Filmic evidence has often been produced in war trials, but Li Xianglan, who has died aged 94, had the distinction, in 1945, of being prosecuted for treason in China for the fictional roles she had played. Having depicted on screen Chinese women falling for members of the Japanese occupation forces, she read in the newspapers that she was to be publicly executed at Shanghai's horse track. Then, as if in the plot of a baroque opera a genre that would have suited her vocally her family register was smuggled in, within the head of a doll.
The document proved that Li had been born Yamaguchi Yoshiko, the daughter of Japanese parents in Manchuria, a colony of Japan before the second world war. Yamaguchi became one of millions to be repatriated to the main Japanese islands. But her singing talent, fame, and ability with languages was to propel her through careers in journalism and politics.
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