In a 1978 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Sasakawa said, “All my critics are red, or jealous, or else spiteful because I didn’t give them money.”
—NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 20, 1995
As she faced uncertainty once again, Yoshiko had much to learn from Sasakawa Ryōichi. Like Yoshiko, Sasakawa sought regime change at various times and devoted himself to this cause, yet Yoshiko could not compete with him when it came to cash and luck. Sasakawa could have easily been shot in the Shanghai twilight by a Chinese patriot or hanged at dawn by assorted governments. Instead, Sasakawa survived, moving from fervid ultranationalist to ubiquitous fixer to prisoner, and finally settling down as philanthropist with a past.
After the war, he was arrested as a suspected Class A war criminal and spent three years in jail. Yet in the end Sasakawa sat on a throne not ordinarily available to such wily wheeler-dealers, establishing a foundation with his fortune and challenging the high-minded, who struggled with their principles as they accepted his money.
Sasakawa began his career in 1918 as a pilot in the Japanese navy, and after a two-year stint, he learned enough to apply his aeronautic expertise in a spectacular fashion. He would use airplanes to influence the course of major events, including the Second World War. Rice speculation increased his riches, and he became a supporter of extreme right-wing movements. He formed his own political party, outfitting his fifteen thousand followers in black shirts to pay homage to his idol, Mussolini. Too big an operator to be termed a mere China rōnin, Sasakawa’s endeavors fanned out widely as he lent his private fleet of twenty-two planes to the Japanese navy and flew in supplies for Japanese troops in China. After serving time in prison for extortion, a charge that was eventually dropped, Sasakawa flew off to Rome, where he met Mussolini and gave him a sumo referee’s fan. Profiteering in China’s precious stones and other materials is said to have brought him millions.
Sasakawa’s money and contacts made him a natural choice as consultant when the military became fed up with Kawashima Yoshiko. To be precise, Tada Hayao, by then chief of the North China Area Army, ordered Yoshiko’s assassination. Sasakawa remembers the day he was asked to intercede in this matter, and the Japanese conversation is one of those gems of linguistic magic, difficult to capture in English, that make learning Japanese worthwhile. It was June 1940 when the army’s Major General Yuri, an old friend, broached the topic with Sasakawa in a Beijing hotel.
“I have something that I must ask you about.”
“And what may that be?” Sasakawa looked back at Yuri.
“Sasakawa-san, do you know Kawashima Yoshiko?”
“I’ve heard talk about her, but I’ve never met her in person. Has anything happened to Yoshiko?”
“There’s been some trouble with her. It’s giving me a headache.” Yuri lowered his voice. “She’s under house arrest now, but the military brass has ordered me to dispose of her.”
“What’s this all about?” Sasakawa raised his voice without thinking. “Didn’t she work for the military during the Manchuria and Shanghai Incidents?”
“That’s true. She worked for Major Tanaka Ryūkichi in Shanghai and accomplished a lot when she was a member of the information division of the Special Service Agency, but recently she’s become a bit more than the military can handle.”
“You mean she’s become a nuisance?
“Yes, that’s right. … These are His Excellency [Tada’s] orders. When I think about it, I feel sorry for her. The military exploited her as long as she was useful, that’s all, and now that she’s done something slightly bad, they want to be rid of her. It’s immoral. I can’t bring myself to kill her.”
Sasakawa had his ideas about how a war should be waged, and though he could tolerate the broader savagery of the Japanese military, he was a stickler for honorable behavior in lesser things. As Sasakawa saw it, Tada Hayao showed manners unbecoming an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army when he asked a hit man to murder Kawashima Yoshiko, who had, after all, toiled on behalf of Japan.
Mustering his characteristic can-do approach, Sasakawa immediately volunteered his services. “What a cruel story. Just leave it to me. I’ll meet with Yoshiko and take care of everything.”
And so Sasakawa was soon off to visit Yoshiko, wielding a personal power that flew above the petty rules of national governments. At her Beijing home, Yoshiko was being kept under guard by two Japanese military policemen, who checked on all visitors.
“Thank you so much for coming to visit,” Yoshiko told Sasakawa. “These days no one comes to see me because they’re afraid of Papa.” “Papa” was her way of referring to Tada, who wanted her dead.
Yoshiko, wearing flashy Chinese clothing with gold touches, led him to a Chinese-style chair. Sasakawa says that she looked “pale and listless,” with the refined though melancholy air that struck others who saw her during this period. She perked up when he expressed concern about her situation, and, according to Sasakawa’s adoring biographer, she immediately discerned his upstanding nature and intentions. Rising to denounce the injustice, she railed against being kept in her home under constant surveillance.
“Sensei, you have a look at them,” she exclaimed, pointing at the military policemen.
“I’m being treated like a criminal. This is all at Papa’s orders. Sensei, they say that I’ve done bad things. But isn’t it Papa who’s the betrayer? He makes use of me, showing no mercy, and then tells me that he can’t stand the sight of me and throws me out like some old rag. … Those guys, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill their own parents and brothers to protect themselves. You take Tada or Tanaka, they both were after my body. But they’re just worthless. You call them generals? They’re nothing but two-bit generals. A bunch of ungrateful thugs.”
