公主還是間諜：謎一般的川島芳子

‘Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy,’ by Phyllis Birnbaum

公主還是間諜：謎一般的川島芳子

Yoshiko Kawashima was, at first glance, a winning figure. Described by The New York Times in 1933 as “a picturesque film-drama figure, half tomboy, half heroine,” she was often called the “Joan of Arc of the Manchus.” It was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Riding to school on horseback, Kawashima imagined herself as a new Joan, restoring her people to their rightful glory.

川島芳子乍看上去是個(gè)迷人的人物。在1933年的《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》上，說她是“奇特的電影式戲劇化人物，半是假小子，半是女英雄”，經(jīng)常被人稱為“滿族的圣女貞德”。這也是她的童年夢想——兒時(shí)騎馬上學(xué)的時(shí)候，川島就經(jīng)常幻想自己像貞德那樣，領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人民贏回應(yīng)有的光榮。

She was born in China in 1907, the daughter of a Manchu prince with 38 children and frustrated dreams of reviving the Qing dynasty. As a reward to one of his Japanese allies, Naniwa ­Kawashima, Prince Su sent him a child — Aisin Gioro Xianyu, now renamed Yoshiko ­Kawashima, who was likely just 8 years old when she left for Japan.

1907年，川島芳子生于中國，是一位不得志的滿族親王的女兒，她父親有38個(gè)子女，懷有復(fù)興清王朝的夢想。為了報(bào)答來自日本的支持者川島浪速，這位肅親王把8歲的女兒愛新覺羅·顯玗送給他做養(yǎng)女，她改名川島芳子，隨養(yǎng)父去了日本。

Yoshiko’s adoptive father encouraged her warrior bravado and her tendency ­toward exaggeration. During the ­Boxer Rebellion, he claimed to have ­single-handedly rescued the imperial family. But Naniwa was also short-­tempered, known for running after his daughter with a shovel. And she was subjected to a hellish series of suitors, drawn from the ultranationalists who surrounded him. At last Yoshiko rebelled, cutting off her hair. “I decided to cease being a woman forever,” she announced. As Phyllis Birnbaum reports in “Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy,” it was the first of many attempts to shape her own image, and her fate.

養(yǎng)父鼓勵(lì)她身上武士的勇敢精神，以及喜歡夸張的傾向。他聲稱自己在義和拳運(yùn)動(dòng)中單槍匹馬地拯救了皇室家族。但川島浪速脾氣暴躁，曾經(jīng)提著鏟子追趕自己的女兒。芳子有大量追求者，都是圍繞在浪速身邊的極端民族主義者。最后叛逆的芳子剪掉了自己的頭發(fā)，宣布，“我永遠(yuǎn)清算了女性”。菲利斯·伯恩鮑姆 (Phyllis Birnbaum)在《滿族公主，日本間諜》(Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy)一書中寫道，芳子一生多次試圖改變自己的形象與命運(yùn)，這僅僅是第一次而已。

In 1931, Yoshiko was hired by the Japanese Kwantung Army, which was intent on creating a Manchurian “paradise of benevolent government,” the puppet state of Manchukuo. “The job description,” Birnbaum writes, “was hazy.” Yoshiko may have driven cross-country with Empress Wanrong stowed in the trunk of her car. She may have incited the Shanghai Incident of 1932, led troops at the disastrous Battle of Rehe and flown into Manchukuo to confront a rebellious warlord and free his captives.

1931年，日本關(guān)東軍想在東北建立所謂的“王道樂土”，即滿洲國傀儡政權(quán)，他們雇傭了芳子。伯恩鮑姆寫道，“她的工作內(nèi)容并不明確”。芳子很可能把婉容皇后藏在自己汽車的后備箱里穿越滿洲國。她可能引發(fā)了1932年的上海事變，可能在傷亡慘重的熱河戰(zhàn)役中率領(lǐng)軍隊(duì)，乘飛機(jī)來到滿洲國與一個(gè)反叛的軍閥對峙，并釋放了他的俘虜。

She may have, but probably didn’t. ­Yoshiko’s wartime experiences were filtered through the work of the Japanese novelist Shofu Muramatsu, who “improved” his best-selling 1933 portrait of her, “The Beauty in Men’s Clothing,” with a few undercover assignments. Muramatsu called the result a collaboration. Later, the Nationalist government would accuse Yoshiko of the same crime.

