Who is she:
- A renowned female spy of Manchurian descent, who spied for the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese war that is part of World War 2
Notable Life Events:
- Born in 1907, 4 years before the Qing dynasty was overthrew, as Aisin Gioro Xianyu, a Manchurian princess born to a concubine mother
- In 1915, she was given up for adoption at the age of 8 to her father’s friend, a Japanese espionage agent and mercenary adventurer, who took her to Japan and gave her the name she was better known as, Yoshiko Kawashima
- When she was 15, her father died and her mother followed the Manchurian tradition of committing suicide as a concubine. At the age of 17, her adoptive father raped and later continued to abuse her
- On 22 November 1925 (aged 18), she proclaimed of her decision to cease to exist as a woman forever and started dressing in men’s clothes as well as changing her hairstyle to a crew cut
- When she was 20, she was arranged by her brother and adoptive father to marry a Mongolian prince (the Manchurian dynasty was really founded on a Manchurian-Mongolian alliance) but she divorced three years later. Afterwards, she seemed to have led a decadent life where she had lovers of both genders
- Her espionage career seemed to start with meeting the intelligence officer Ryukichi Tanaka in Shanghai and subsequently moving in with him
- Due to a cordial relationship with Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing dynasty, who saw her as a member of the Imperial family (she was his distant cousin), she was able to persuade him to re-ascend the throne as the figurehead ruler of Manchukuo, a puppet state created by the Japanese for Manchuria based in the city of Harbin bordering Russia
- She was arrested in Beijing in 1945, charged with treason in 1947 and executed in 1948
Moonlake’s thoughts on her:
I think this is a woman that is worthy of being cast as a female lead for sure (there was definitely a HK movie about her where she was played by Anita Mui): she has outward charm and she knows what she is doing.
English Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshiko _Kawashima
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