Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (Critical Interventions) - Image 1

£50.81

University of Hawaii Press Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (Critical Interventions)

Name: Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (Critical Interventions)
Brand: University of Hawaii Press
Price: 52.74 GBP
Availability: InStock

Individual Directors

Price History & Forecast

Last 44 days • 44 data points (No recent data available)

Historical

Generating forecast...

Price Distribution

Price distribution over 44 days • 2 price levels

Days at Price

Current Price

Price Analysis

Most common price: £51 (39 days, 88.6%)

Price range: £51 - £53

Price levels: 2 different prices over 44 days

Description

The acclaimed actress and legendary singer, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (aka Li Xianglan, b. 1920), emerged from Japan-occupied Manchuria to become a transnational star during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Born to Japanese parents, raised in Manchuria, and educated in Beijing, the young Yamaguchi learned to speak impeccable Mandarin Chinese and received professional training in operatic singing. When recruited by the Manchurian Film Association in 1939 to act in “national policy” films in the service of Japanese imperialism in China, she allowed herself to be presented as a Chinese, eff ectively masking her Japanese identity in both her professional and private lives. Yamaguchi soon became an unprecedented transnational phenomenon in Manchuria, Shanghai, and Japan itself as the glamorous female lead in such well-known films as Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940), Pledge in the Desert (1940), and Glory to Eternity (1943). Her signature songs, including“When Will You Return?” and “Th e Evening Primrose,” swept East Asia in the waning years of the war and remained popular well into the postwar decades. Ironically, although her celebrated international stardom was without parallel in wartime East Asia, she remained a puppet within a puppet state, choreographed at every turn by Japanese film studios in accordance with the expediencies of Japan’s continental policy. In a dramatic turn of events aft er Japan’s defeat, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Chinese Nationalist forces and barely escaped execution as a traitor to China. Her complex and intriguing life story as a convenient pawn, willing instrument, and tormented victim of Japan’s imperialist ideology is told in her bestselling autobiography, translated here in full for the first time in English. An addendum reveals her postwar career in Hollywood and Broadway in the 1950s, her friendship with Charlie Chaplin, her first marriage to Isamu Noguchi, and her postwar life as singer, actress, political figure, television celebrity, and private citizen. A substantial introduction by Chia-ning Chang contextualizes Yamaguchi’s life and career within the historical and cultural zeitgeist of wartime Manchuria, Japan, and China and the postwar controversies surrounding her life in East Asia.

Product Specifications

Brand: University of Hawaii Press
Format: hardcover
ASIN: 0824839846
Category: Books > Subjects > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Individual Directors
Domain: Amazon UK
Release Date: 30 March 2015
Listed Since: 21 February 2015

Barcode

No barcode data available

University of Hawaii Press Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (Critical Interventions)

Price History & Forecast

Price Distribution

Price Analysis

Description

Product Specifications

Barcode

Similar Products You Might Like

My Life as a Filmmaker: Volume 80 (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China's Revolution and Reform (Asian Voices)

Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China's Revolution and Reform (Asian Voices)

Contemporary History of Cantonese Migrants in Yokohama Chinatown: A Case Study of Shatenki and the Xie Family

Heaven and Hell: A Novel of a Manchukuo Childhood

Chiang Kai-Shek's Secret Past: The Memoir of His Second Wife

The Turning Point in US-Japan Relations: Hanihara’s Cherry Blossom Diplomacy in 1920-1930

China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)

Sino-Japanese Transculturation: Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War

Doris Day: Images of a Hollywood Icon

Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Chinese Celebrities (Cambria Sinophone World)

The Chinese Chameleon Revisited: From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou

Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China

Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria: The Lives of War Orphans and Wives in Two Countries (Japan Anthropology Workshop Series)

The Making of China’s War with Japan: Zhou Enlai and Zhang Xueliang

激流者: 陆海空抗战老兵口述历史合集 (壹嘉个人史系列)

Collected English Works of Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto (5-vol. ES set) (Japan As Conveyed to the West by Japanese, 1)

Eileen Chang: Romancing Languages, Cultures and Genres

The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema

Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks: Voice, Ethnicity, Power

The Nanjing Massacre and Sino-Japanese Relations: Examining the Japanese 'Illusion' School

Standards Real Book: the "C and vocal edition"

Literature and the Japanese War of Aggression against China: Investigations and Criticisms

Yangzhou, a Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History