她可能做了以上這些事情，也可能沒有——芳子的戰(zhàn)時(shí)經(jīng)歷經(jīng)過日本小說家村松梢風(fēng)的加工，1933年，他創(chuàng)作了她的傳記《男裝麗人》(The Beauty in Men’s Clothing)，其中寫到她從事的若干秘密任務(wù)，并“改進(jìn)”了她的形象，這本書成了暢銷書。村松梢風(fēng)說這本書是兩人合作的產(chǎn)物。后來，國民黨政府也以同樣的罪名起訴她。

“My whole life has been formed by false gossip about me,” her prison confession begins, “and I will die because of false gossip against me.” But ­Yoshiko herself seized every opportunity for ­aggrandizement. In a typical encounter, she described herself as the last emperor’s daughter, dressed in drag to outsmart assassins. Her parents were killed, her brothers gruesomely dispatched. She was a pilot, an expert shot, a painter, a poet. Her listener believed, and transcribed, every word.

“我的整個(gè)一生都建筑在虛假的謠言上，”她的獄中自白這樣開頭，“如今我也將死于這些虛假的謠言。”但是她也不放過任何夸大其詞的機(jī)會(huì)。在一次特別典型的聊天中，她說自己是末代皇帝的女兒，穿男裝是為了逃過暗殺。她的父母被殺害、兄弟被殘忍地處決，她是飛行員、神槍手、畫家和詩人。和她聊天的人相信了她的話，并且逐字記錄下來。

“This star-struck remembrance,” Birnbaum writes, “must bring despair to the heart of any biographer.” Birnbaum’s ­previous work has featured flamboyant, self-made characters — one of her ­subjects, the painter Foujita, wrestled movingly with his Eastern and Western identities — but never someone whose life was so strongly a product of her own imagination. Still, reality eventually made inroads. By the late 1930s, disillusioned with Manchukuo and diminished by opium addiction, Yoshiko began to seem less the Eastern Joan of Arc than the Manchurian Lindsay Lohan. In the end, her closest confidants were four pet monkeys.

“這種追星式的回憶真能讓任何傳記作者抓狂，”伯恩鮑姆寫道，她之前的傳記作品中也塑造過華麗浮夸、憑空塑造出自身形象的人物，比如始終在東方與西方身份認(rèn)同之間艱苦掙扎的畫家藤田(Foujita)——但她從來沒寫過像川島芳子這樣一個(gè)整個(gè)人生都建立在自己想像之上的人物?，F(xiàn)實(shí)最終還是要面對。 20世紀(jì)30年代末，芳子對滿洲國感到幻滅，又深受鴉片煙癮的折磨，她看上去不再像東方的圣女貞德，倒像是滿洲的林賽·羅翰(Lindsay Lohan)。到最后，她最親近的朋友是四只寵物猴子。

Birnbaum’s book closes with the sad poetic justice of Yoshiko’s trial, when the Nationalist government, relying on films, novels and Yoshiko’s own hyperbolic memoirs, sentenced her to ­execution. ­Yoshiko was, Birnbaum notes, “astonished that fiction would pass for ­evidence.”

伯恩鮑姆的書以芳子在審判中受到了悲哀而應(yīng)得的懲罰告終——國民黨政府根據(jù)電影、小說和芳子夸張的回憶錄判處她死刑。伯恩鮑姆寫道，“小說竟然也能成為證據(jù)，芳子感到大為震驚。”

So Yoshiko Kawashima died, at last taken seriously. Or she didn’t. In Birnbaum’s biography, which grasps at but never quite captures Yoshiko’s spirit, her subject emerges as a woman supremely in command of her own fiction, even to the last. On March 25, 1948, Yoshiko was ­either executed or replaced by a body double and smuggled off to a life in hiding. She’ll always be the one who got away.

于是川島芳子就這么死了，至少人們認(rèn)為她死了。但是，也許她沒有死。伯恩鮑姆的傳記把握住了芳子的精神，但并未能真正捕捉到她的魂魄，這個(gè)女人直到生命的最后一刻，都拼命想要塑造自己的虛構(gòu)故事。根據(jù)這本傳記，1948年3月25日，芳子不是被處決，就是被替身掉包了，她本人被偷運(yùn)出去，藏匿起來。她永遠(yuǎn)都是那個(gè)逃逸的人。