”
*
Tanaka Ryūkichi was doubtless a ruthless army officer who turned against his colleagues after the war. He was also an important figure in Yoshiko’s life; he was her lover, her mentor, her source of cash, and the person who made her most vulnerable to execution. It was an involvement that stemmed from Tanaka’s personal weaknesses, which, along with his professional skills, brought him attention. Women sent the violent and unstable general into childish mood swings. Unhinged by passion, he abased himself and wept. Kawashima Yoshiko would possess his spirit for years, and later, in order to exorcise her, he pushed for her assassination.
As of New Year’s Day 1931, when Tanaka became involved with Yoshiko, he had already demonstrated the rash side of his character. He’d become involved with a married woman, and the lovers attempted double suicide by throwing themselves into a lake. The woman died but Tanaka lived on, making his superiors aware—not for the last time—of his unsteadiness. Ordinarily such behavior meant automatic expulsion from the army, but an exception was made this time since Tanaka had shown so much promise in military matters. The army ordered the newspapers not to publish a word about the double suicide attempt, and Tanaka continued his rise in the army.
In a later essay about Tanaka’s relationship with Yoshiko—written by Tanaka’s son but with facts straight from the father—the couple’s Shanghai courtship is recalled by Tanaka in a mood of calm reflection. While contemporaries have described Tanaka as driven crazy by his sick, fierce passion for Yoshiko, he sees himself as a restrained and chivalrous suitor. Early in their acquaintance he rejected this Qing princess when she made lewd advances in his Shanghai office, and he urged her to act in the chaste manner that befitted her royal status. After she tricked him out of some money, badgered him into finding her a place to live, and besieged him with sexual importunings that he turned down, he happened to run into her at a dance hall. As they took a turn on the floor, she chided him for his coldness, saying she had never been treated so badly by a man. Despite this, she could not forget him.
Worn down, Tanaka escorted her to the room she had reserved in the Kasei Hotel. Here the essay confirms the well-documented obsession that haunted Tanaka from that day forward: “After that, while he was working in Shanghai, her existence was always essential to him, both publicly and privately. During this period in his life, she became very important to him, a woman he could not get out of his mind.”
This account, though bowing to certain facts, does not own up to the true nature of their alliance. Muramatsu Shōfū, no stranger to bizarre romance in the China of those days, found himself not only aghast when he witnessed the couple’s exchanges but also fearful for his own safety in associating with them. In one of his accounts, perhaps embellished, Shōfū sized up Tanaka and Yoshiko’s domestic interactions in Shanghai: “When I met him, he struck me as different from what I’d imagined. Based on what other people had told me, I had formed an impression in my mind of a gifted military man, but in person he was the exact opposite. He had a wide forehead, puffy cheeks, pug nose, and more of a certain solidity than you would expect of a man of his age. In his arrogance, he seemed to fear nothing.”
This impression changed minutes later, when Yoshiko came into the room. “Kawashima was imperious and rude to Tanaka,” Shōfū writes, “like a master to her servant. … He just kept saying yes, yes to whatever this female master told him.” In spite of the army’s high opinion of Tanaka’s professional abilities, “he had something big missing inside his head,” Shōfū concluded.
More startling to Shōfū was another occasion when Yoshiko became infuriated at Tanaka for boasting in public about how he supported her, how she did nothing for the army, and how, without his money, she’d be out on the streets tomorrow. “Her voice was shocking,” Shōfū says. “It was such a roar of anger that you had to wonder about what part of the woman’s throat that sound came from. … Her face became as red as a peony.”
Yoshiko ordered Tanaka to apologize for insulting her, and he immediately obeyed. He got down on his knees and begged forgiveness. An incredulous Shōfū could only attribute this to Tanaka’s “well-known perversion.”
