A lifeless novel about an extraordinary life

By Ian Buruma

Penguin Press. 392 pp. $26.95

Reviewed by Frank Wilson

Those of a certain age may remember Shirley Yamaguchi. She was a Japanese singer and actress who made something of a splash in this country during the '50s, appearing on

The Ed Sullivan Show

, starring opposite Robert Stack and Robert Ryan in Sam Fuller's film

House of Bamboo

, and even making it to Broadway in an ill-fated musical version of James Hilton's novel

Lost Horizon

. For a time, she was married to sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

She is also the focal point of Ian Buruma's

Rashomon

-like novel,

The China Lover

, in which three narrators tell us of their encounters with Yamaguchi.

The first of the narrators is Sato Daisuke, a Japanese living in Manchukuo, the puppet state Japan set up in Manchuria in 1932. When he sees 13-year-old Yamaguchi Yoshiko, a Manchurian-born Japanese who is the star pupil of a Russian woman named Madame Ignatieva, sing at the Yamato Hotel, he knows that "she was something very special indeed." So when a singer is needed for a radio show called

Manchukuo Rhapsody,

Sato knows exactly who will fit the bill.

Soon - using her Chinese name, Ri Koran - Yoshiko is making movies for the Manchuria Motion Picture Association. One,

China Nights

, becomes a big hit in Japan, while the title song - sung, of course, by Ri Koran - becomes an instant classic throughout East Asia.

Sidney Vanoven, our second narrator, sees

China Nights

while working for Frank Capra in Hollywood. Reaching draft age just as the atomic bomb brings World War II to an end, he is (implausibly) admitted to the Foreign Service (he is, after all, just a high school grad with secretarial skills but no knowledge of Japanese) and manages to get assigned to just the place he wants to go - Japan - where a Capra friend gets him a job with the Civil Censorship Detachment.

This puts him in constant contact with the Japanese movie industry, which is how he meets Yoshiko, who has put her Ri Koran days behind her. She befriends "Sid-san" principally because of his Hollywood connections, tenuous though they are. Eventually, Vanoven returns to the States, so he can finally study Japanese at Columbia University. At a Manhattan party given by a wealthy Japanese couple, he meets the sculptor Noguchi, and everyone in attendance is fascinated when they see a young woman named Shirley Yamaguchi perform on Ed Sullivan's show.

Noguchi is more than fascinated. For him it is love at first sight. (The best scene in the novel is when she lets Noguchi have it between the eyes: "Unlike you, I am Japanese. . . . You're just a typical American. . . .")

Narrator three is also named Sato.

Sato Kenkichi has gone from being a James Dean worshiper to hating all things Western. He meets Yoshiko as is she reinventing herself yet again as a television journalist, having long since dumped Noguchi and married a Japanese diplomat. She has a knack for getting to see who she wants to see - and they tend to be dictators and terrorists. And so she meets Moammar Gadhafi ("a very religious man"), Yasir Arafat ("What a wonderful person!"), and Idi Amin ("like a sweet black bear"), among others. When she does a piece on the Palestinians, Sato is so taken with their cause that he joins their efforts, participating in an act of terrorism that claims 26 victims (although that is not the reason he writes his account from a Lebanese prison). Sato last hears from Yoshiko as she prepares to run for a seat in the Japanese parliament (she won and held the seat for 18 years).

All three narrators hate their provincial origins - both Satos are from towns far from Tokyo, and Vanoven hails from Bowling Green, Ohio - and have nothing but contempt for their countrymen. All have voracious sexual appetites, but none has any discernible capacity for love. In fact, they are too alike. As narrators, they need much more distinctive voices.

Another problem: If you are going to write a novel with specific historical reference points, you need to pay attention to detail.

Vanoven has Noguchi and Yamaguchi marrying in December 1951. The Noguchi Museum has them marrying in May 1952. It's never mentioned that Noguchi was 16 years older than his bride. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy is shown as being involved with Charlie Chaplin's visa problems. That was J. Edgar Hoover's doing. And Ronald Colman does not play a novelist in Frank Capra's

Lost Horizon

; he plays a British diplomat named Conway.

And it is not Conway, but his brother, who falls in love with the girl who wants to leave Shangri-la.

Yoshiko remains the focus of attention, but never comes to life as a person. Given the extraordinary life she has led, that's hard to forgive.