During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government invested in propagandistic cultural production in China, including "friendship films" that promoted goodwill between the two nations. These films often included shidaiqu, or Shanghai popular songs, a genre that blended Chinese opera, jazz, Tin Pan Alley songs, and Hollywood film music. Under the pseudonym Li Xianglan, Manchurian-born Japanese performer Yamaguchi Yoshiko acted in many friendship films; her fluency in Chinese and Japanese and Western operatic training equipped her to become a major star.

Drawing on voice studies and timbre analysis, I illustrate how Yamaguchi's voice served as a sonic bridge between wartime Chinese and Japanese popular music. I compare Chinese songstress Zhou Xuan's famous 1937 recording of the controversial love song "When Will You Return?" (Heri jun zailai) to Japanese singer Watanabe Hamako and Yamaguchi's 1939 recordings. Visually and linguistically, Yamaguchi masqueraded as a Chinese performer, but her idiosyncratic timbre betrayed her Western training and her cross-cultural identity. Yamaguchi’s budding career as Li Xianglan mirrored the Japanese implementation of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” (GEACPS) ideology. A 1943 Shanghai fan magazine featured a cartoon of Li Xianglan wearing a qipao, holding a suitcase, and walking across the continent of Asia labeled “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” captioned “Li Xianglan, hurrying to and fro” (Stephenson 2002). By synthesizing Japanese, Chinese, and Western vocal styles, her voice acts as an ethnic and sonic chimera, comprehensible and compelling for multiple audiences yet deployed in service of Japanese propaganda to represent a unified Asia.

The term “female singer” or “singsong girl,” as discussed in many newspaper articles from 1940s Shanghai, was at the center of the controversy on the identity of female performers and the music they presented. In the 1930s-1940s, Shanghai was a hub of fusion music, like shidaiqu, born out of colonial local negotiations. This genre, often referred to as “yellow music,” carried somewhat vulgar connotations. As spokespersons of shidaiqu, singsong girls contributed to the diverse musical scene while continuously facing stigmatization. They were often accused of solicitation and were not considered equal to “singers”. Societal anxieties about modernity, morality, and gender are reflected in the attitudes toward them. While their performances provided unprecedented exposure to female artists, making them a symbol of the “new woman,” they also attracted harsh critiques.

This paper analyzes the debates surrounding the term “female singer” or “singsong girl.” Through articles and reports of 1940s print media from the Shanghai Library’s National Periodical Index, I elaborate on the perspectives of female performers from their own narratives and those influenced by various social forces. This research highlights the collective identity of singsong girls in historical narratives. By defamiliarizing the stars’ voices, I reexamine the depictions, partially moving away from viewing Zhou Xuan and Yao Li, and other stars as exclusive examples. I bring in the traces of lesser-known figures, like Dong Peipei, Du Jie, and Zhang Lu. Their struggles, resistance, and disidentification became the key that profoundly impacted the Chinese popular music industry and gender norms.

“The Japanese, in a sense, have been castrated,” lamented the Japanese writer Takami Jun in his late 1945 diary, reflecting on the U.S. military occupation of Japan following the country’s defeat in the Pacific War. Despite a widespread sentiment of humiliation regarding Japan’s downfall and subservience to its former enemy, for women in Japan, the U.S. Occupation (1945–52) also sparked what Michael Bourdaghs described as an “intoxicating optimism” (Bourdaghs, 2011)—that is, a hopeful outlook on liberation characterized by the freedom of speech, gender equality, and financial abundance. In the popular culture produced and consumed by Japanese women during this time, the women jazz singers, including Kasagi Shizuko, Eri Chiemi, and the child star Hibari Misora, took center stage.

Drawing on magazines and newspapers published in Occupied Japan, this paper examines the various personas of these female singers and their reception, illuminating their central significance to the sociopolitical transformations of gender, economy, and national identity during this time. I emphasize the circulations of women’s magazines, commentaries by female authors, and opinions attributed to female audiences, framing the personas of the female singers and the discussions among ordinary women as dynamic dialogues. Building on the work of scholars such as Bourdaghs, Hiromu Nagahara, and Christine Yano, I argue that the female voice and body as produced by the popular music industry was shaped by and in turn shaped Japanese women’s negotiations of femininity, consumerism, and liberation in the light of sociopolitical transformations as well as their everyday lives.