*
After she had successfully transported the empress, Yoshiko could declare herself launched on a new career. The job description was hazy, however, and so employee and employer had different views about her responsibilities. Yoshiko of course always insisted that she was a liberator—Manchus returned to power and prosperity, peasants uplifted, all of China saved—but the Japanese army saw her more as royal window dressing, a captivating distraction from awful goings-on and proof that they had the Manchus on their side.
Tanaka’s son recorded his father’s reminiscences years after Yoshiko had been executed—as had a number of Tanaka’s former military associates, thanks in part to the elder Tanaka’s testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Excoriated afterward as a turncoat and a lunatic, Tanaka had not been able to endure the strain of this notoriety in postwar Japan. There were mental crises and a suicide attempt. His son says that he had a miserable twenty years after the trial and, forgotten by the world, he died a “tragic” figure.
Tanaka likely did suffer in the aftermath of his appearances at the trial, and hounding by journalists and critics could have easily wrecked his emotional balance. Sympathy for Tanaka comes hard, however, and this is especially true after reading his account of his time with Yoshiko. Although Tanaka had failed to win Yoshiko’s affection in life, he has reason for the triumphant tone in these reminiscences. In particular, he allows himself to gloat over the difference in their circumstances at that moment, for he has come out the winner in a big battle: he has managed to stay alive, and she is dead. Smug in victory, he reviews his former lover’s bad luck.
Tanaka’s reminiscence is our only detailed source of information about Yoshiko’s involvement in the Shanghai Incident of 1932. The self-serving words of a person prone to betrayal and nervous breakdown must be read with skepticism. It should also be remembered that this is the view of the only surviving participant in a love affair that ended badly.
Still, Tanaka’s basic facts about the Shanghai Incident have more or less been accepted, with even Yoshiko’s sympathizers finding them hard to refute. Biographer Kamisaka Fuyuko, who always looks for ways to defend Yoshiko’s doings, is pained by her subject’s involvement in this bloody conflict. “She was manipulated and chased into a corner before she understood the whole situation, and this was doubtless due to her own stupidity.” Softening, Kamisaka reverts to her view of Yoshiko as a helpless female who cannot be held accountable for her own decisions: “But if we take a closer look and try to find the guilty party, doesn’t the real blame for this crime fall on those who engineered this woman’s participation in this grand plot?”
Tanaka’s son reports that his father “bought a house for Yoshiko and made a love nest for him and her.” But Tanaka was then the assistant military attaché for the Japanese legation in Shanghai and “did not forget about his basic duties.” In short, Tanaka saw that Yoshiko could be helpful to the Japanese military. “While he was living with her, he understood her personality and made use of her for his work, realizing that she would be good at gathering information.” He enrolled her in a Chinese school to study English, and because she already knew some Chinese, he wanted her to put the two languages to work in spying on prominent figures. “In other words he poured all his effort into making her a full-fledged spy, and his plans succeeded beautifully. She became his invaluable assistant and followed his instructions.”
Of course the work also went along nicely with her personal philosophy. “She never for a moment forsook her pride at being part of the old Qing royal family,” Tanaka’s son reports. “She often mourned their decline. She had made the firm decision to bring about the return of the Qing with the backing of Japan. She said she would not regret sacrificing her life for this cause.” Tanaka sent her north to Manchuria, where she took orders from Colonel Itagaki Seishirō, who had been one of the planners of the Kwantung Army’s invasion of Manchuria. Tanaka again gloats about his superb judgment: “Her talents as a spy were extraordinary.”
Yoshiko also kept up her appearances at the dance halls of Shanghai, where, the gossips charged, she joined the taxi dancers, whose services were purchased with a ticket at the door. Yoshiko always rejected the idea that she ever had danced for pay, though she did win renown for dancing in the man’s role and a first prize in a Shanghai waltz competition. Shōfū, who always enjoys emphasizing Yoshiko’s male clothes and habits, wrote that she had become “expert at dancing the man’s role” and praises the “very distinctive, inimitable style, good sense of rhythm, and good form.” In such passages, Shōfū views Yoshiko’s male ways as nothing more than a gimmick, a way for her to get publicity; he never thinks there was anything deeper involved in her assumption of a male persona. Later on in Tokyo, when Shōfū saw Yoshiko taking the woman’s dancing role dressed in feminine clothes, he was scornful of her performance, saying that she looked as if she’d “swallowed an iron rod, very stiff.”
