The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

Book Overview

A transfixing portrait of a woman and a nation eagerly burying the past to transform the future . In his enthralling new novel, Ian Buruma uses the life of the starlet Yamaguchi Yoshiko as a lens... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143116088
• ISBN13: 9780143116080
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An incredible and inventive reading experience

It's the unique structure of this book, told in three parts by three different first person narrators that excite the reader. Each narrator tells his own story with the three connected to their relationship with a different phase of a true person, Yamaguchi Yoshiko who uses a different name and persona during each phase of her life. The three stories cover Japanese history from before WWII until the present time as well as numerous ties to films and there making during each time period. The book opens with the Japanese loving all things Chinese just before WWII where the reader meets the first of the three narrators each providing their own unique viewpoints. They are a surrogate father, a gay film critic, and a jailed terrorist (who does not think of himself that way). The book is probably easiest to category as historic fiction, perhaps a fictional biography (although the author interviewed Yoshiko in researching the book), and lastly a uniquely entertaining page turner that through three separate stories keeps the reader constantly learning and thinking. Yoshiko apparently reinvented herself many times through out her life and that is what the book does very well with its unique first person viewpoints. It's a bit of fun that each of the first two narrators appear very slightly in the following narrators own story. At one time I thought I did not like fiction told in the first person but all that has changed recently. Buruma has taught me that first person can even be turned on its head to provide an incredible and inventive experience. My only small complaint is that each narrator seems to share the similar voice of Mr. Burmua. (Note: My wife also read this while on vacation and gave it raves too.)

review of "China Lover"

I have an interest in Li Xianglan way before I knew about this novel. Actually I read other people's reviews on this novel as well as an interview with the author before I bought the book. The author is,of course, free to incorporate anything about Li into his fictional character. For those who intend to find out something about Li through this book, it would be a mixed blessing. True, the author did capture some aspects of her life, but reading the fiction also suggests some aspects of the author as a white Westerner who has a "certain" fascination of Asian women. Casual remarks made through the characters reveal some of this attitude. There is also a hint from his interview that the author does not react as most people do in regard to the Nanking Massacre. The reader can draw his/her opinion as to whether this has anything to do with the novel.

Great characters, history, and culture

If you like intricate plots, interesting characters, foreign settings, and historical accuracy, this is a book for you. I knew absolutely nothing about Japanese/Chinese relations or Manchuria during the war and I must admit I had to reread chapters in the first part of the book to gather an understanding of the history of the times, but after that I was totally pulled in. The first chapter is so compelling and demonstrates the effect stories and imagination can have on the human condition. And then as the book unfolds, one begins to see how stories (movies) can have an effect on an entire nation; are they stories for the imagination or propaganda or both. Although Ri Koran (or Shirley Yamaguchi or whatever her name could be) is the center of the story, the three men that tell her story at three different times in her life are the most interesting. They provide perfect foils to her personality as she evolves from someone who is knowingly manipulated to someone who manipulates those around her. All of this set in three different parts of the world in vastly different circumstances. I loved this book. I loved the fact that real historical characters play a part (Truman Capote comes to mind), and the authenticity of the historical events as they unfolded in China, Japan, United States, and Lebanon. There are so many characters in this book and so many little unique connections between them, it was a fascinating read.

Truly remarkable novel

I loved "The China Lover", which I had the good luck to read in advance of publication. The book is a vividly imagined account of an episode in far eastern history quite unknown to most western readers, a subtle and haunting commentary on the relation between life, literature and film, the work of a writer of unique range and astonishing erudition.

sex, lies and japanese film

An engrossing, wonderfully-written historical novel. Here's the premise: In 1940, at the height of Japan's military aggression during World War II, a movie called "China Nights" won the hearts of countless Japanese soldiers and patriots who were riveted by the stirring singing voice of the young girl who plays a Chinese orphan rescued by a Japanese officer who both loves and beats her. The singer became enormously popular, a symbol of subservience to Japan's self-image of benevolent but iron rule over Asia. After Japan lost the war, the singer was accused of treason for helping her wartime captors. To escape execution, she revealed a secret -- that she was actually Japanese and had followed orders to pretend to be Chinese. She escaped to Japan and reinvented herself as a successful film actress, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, though she used the first name Shirley when she made it to Hollywood and Broadway. Ian Buruma, a film buff and an accomplished writer of nonfiction about Asia, delivers a lushly rendered piece of historical fiction. Buruma conveys the exhilaration and devastation of Japan's military folly and its resulting moral hangover through the lens of the film world at the time. With a sharp yet generous eye, Buruma explores the moods and sensibilities of the movie business in wartime Shanghai and postwar Tokyo. His novel seems to revel in and see through the filmmaking and its role in shaping memory and history. It's a cinematic story, in topic and form, made richer by the fertile emotional terrain of its fallible protagonists. The story begins in Manchuria, narrated by a cultural official named Sato, whose day job is to promote cultural events that win over Chinese hearts and minds and whose nighttime pursuits satisfy a prodigious appetite for bedding Chinese actresses. As a Japanese patriot, Sato sneers at the haughty European colonials and is thrilled by news of Pearl Harbor. Yet Sato is fascinated by the mysteries and challenges of life in a foreign culture, which fuel and soothe his restless nature. He also observes the realities of war with stark clarity, seeing Japan's military police as sadistic thugs whose real goal is to profit from illicit schemes and lawlessly exercise power over the helpless. "The China Lover" overflows with intriguing characters, particularly Amakasu, a shadowy official who supervises Japan's propaganda efforts in China. I kept visualizing the oily haired fixer supreme who called the shots in the film "The Last Emperor" and put a pistol to his temple at the end. Eventually, I put this novel down to look him up and discovered that Amakasu was indeed a true historical figure. The second part of the book shifts to postwar Tokyo and is narrated by a young American soldier, Sidney, who works in the film censor's office, a perfect vantage point for watching a golden era of filmmaking begin to germinate. Buruma seems to know every nook and cranny of this landscape. Akira Kurosawa, Frank Capra, Truman Capote and oth