夜来香 / 上戸彩 YeLaixiang by Ueto Aya 「李香蘭」夜來香
Japanese actress Ueto Aya sang this YeLaixiang (夜来香)for the Japanese TV drama Rikoran 李香蘭(TV Tokyo,テレビ東京) in February 2007. You can also listen to Suzhou Nocturne (蘇州夜曲) here. DVD of this drama 李香蘭(Kadokawa Pict. 角川映画) is available from Amazon.com etc. to see full of story.
Li Xianglan(李香蘭、李香兰) was born in China in 1920. When she was 13, her Chinese foster father(養父)gave her name Li Xianglan. She lived as a Chinese singer and actress, hiding the fact that she actually was a Japanese named Yamaguchi Yoshiko(山口淑子). In order to avoid anti-Japanese movement against the invasion of Japanese army, she had tried to hide it till the end of WW2 . In some Japanese movies, she got a role for Japanese propaganda. After noticing it by herself, she had much suffered from consideration of sin.
Once, there was an episode for her national identity. When she had a concert in Japan, a local newspaper scooped that she was actually a Japanese. Then she replied ---"I know the paper made my real name public, but I don't worry whether I lose my populality. The important thing is how well I act and sing on the stage. And I think my nationality is just an East Asian woman." ---
From this interview, we can imagine that she had hard time to hold her identity between Chinese and Japanese. She overcame it by concentrating singing and acting.
June 1945, she had a concert with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra(上海交響楽団) at the Grand Theatre(大光明大戯院). This video is the scene. The concert was so successful continuing 3 days. August 9th 1945, she had an encore concert for her fans at Shanghai horse race field(現在の人民広場). She sang at her very best because she knew this could be the last message to China where she was born in and grown up.
6 days later, the war ended. Chinese government arrested her on the doubt that she helped Japan's propaganda by acting in Japanese movies. Many newspapers said that she would be killed. Finally, getting help from her Russian childhood girl friend, she got free and left out to Japan with love to both China and Japan.
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