Afterward, Yoshiko also denied using her charms and her dancing skills to wheedle intelligence out of the prominent Chinese officials who liked to dance with her. Yet biographer Kamisaka points to a passage from The Beauty in Men’s Clothing that, in Kamisaka’s view at least, expresses the “basic beliefs” of the real-life Yoshiko. Defending herself against criticism that a Qing princess should not degrade herself by toiling in dance halls, this fictional heroine sounds like a woman who danced with a purpose and did not take to the floor just to polish her technique:
Talk about being a member of the Qing imperial family had some meaning when there was a Qing court. But now people like us are shunned by society and pressured by those in power more than ordinary people. We are rushing every which way in order to escape. Don’t you think it would be really pathetic if the only thing we carted around was our pride at being part of the imperial family? You can only laugh at an attitude like that. I am a mere insignificant woman, but to help the restoration movement, I will offer what little support I can at any time.
*
After the war, Tanaka proudly admitted that he was entirely responsible for the Shanghai Incident, showing no remorse for the thousands who died as a result of his ingenuity. He explained that the plot to foment violence in Shanghai had been hatched as a distraction from bigger doings in Manchuria. The Kwantung Army was getting ready to expand its hold by taking Harbin and then wanted to officially organize its occupied land into the independent state that would be known as Manchukuo. Fearing an international outcry once this was achieved, the army ordered Tanaka to start an uprising in Shanghai to divert the world’s attention.
On January 10, 1932, Tanaka received a long telegram from Itagaki and was sent twenty thousand yen, for use in exacerbating the already volatile relations between the Chinese and Japanese in Shanghai. “At that time,” a Japanese eyewitness in Shanghai recalled, “you have to think of the impact of the Manchurian Incident. All of China was in an uproar because of the Manchurian Incident, and the waves of anti-Japanese sentiment were on the rise. Their country’s territory had been usurped. The country had been humiliated.” There were protests against Japanese imperialism by Chinese students and workers as well as boycotts of Japanese goods. “Even so, the Japanese living there were not in direct danger.”
Aiming for an explosion of violence, Tanaka set to work immediately. He says that he gave half the money to Yoshiko, and she then contacted Chinese workers from the Sanyou Towel Company, with instructions to cause trouble.
On January 18, a group of Japanese Buddhist priests strode down the street near the factory, intoning sutras and beating their drums. “The important thing to remember,” says the Japanese eyewitness, “is that at that time, the Chinese in Shanghai were very riled up. Anti-Japanese feeling was getting more and more fierce. Then you have Japanese priests walking down a Chinese street and creating a warlike atmosphere by beating their drums. Such things didn’t happen in China. Chinese monks are very gentle. … I thought at the time that the Chinese would take this as provocation.”
As Yoshiko had supposedly arranged, Chinese workers from the factory set upon the Japanese monks. One monk was killed in this attack, and two were wounded. “That incident occurred so suddenly. Now we had a direct confrontation between Chinese and Japanese.”
This was followed by the predictable accusations on both sides and revenge attacks. Next, Japanese youths, again commissioned by Yoshiko, burned down the storage area of the Chinese towel factory. The Japanese residents of Shanghai had already presented objections to Chinese officials regarding anti-Japanese activities in the city. Not only did the Japanese protest against boycotts of their goods and efforts to get them out of China, they also demanded severe punishment for the Chinese who had attacked the Japanese monks. Soon enough, Japanese warships appeared in the Shanghai harbor to bolster troops already in the area.
