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So head on over to pseudioswedin.com, that's S-U-D-I-O-S-W-E-D-E-N.com, and check them out today. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 237, Princess, Lover, Soldier, Spy.

This week, I want to talk about one of the most unique biographies I think we'll ever discuss

on this show. The story of a woman whose life was so dramatic and action-packed that if I did

not know better, I'd swear she was an invented character for a TV show. She was not, by any

traditional standard, Japanese herself, but her life was pretty inextricably

wound in with the course of Japan's modern empire.

Our story begins in a place removed from Japan itself, but in a time when Japan's influence

was soaring to ever greater heights, the city of Beijing in the year of 1907.

In that year, a prince named Shan Qi had a daughter.

Now, Shan Qi lived a charmed life. He was not Han Chinese, but Manchu, part of the ruling ethnic

class of China's Qing dynasty. Moreover, he was part of the great A class of China's Qing Dynasty.

Moreover, he was part of the great Aysingioro clan, the family which for the last 300 years had produced the Emperor of China.

Specifically, he was descended from a branch of the clan, which traced its lineage back

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