The Last Emperor (5 Stars)

True Stories #41

Name: Puyi

Lived: 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967

Film dates: 1908 to 1967

Film made in 1987

This is a straggler in my series of true stories. It didn't occur to me until today.

In 1988 "The Last Emperor" won nine Oscars, including the Best Film award. It's not often I agree that the best film of the year rightly won the Best Film Oscar. "Fatal Attraction" was another good film at the 1988 Academy Awards, but the judges made the right choice. "The Last Emperor" is an epic in every sense of the word. It follows the life of Puyi, sometimes called Henry Puyi, the last emperor of China.

At the age of two Puyi was made the Emperor of China after the death of the former emperor, his uncle. Despite his young age he was worshipped as a God. He was allowed to do whatever he wanted, with one exception. He was not allowed to leave the Forbidden City, i.e. the imperial palace and the surrounding grounds. Four years later China became a republic, so he was no longer emperor, but as a special concession he was allowed to retain power within the Forbidden City. He wasn't informed of this until years later, when his advisers considered he was old enough to understand it.

The young emperor was educated by a private tutor from Scotland, Reginald Johnston, who also became his close friend. As a teenager he got married, twice in one day. Why choose one wife if you're allowed to have two?

In 1924 the Chinese government decided to expel him from the Forbidden City. Since his life was in danger, Reginald Johnston recommended Puyi to seek asylum in the British embassy. He was refused asylum, so he turned to the Japanese embassy, where he was gladly accepted. The Japanese treated him well, even though there was a long standing enmity between the Japanese and the Chinese. In his naivety he didn't suspect that the Japanese wanted to use him as an ally against China.

In 1928 soldiers serving Chiang Kai-shek raided the tombs of Puyi's ancestors. It's possible that they were acting independently, but Puyi gave Chiang Kai-shek the personal blame and turned against the ruling Chinese government. The Japanese were in the process of conquering vast areas in China. They offered to make Puyi the Emperor of Manchuria. He thought this was the first step to regaining control of China for himself, but the Japanese were setting him up as the head of a puppet government. Initially he tried to rule Manchuria independently, but the Japanese forced him to sign whatever edicts they wanted.

After the war Puyi was arrested by the Russians as he attempted to flee. Five years later he was sent back to China, where he expected to be executed. Instead of this, he was put into an indoctrination programme in a Chinese prison camp. He confessed to the crime of collaborating with the Japanese, but he also confessed to many other crimes that he'd never committed. That's understandable. After ten years of brainwashing I'd confess to anything as well.

Puyi spent the last years of his life working as a gardener. He wrote an auto-biography, "From Emperor to Citizen", but it's considered unreliable, because he wrote only what the 1960's Chinese government wanted him to write. A better source of information is Reginald Johnston's book, "Twilight in the Forbidden City", on which this film is mostly based.

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