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Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ130395308 ↗
Source-derived summary

Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life (李香蘭 私の半生, Ri Kōran: watashi no hansei; Ri Koran: Half my Life) is an autobiography by Yoshiko Yamaguchi and Fujiwara Sakuya. It was published in Japanese in 1987, by Shinchosha.

It was translated into English by Chia-ning Chang, published by University of Hawaii Press in 2015.

The title is a reference to Yamaguchi's stage name in Chinese-language film productions, Li Hsiang-lan a.k.a. Ri Kōran.

Background

Chang works at the University of California system as a member of a faculty. Specifically he is at the University of California, Davis.

Contents

Chang wrote the introduction to the English version. Kris Kosaka of The Japan Times wrote that this scholarly influence distinguishes the work "from a normal memoir".

Release

It was published in Mandarin Chinese in 1988 by Liaoning People's Publishing House.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life” as open-knowledge reference entry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fragrant, Orchid and Story.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 2015, 1988—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Fragrant, Orchid and Story providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life”, the useful work is to connect “open-knowledge reference entry” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130395308. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 2015 and 1988.

Critical limits

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How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life primary sources, Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life archive and Fragrant research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.