[Rehe] is all mountainous, a magnificent country that becomes more rugged and splendid with lonely panoramic beauty as one penetrates inward. Its traffic arteries, old caravan trails, are steep and narrow, and only three or four main highways are wide enough for motor traffic. As you come into it from Manchuria every road winds through numerous narrow defiles. Held by determined men, they are formidable barriers to conquest. A few hundred soldiers with machine-guns and dynamite at any one of them could, it was thought, stem the advance of all kinds of vehicular war machines, and for days inflict severe casualties against Japanese infantrymen.
—EDGAR SNOW
The photo would be reprinted countless times, summing up all that needed to be said about Kawashima Yoshiko’s life. It is easy to imagine Yoshiko’s delight as she sat before the camera in the stirring pose, and how she later regretted being linked to the damning image. Approximately twenty-six years old, Kawashima Yoshiko is pictured in the evening edition of the February 22, 1933, Asahi, dressed in a Japanese military uniform, from her soldier’s cap down to her long boots. She sits unsmiling on a chair and rests her hands on a sword, definitely ready for combat. (See cover photo.) “The Beauty in Men’s Clothing Kawashima Yoshiko,” blares the headline, “Is Backed to Be Commander of a Vigilance Corps in Rehe. With Heroism She Will Lead Troops in the Suppression of Bandits.”
The article goes on to explain why this female soldier has come to the fore with new and daunting responsibilities. She has left frivolous pursuits behind as she readies herself to serve in her first official military post. Up to now, the former Manchu princess carried out her activities behind the scenes, “but at last the time has come for her to ride out into public view.” Her responsibilities will be enormous, of this there is no doubt, since she will head a large band of Chinese soldiers. Together they will assist the suffering masses of Rehe, who have “cried under the warlord Tang Yulin’s despotism but at last have emerged from the darkness of tyranny and begun to see the light of a new life.” To emphasize her new role as commander, she will assume the name Jin Bihui—“Jin” the surname used by her Chinese relatives and “Bihui” meaning “Radiant Jade.”
Apparently, some Japanese were skeptical about Radiant Jade’s selection for this position. “When it comes to this important job, critics acknowledge the lack of a qualified person in Manchukuo but feel that sending her is a mistake.” The article begs for patience: “You have to let her try and then see what she can do. Much expectation rides on her activities.”
Readers of this account cannot be blamed if they are stunned by the sudden upgrade in Yoshiko’s status: she has been granted skills enough to subdue “bandit” gangs in Manchuria. What the newspaper does not say is that Yoshiko has been brought forward because of Japan’s further aggressions into China. Having established itself in Manchukuo, the Japanese army has decided to expand into neighboring Chinese lands. The “bandits” Yoshiko is going off to vanquish are, among others, Chinese fomenting rebellion against the Japanese advance.
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The newspaper declares Yoshiko ready for a leading role in such undertakings and reminds readers, who may have missed intervening events, that she has already proven herself. After leaving Tanaka Ryūkichi, she sought out new challenges, as well as new sources of cash. She found both. “At the time of the Hulunbuir Incident last September,” the Asahi explains, “this elegant young officer accompanied the generals serving as advisers of Manchukuo and braved danger, joining the difficult fight to save the Japanese hostages held by the tyrannous rebel Su Bingwen, who made his stand in the severe cold of Qiqihar.”
The article is touting Yoshiko’s heroism of the year before, when the warlord Su Bingwen seized a railway line in Manchukuo. Although he was supposed to be one of the local Manchu warlords allied with the Japanese, he was not the first of their “allies” to switch sides without notice. He had been charged with guarding the railway line on behalf of his Japanese patrons but turned around and took it over, next establishing his own state independent of Japanese control. He also took Japanese hostages, the unconfirmed number as high as 284. “Gen. Su,” reads a vivid newspaper account, “has had these captives for several weeks but as he has released all the women and children only the men remain and these Gen. Su has steadfastly refused to release as he finds them useful for parading in the streets when Japanese aeroplanes bomb the towns under his control.” The Japanese eventually sent in troops to put down this uprising, part of their widening “pacification campaign” in hostile areas, and Su Bingwen was forced to flee to the Soviet Union.
But the story came out too damaging to the Japanese in China when told that way—warlord’s insurrection, hostages, Japanese troops—and so the Japanese military created a more winning account by making a star out of Yoshiko. Here she was again, an appealing protagonist in the military’s efforts to win over support for its onslaughts. On a 1933 radio program, a Japanese army officer spoke with much enthusiasm about her contributions at Hulunbuir, and these remarks were repeated in the newspaper, the headline proclaiming her the “Glittering Joan of Arc in the Bandit Suppression Army.” According to the army officer, “She took a plane to northern Manchuria, where she played an active role everywhere and with such deeds truly risked her life for the sake of Manchukuo, much like the maid of Orléans, Joan of Arc.”
