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At seven a.m. on 25 March 1948 a female corpse was carried out from Municipal Prison Number 1 in Hebei province in China. The prisoner was executed an hour earlier. The bullet had entered the back of her head, emerging from the right side of her face, leaving the face an unrecognizable mass of blood and bone. She was Aisin Gioro Xianyu (1906-1948), the fourteenth princess of Shan-qi (18661922) or daughter of Prince Su of the late Qing dynasty in China. She was also known as the "Joan of Arc in the Orient," "Jin Bihui" (Radiant Jade) or "Beauty in Male Attire." She was named Kawashima Yoshiko (Kawashima was her family name) after her Japanese foster father, Kawashima Naniwa (1865-1949), adopted her. American journals referred to her as the "Mata Hari of East Asia." She is also known as a Chinese traitor in China and a Japanese spy, Yoshiko Kawashima.
Yoshiko Kawashima was a prominent figure in Asia during the 1930s, her glorious career as a female commander in the Japanese army in China was frequently reported in Japanese newspapers and magazines. Her life story has been made into novels and movies many times over in China and Japan since the 1930s.'
Yoshiko spent her childhood both in China and Japan; she was brought up by two fathers, Prince Su and Kawashima Naniwa, a translator and an adventurer in the Japanese army in China. Yoshiko was born in 1906 into the deposed Manchu dynasty as the fourteenth daughter of Prince Su; she was sent to Japan at age seven to be adopted by Kawashima Naniwa (adopted brother of Prince Su, his political partner, and best friend). Both Prince Su and Kawashima Naniwa had great expectations of Yoshiko to become an agent in establishing a new nation in Manchuria, and restoring the Qing dynasty in China.2 In order to get assistance from the Japanese army and to demonstrate his close relationship with Naniwa, Prince Su gave up his fourteenth daughter in 1912. She was given a Japanese name, "Yoshiko," and Kawashima Naniwa educated his adopted daughter in Japan.
At the age of 22, Yoshiko married Ganjurjab, the son of a Mongolian general. It was a political marriage arranged by Naniwa Kawashima, who dreamed of Mongolian-Manchurian...