She issued these denunciations in a loud voice and then turned toward the policemen.
“Hey, when you go back, you tell those two-bit generals that Yoshiko doesn’t give a damn about the Japanese military.”
Sasakawa endeavored to impose calm on the encounter. “Yoshiko-san, you have every reason to be angry. … They make use of you and then turn around and threaten you. It’s outrageous. His Excellency Tada’s way of dealing with this problem is definitely mistaken. Outrageous. But you have to remember that you are dealing with the highest level of the military. You are going to have to resolve this in a way that maintains their honor and credibility. If you go on like this, they will get upset, and you’ll lose your life.”
At this Yoshiko—at least according to Sasakawa’s besotted biographer—was again overwhelmed by his virtue. “No one understands how I feel,” she told him. “You are the only one who truly understands me. I am so happy. Really happy. You are a true Japanese who loves justice.”
Sasakawa took charge of her case, and in no time he had her out of Beijing and resettled at the Dalian home of Kawashima Naniwa. Her adoptive father’s reaction to her sudden return to his home is unrecorded. Eventually Yoshiko was shipped off for a long stay in Fukuoka, Japan, where she remained Sasakawa’s financial responsibility.
It is easy to understand why the Japanese military sought to eliminate Yoshiko, whose dedication to the task at hand had served them well in the past. When she put that same passion into tasks destructive to their aims, her former bosses felt obliged to reconsider her status. Sasakawa’s biographer describes one of the rumors, about her method of acquiring funds: “She’d use her troops to inform on people to the military police, who would arrest merchants and rich people. Next Commander Jin would go to the prisoners’ families and tell them about how she was well acquainted with the higher-ups in the military police. She told the families that she’d negotiate and so raked in a load of money and property.” She was in cahoots with an official of the military police, who received part of her take and then released the prisoners. Such gossip alarmed Tada, who feared that he might be damaged if word of these transactions leaked out.
While such behind-the-scenes deals, if true, certainly complicated the military’s view of Yoshiko, they were likely more alarmed by the growing boldness of her public criticisms:
“The Japanese go around spouting all kinds of noble slogans, but the fact of the matter is that Manchukuo is like a Japanese colony,” she was heard to say.
“In his heart Puyi hates being emperor even now. He’s been cut off from contact with the outside world. It amounts to house arrest. … The Kwantung Army is the real emperor.”
Sasakawa’s recollections of Yoshiko in this period must be viewed as the accounts of a man who saw himself as soaring above ordinary creatures in his morality and vision. He is blatant in spinning the facts for his own enhancement. Still, his portrait of Yoshiko, as recorded by his biographer, in many ways agrees with the portrayals of other contemporaries. Her ravaged appearance began to be apparent to everyone, and her lies, previously crafted with care, were easily seen through. Most often she was desperate—desperate for companionship, limelight, cash, and the drugs that kept her going.
Sasakawa’s biographer tells of how, one eventful night, Yoshiko went to Sasakawa’s hotel room, rushed into his bed, and refused to leave. Later on, she woke up to give herself an injection in the thigh.
“Hold me,” she told him, “I want to be held by a real Japanese.”
Her attachment to Sasakawa became so intense that she could not bear any separation. When he had too many commitments to see her, she sent him a telegram announcing her death. Despite a schedule filled with lectures and memorial services for fallen soldiers, he rushed off to see what had happened, only to discover her alive at a hot springs.
“Don’t get so angry. … I wrote to you but you didn’t come. So I sent that telegram.”
Although he had no trouble understanding why she would love a rare man like himself, Sasakawa conceded that part of her devotion might have been fueled by her drug addiction. Repeatedly, he saw her injecting herself, and when he urged her to stop for the sake of her health, Yoshiko lapped up his concern.
“I can only depend on you,” she whimpered. “You are my only ally in Japan.”
Sasakawa’s biographer solemnly points out that she had up to then been involved with many men, but all these were “impure” loves, based on a desire for power. “Sasakawa was the first and last of her men whom she could truly depend on, whom she loved from the bottom of her heart, who made her feel a woman’s true happiness.”
Still, Sasakawa saw that too much of Yoshiko meant mayhem constantly coming his way, and when she offered to become his secretary so that they could be together all the time, he turned her down. He did try to use her skills as a lecturer, scheduling her to speak before members of his political party. This plan too went nowhere. “She would promise to lecture, but on the day of her talk, she would oversleep and not show up. Or, in the middle of her talk, she would step down from the podium and go off to a secluded seat to give herself a shot.” Still thinking big, she pestered Sasakawa to join with her to broker a peace between China and Japan.
“I’m thinking of going to see Chiang Kai-shek,” she wrote to him. “We don’t have time to wait for a better opportunity. You come along with me. We’ll have a good long talk with him. … If we do that, then we can say that we have at least done something good in our lives.”
Although Sasakawa managed to avoid getting involved in this scheme as well, he avows that his loyalty was steadfast and his concern about her welfare unremitting. “Sasakawa supplied all the money required to clean up the mess created by her dissolute life,” the biographer writes. “His heart had been greatly moved by Yoshiko’s pure passion for her unfinished dream of an imperial state, which she had staked her life on.”