It was not hard to go from there to other concocted stories that gave Yoshiko credit for convincing Su Bingwen to give up his rebellion and those hostages. Eventually the tale gained swagger and had her floating down to Su Bingwen’s camp in a parachute. To emphasize this idea of airborne action, a newspaper photograph taken around the time of this incident shows her with a radiant smile as she arrives in Qiqihar, wearing aviator glasses.
Even Yoshiko, however, could not let this fable go uncorrected, and in her autobiography, she admits that her plans for an act of mercy during that crisis came to nothing in the end. According to her, she sought to help the Japanese during this episode because she longed to protect the security of Manchukuo, the new Manchu homeland, which was imperiled by Su Bingwen’s revolt. She did want to parachute down to begin negotiations with this fellow Manchu and so asked army officials for permission to perform such a stunt, to do her bit for the hostages and Manchukuo’s well-being: “I don’t mind dying,” she told them, “or care about what the world thinks of me. I just want to do my utmost to urge Su Bingwen to change his position and do not wish to disturb the dawn of Manchukuo.”
Yoshiko says that she practiced parachuting in the wind and cold several times, but the recurrence of an old “nervous ailment” and the escalation of the conflict beyond the possibility of negotiation compelled her to give up this idea. That did not stop the military from extolling her crucial role in ending Su Bingwen’s rebellion in China’s north, a triumph that would have meant facing temperatures forty degrees below zero.
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And that is how she came to be photographed in a military uniform for the 1933 newspaper article announcing her next exploit, this time in the region then known as Rehe, southwest of Manchukuo. “The public’s attention,” declares the Asahi, “has been focused on whether this lone weak woman can in the end carry out this job.” Yoshiko insisted that she was again providing crucial aid to Manchukuo, ensuring the country’s continued existence by beating down foes. Such a belief makes sense if you believe that Manchukuo was a genuine Manchu homeland, nothing else, and under assault. But the Japanese army, which was in control of Manchukuo, was of course not principally concerned with the safety of the Manchus. Rather, it wished to extend the border of its puppet state, increase its hold on China, and along the way quell Chinese “bandits” bent on sabotaging the army’s advances
The Rehe region was a prize for the Japanese not only because it bordered Manchukuo: there was also the lure of the rich opium production in the region, a prime source of income for the Japanese occupiers. Major General Tada Hayao, Yoshiko’s latest military patron and lover, is sometimes cited as the force behind her new assignment in Rehe. “He was her supervisor, her leader, her favorite uncle.” At that time Tada was also Japan’s chief military adviser to Manchukuo.
“I must go forward now in accordance with my convictions,” Yoshiko informed her brother, who objected to her intimate relationship with Tada. “I confess that I made use of Tada. Please, I ask you to avert your eyes from our secret connection.” Yoshiko claimed to be the one in control, merely using Tada for her own aims. “Tada adopted me,” she bragged. “That makes it easier to snatch his money.”
But others had no doubt that Tada, unlike Tanaka, had a good grip on his sanity and all aspects of their alliance. “When she caused him trouble, he threw her out like old shoes and didn’t think anything of it.” Tada later joined the list of ex-lovers who plotted her assassination.
In her autobiography, Yoshiko says that she was implored to take on the assignment in Rehe. “I was living in a second-floor apartment above a furniture store on a side street in Shinkyō with two of my sisters and Chizuko, who had been deeply attached to me since my days in Shanghai. Also there was a Chinese servant, and others. … One day Fang Yongchang came to visit out of the blue. He said that he’d been leaderless since the murder of his chief, Zhang Zongchang, and asked me to become his commander.”
Yoshiko says that there were both military and spiritual considerations behind Fang Yongchang’s appeal that compelled her to participate. He wanted to take advantage of her stellar leadership abilities and also sought to erase the bad karma accrued by his assassinated warlord boss, who had “accidentally” slain Yoshiko’s brother—reportedly over a woman. Now that the warlord was dead, his underlings wanted to demonstrate their loyalty to Yoshiko, and so “lessen the spiritual debt to my siblings and me that Zhang Zongchang had incurred while he was alive.”
Yoshiko says she was won over by the sincerity in Fang Yongchang’s eyes and agreed to take command of his troops. She has nothing but praise for Fang’s unswerving devotion to her and for the troop’s thirty secondary leaders, who were “uncharacteristically quiet and obedient.” She describes the loyalty ceremony, when Fang presented his formal request that she take up the post and performed a formal kowtow before her. Though she accepted the vows of fealty and kowtows from him and the others, she could not ignore the condition of her new colleagues, who were unmistakably ragtag bandit chiefs supporting the Japanese. The Japanese army may have wanted to convince the world that Kawashima Yoshiko was a leader in the Rehe campaign, but it would allow her only a bunch of wrecks for her fighting force.
