G.D. Falksen's Blog, page 1026
September 11, 2013
Les Mis AU | Jean Valjean is among the oldest, strongest, and...
Les Mis AU | Jean Valjean is among the oldest, strongest, and most-feared vampires in France. When he resurfaces in Paris seven years after abducting an orphaned, human child, dedicated vampire hunter Javert is determined to find him and to end his reign of terror. Now that she is no longer a child, Valjean’s “daughter” Cosette is in serious danger. Javert knows he must stop Valjean before he transforms his beautiful, innocent young ward into a monstrous creature of the night. The clock is ticking,—and the stakes are high.
{ft. Christoph Waltz as Valjean, Richard Armitage as Javert, & Jessica Brown-Findlay as Cosette}
I would go see this film.
WW1 as a bar fight
WW1 as a bar fight
It’s Benedict Cumberbatch in a top hat. You’re...
It’s Benedict Cumberbatch in a top hat. You’re welcome.
‘Morphine’ (1891), George Moreau de Tours
‘Morphine’ (1891), George Moreau de Tours
The Tower of Babel, a tour de force of architectural fantasy,...
The Tower of Babel, a tour de force of architectural fantasy, partly based on the painting by Jan Breughel.
wilhelm i, deutscher kaiser (cabinet card, c1880s)
wilhelm i, deutscher kaiser (cabinet card, c1880s)
September 10, 2013
Kawashima Yoshiko (1906 - 1948) princess, intelligence agent,...
Kawashima Yoshiko (1906 - 1948) princess, intelligence agent, traitor.
Chinese name: Aisin Gioro Xianyu, with the courtesy name Dongzhen (= Eastern Jewel). She also had another Chinese name: Jin Bihui.
She was the thirteenth child of Shanqi, the tenth Prince Su, an impoverish rake of royal descent who was briefly the Manchu ruler of Inner Mongolia as a Japanese puppet.
Su gave his daughter, at the age of eight, to Kawashima Naniwa, the Japanese military advisor, who raised her as his own daughter. She was sent to school in Tokyo for an education that included judo and fencing.
Su died in 1921. His concubine, who had no official identity, committed the traditional suicide. Yoshiko lost interest in all things Chinese. As a teenage girl, she was raped by Kawashima’s father, and had an affair with Kawashima himself. She also had many other lovers, both male and female. She did honour her father’s arrangements and marry a Mongol prince in 1921, but she fled him after four months and claimed that the marriage was unconsummated.
She alternated between a bohemian life in Tokyo or Beijing and being kept by a series of rich lovers. In 1928 she used her royal blood to get invited into the Forbidden City and became a friend of the empress, who regarded her as the liberated woman she longed to be.
Joining the Japanese colony in Shanghai, Yoshiko started to wear men’s clothing, particularly riding breeches and shiny black boots. She would bind her breasts with a silk scarf. She found a fellow boot-fetishist in Ryukichi Tanaka, head of Japanese Intelligence in Shanghai, and they acted out various sexual scenarios together.
Tanaka put her on the Intelligence payroll. She played a major role in persuading the last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi, to become the puppet ruler of Manchuria. She participated in the Japanese occupation of China, and extorted large sums of money from Chinese merchants who were accused of dealing with the Chinese forces. She continued her habit of taking many lovers, both male and female.
By the end of the war in 1945 she had contracted syphilis. She was betrayed, by a spurned lover, to the army of Chiang Kai-shek. They found her, as Jin Bihui, guilty of treason and beheaded
