Phyllis Birnbaum

"Kawashima Yoshiko (1906-1948) was an enigmatic Manchu princess whose life mirrored in many ways Japanese-Chinese relations in the first half of the 20th century. She was born into the Qing dynasty in China--the fourteenth daughter Prince Su--but grew up in Japan, after being given up for adoption to promote her father's political causes. Her fame was caught up with the fate of the puppet state set up by the Japanese in Manchuria during the 1930s (Manchukuo). She was a supporter of Manchukuo and served as a spy for the Japanese but also worked to restore the Manchu dynasty. She played a central role in the Shanghai Incident, which the Japanese Army used as an excuse to expand their war in and against China, culminating in the notorious Nanjing Massacre, but she also stuffed the empress into the trunk of her car and transported her in secret to a coronation in Manchuria. The Japanese set her up as the perfect symbol of amity between the two nations. She contested gender roles by wearing male military attire and a short, mannish haircut. In this book, Birnbaum tells Yoshiko's life story, culminating with her execution in 1948 by Chiang Kai-shek. She highlights the way in which Yoshiko's Chinese birth and Japanese upbringing created a unique personality, and how she was viewed differently in the two countries"--Provided by publisher.

The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-dressing Spy who Commanded Her Own Army

Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy

The first English-language biography of the renowned Japanese artist recounts Foujita's fascinating and tumultuous life in an in-depth portrait that also assesses the appeal of his distinctive and flamboyant paintings.

A Life of Foujita : the Artist Caught Between East & West

Glory in a Line

The stunning biographical portraits in Modern Girls, Shining Stars, the Skies of Tokyo, some adapted from essays that first appeared in The New Yorker, explore the lives of five women who did their best to stand up and cause more trouble than was considered proper in Japanese society. Their lives stretch across a century and a half of explosive cultural and political transformations in Japan. These five artists-two actresses, two writers, and a painter-were noted for their talents, their beauty, and their love affairs rather than for any association with politics. But through the fearlessness of their art and their private lives, they influenced the attitudes of their times and challenged the status quo. Phyllis Birnbaum presents her subjects from various perspectives, allowing them to shine forth in all of their contradictory brilliance: generous and petulant, daring and timid, prudent and foolish. There is Matsui Sumako, the actress who introduced Ibsen's Nora and Wilde's Salome to Japanese audiences but is best remembered for her ambition, obstreperous temperament and turbulent love life. We also meet Takamura Chieko, a promising but ultimately disappointed modernist painter whose descent into mental illness was immortalized in poetry by a husband who may well have been the source of her troubles. In a startling act of rebellion, the sensitive, aristocratic poet Yanagiwara Byakuren left her crude and powerful husband, eloped with her revolutionary lover, and published her request for a divorce in the newspapers. Uno Chiyo was a popular novelist who preferred to be remembered for the romantic wars she fought. Willful, shrewd, and ambitious, Uno struggled for sexual liberation and literary merit. Birnbaum concludes by exploring the life and career of Takamine Hideko, a Japanese film star who portrayed wholesome working-class heroines in hundreds of films, working with such directors as Naruse, Kinoshita, Ozu, and Kurosawa. Angry about a childhood spent working to provide for greedy relatives, Takamine nevertheless made peace with her troubled past and was rewarded for years of hard work with a brilliant career. Drawing on fictional accounts, interviews, memoirs, newspaper reports, and the creative works of her subjects, Birnbaum has created vivid, seamless narrative portraits of these five remarkable women.

Phyllis Birnbaum

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