“They were all men who gave no thought to whether they lived or died,” Yoshiko wrote anyway, “as they rode on wooden saddles and rushed around the wide plains of Manchuria and Mongolia.” Some were missing fingers or had parts of their ears cut off, she writes, some cheeks bore scars from sword slashes. As her army pledged loyalty to her, all vowed to work for peace.
If Yoshiko is vague about exactly what she achieved in Rehe, others also struggle to come up with solid information. What exactly did she do there, if anything? A Japanese reporter who was present at the loyalty ceremony did not come away feeling that she exuded the authority attributed to her later on. “There she was, the female commander Eastern Jewel sternly standing there in her usual khaki-colored imitation military uniform. She was small, pretty, and looked just like a soldier out of a Chinese opera.”
After the ceremony also, Yoshiko did not project the gravitas of a general about to steer a militia up frozen mountainsides.
“Ha ha ha.” In the car, she suddenly burst out into uncontrollable laughter.
“What happened?” [the reporter asked]
“They all look like monsters. Some of them have fingers missing. Another one has a big lump on the back of his head. Others have scars on their foreheads. A bunch of monsters, I tell you.”
“I also got the creeps looking at them.”
She refused to attend the banquet after the loyalty ceremony—“I don’t want to spend time with those monsters”—and went off to the Capital Dance Hall.
Although the exact number of men under her command was never clear, she spoke of being shot three times in battle; she definitely took time off afterward to “recuperate,” and this has led to speculation that she had some experience under fire. But even granting that she led troops in some way, their role was most likely negligible. Later she said that her men would gather together as necessary, and then disband, leaving the impression of a very helter-skelter, part-time battalion. Emphasizing this notion of the troop’s flimsiness, Muramatsu Shōfū considered her army “a bunch of toy soldiers.” Most significant is the report that the Japanese army had banned such motley auxiliary forces from their invading army.
“She has no special rank or title,” the Japanese journalist wrote. “She sells the jewelry she inherited from her mother and receives some money from various gentlemen in Japan.” This, again, brings to the fore the matter of her financial backing, and who exactly those “gentlemen” were. One biographer contends that Yoshiko paid a call on the Japanese army later on, wearing her military uniform and boots, and packing a revolver.
“I created the Ankoku Army to benefit the new Manchukuo. Now we are only three thousand men, but I want to rally all the bandits of Manchuria together, get them to cooperate in the Rehe operation, and maintain the peace.” She next demanded two hundred thousand yen as payment.
Even more illuminating is the recollection of her nephew, who says that she received cash from Doihara Kenji, the Kwantung Army’s notorious plotter, whose many dark acts furthered Japanese advances in China.
“In those days you needed money to lead a flashy life,” the nephew says. “According to [her half brother] Xianjun’s writings, Yoshiko would go to Doihara and pester him for cash. And Doihara would give it to her. But no one knows what she did with that money. Even Doihara didn’t know. … She’d go there and pester him for half a year’s funds, and if he didn’t give it to her, she’d lash out at him or get violent or turn on her female wiles. Doihara was on to various secrets. If he gave her the money, for half a year she wouldn’t come back. So Doihara gave her money from the Special Service Agency, but after he gave her the money, he didn’t know what he’d paid her to do”
Whether or not Kawashima Yoshiko and her army played a part in the battle of Rehe, it is certain that the Japanese army did not need her help. The actual push to take over Rehe was a swift victory for the Japanese army, which gained control within two weeks. Eyewitness Edgar Snow was disgusted about the Chinese military’s performance in this long-expected confrontation. “Perhaps not since the Crusades has a great army taken the field with so little intelligent preparation. Given 17 months in which to get ready for the invasion, the Chinese generals conducted their defense as if against a surprise attack.” Even Boy Scouts with some dynamite, Snow wrote, could have held off the attacking Japanese on Rehe’s numerous mountain passes, snow and wind making them even more impregnable. But the disciplined and well-equipped Japanese army seized the region with ease. “[Rehe] was a debacle for the Chinese. Probably it ranks as one of the worst debacles in Chinese military history.”
Before the Japanese invasion, a Time correspondent journeyed to the “chill, bleak, mountainous” region to interview the Chinese warlord in control of the area. This reporter too was flabbergasted by the spotty preparations. “The Master of Jehol [another name for Rehe], whose warm opium-growing oases have made him vastly rich, is sturdy, walrus-mustached War Lord Tang Yulin.” Before the battle, Tang expressed confidence in his forces, boasting that “Japan and Manchukuo cannot control Jehol without taking my Capital and we are certain we can hold out here for at least six months.”
But his capital was captured in eleven days, by speedy Japanese units, which covered more than fifty miles on the last three days, “about as fast as any modern army can climb mountain passes in the teeth of blizzards.”
Just before his flight from the approaching enemy, Tang Yulin “seemed to be in a befuddled stupor—possibly from opium, … ‘I am in a difficult position,’ mused Governor Tang. ‘I don’t even know where my troops are.’”