The China Lover Images II – The Tokyo Years

Following on from the previous post about her Manchuria days and early film career - Yoshiko Yamaguchi was arrested by the Chinese at the end of World War Two but managed to get herself released and headed to Japan, a country that she barely knew despite having Japanese parents. Of course when she arrived it was the American occupation of a devastated country.

In 1946 Yoshiko Yamaguchi made it to Tokyo and resumed her movie career. She made a number of films including Akira Kurosawa’s (far left) story of paparazzi, celebrity and a court case Scandal (1950), one of the best films of those years. It happened to co-star Toshiro Mifune (left), a Kurosawa favourite, who also happened to have been born in China to Japanese parents (though Qingdao rather than Manchuria).

During this period she also married Isamu Noguchi, the prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Noguchi was highly celebrated and has a museum dvoted to his work in Long Island. Yoshiko met Noguchi in New York in the autumn of 1950. They were married in Japan in May 1952, and lived that year on the land of eminent potter Kitaoji Rosanjin. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1957. In the later 1950s Yoshiko looked for work in Hollywood movies – see next posting.

The China Lover - A NOVEL
The China Lover Images I - Li Xianglan/Ri Koran The Manchurian Days

The China Lover Images III – The Hollywood Sojourn

The China Lover Images IV – Post the Movies