Tokyo: Japanese cinema idol Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who was known as Rikoran and symbolizes the dreams of wartime Japan's conquest of Asia, has died at age 94. 

Known as Shirley Yamaguchi in the USA and one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema during and after World War II, Yamaguchi died of heart failure Sept. 7, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. 

Born to Japanese parents in northern China in 1920 and grew up in wartime Japanese puppet Manchukuo state, Yamaguchi was adopted by a Chinese friend of his father and was renamed "Xianglan," or "fragrant orchid," when he 13 years old. 

He debuted as a Chinese singer Li Xianglan - Rikoran in Japanese - and starred in films made ​​by Chinese Japanese run Manchuria Film Association, many propaganda films. 

During his militaristic march through Asia in the first half of the 20th century, Japan operated coal mines and railways and forced the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, to be head of a puppet government in Manchuria, the Japanese call Manchukuo . 

Generally believed that the Chinese, Yamaguchi was a star in Asia, especially in Japan. 

"Yue Lai Xiang," one of his best known songs, remains popular among Chinese singers. In the movie "Song of the White Orchid," which showed a young Chinese woman who falls in love with a Japanese man after his family is killed by the Japanese. 

Chinese authorities detained after the war Yamaguchi and accused of being a Chinese traitor. But a friend produced family records demonstrating its Japanese origin, saving her from execution. He apologized for his duplicity and was allowed to leave China. 

After the war, Yamaguchi appeared in two Hollywood movies and on Broadway during the 1950s At home, he starred in Akira Kurosawa "Scandal" Seijun Suzuki "Escape at Dawn" and other films. 

She largely retired from the silver screen, but the story of his dramatic life became in dramas and musicals that are made today. His 1987 autobiography "Half of my life as Rikoran" was a best-seller. 

After his first marriage to the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi ended in the mid-1950s, he married Hiroshi Yamaguchi Ohtaka, who was ambassador to Japan in Burma, now Myanmar, and occasionally appeared on television. In 1974, he was elected to the Upper House of Parliament as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party leader and served until 1992 she was one of the contributors to a private fund for atonement Asian "comfort women" used as prostitutes for the military in wartime Japan.