Likewise, the calls for action from the Chinese side intensified. “The Chinese government in Shanghai didn’t have the military strength to get into a war with Japan,” remembers the eyewitness. “What students were saying [against the Japanese presence] was absolutely correct, so it was no use trying to get them to back off. The Chinese government was really in a bind.”
Although the Chinese mayor eventually had to accede to Japanese demands, the Japanese military nonetheless commenced its huge assault on the Chinese sections of the city by land and air. The military cited provocation by the Chinese and the need to defend Japanese residents of Shanghai as the reasons for its massive onslaught. “The Chinese refugees,” one journalist wrote, “report that vast numbers of the 200,000 population of Chabei [the Chinese district] have been slain, and that the dead and dying number thousands.” In spite of this gory fight, the Chinese troops fought with surprising effectiveness, and it was not until the Japanese brought in additional divisions, bringing the total to ninety thousand Japanese troops, that they were able to prevail.
Tanaka had nothing but praise for Yoshiko’s contribution to this hard-won Japanese victory. “While this fierce battle was going on, she followed his directions,” Tanaka’s son reports, “and acted with remarkable bravery. Tanaka also was astonished by her abilities. … These deeds of hers would never appear in the newspapers but were rather schemes carried out behind the scenes.” Implicating her in every aspect of the operation, Tanaka says that Yoshiko was indispensable in ferreting out information from the Chinese side, at a time when up-to-the-minute intelligence about the enemy’s next moves was desperately needed. On her own, he says, Yoshiko infiltrated her way into a Chinese military installation and informed Japanese officials about its inventory of armaments. She was in constant contact with Sun Fo, the son of Sun Yat-sen, who was a high-ranking official in the Nationalist government at the time; Sun Fo is said to have provided her with valuable information that she conveyed to Japanese military headquarters.
Once the truce had been declared and the fighting over, Tanaka rejoiced in all that he had achieved. As his son writes,
With Staff Officer Itagaki as the driving force, the Kwantung Army in Manchuria took advantage of the fact that the eyes of the world powers were all focused on Shanghai and made good progress toward the establishment of the independent state of Manchukuo. A proclamation establishing the independent state of Manchukuo was issued. … And so Tanaka’s mission had been accomplished. Also that heroic woman Kawashima Yoshiko, who had been indispensable to him in this work, of course came to be known to posterity as “Mata Hari of the East” as a result of activities like this and achieved fame among the Japanese military and around the world.
Again, such reports about Yoshiko’s service to the Japanese army are all impossible to confirm. Tanaka has reason to give an exaggerated appraisal of her contributions and thereby emphasize the strictly business side of a bond that consumed him. Postwar, he also did not mind taking credit for being the force behind a fascinating, famous woman.
Those who doubt Tanaka wonder about how a woman so instantly recognizable from many newspaper articles about her could have been involved in any clandestine operations in the first place. There are questions, too, about Yoshiko’s Chinese language skills, since a number of the feats Tanaka attributes to her required a fluency she did not possess.
Still, Yoshiko’s cocky behavior and her extravagance after the Shanghai Incident indicate that her circumstances had suddenly and greatly improved, suggesting reward for services rendered to the Japanese army. The newspapers treated her with more respect and stopped focusing on her sexual excesses.
In fact, of all the charges brought against Yoshiko at her trial, her incitement of the violence during the Shanghai Incident seems most believable. The assignment required basic but not perfect Chinese language skills, good connections, instant recognizability among the workers she had to recruit, commitment, the gift of gab, energy—all qualifications within her capacity. And finally, Yoshiko’s brother Xianli has been found credible by some when he offers evidence pointing to her culpability in the Shanghai Incident and the deaths of so many.
“Afterward Xianli remembered that Yoshiko had introduced him to workers from the Sanyou Towel Company, proving that Yoshiko played a large role in the swirling machinations of the plot. There seems to be no room for excuses here.”