When there were tickets from 'Shimbashi to Paris': The route Yul Brynner took to escape the ravages of war

Two days ago, I wrote about the classic Hollywood star Yul Brynner.

While researching him, I noticed that until he settled in America,

he frequently traveled along the route of Japan (Yokohama, Kobe, etc.) - Russia (Vladivostok) - Manchuria (Harbin) - Europe (Paris, etc.).

I realized that this route was used often.

Yul Brynner was born in 1920 in Vladivostok, which was under Japanese administration during the 'Siberian Intervention'.

In 1922, following the establishment of the Soviet Union, he briefly became a Soviet citizen, but his family moved to Harbin, Manchuria.

However, in 1933, following the Manchurian Incident, they moved to Paris, France.

In 1935, at the age of 14, Yul Brynner debuted as a 'gypsy singer' at a cabaret in Paris.

However, in 1940, because France was occupied by Nazi Germany, he traveled to Japan via Harbin and escaped to America by ship from Kobe.

Then, in 1951, he became an overnight star in the Broadway musical 'The King and I'.

In other words, he fled the Russian Revolution to Manchuria, fled the war between Japan and China (the Manchurian Incident) to Paris, and fled the German invasion of World War II to America via Japan.

Broadly speaking, Yul Brynner was also one of the 'White Russians' who went into exile due to the Russian Revolution.

As is well known, there were many White Russians who fled the revolution and immigrated to mainland Japan.

Victor Starffin, who was four years older than Yul Brynner (born in 1916), was one of them.

In 1925, at the age of nine, he fled from Russia to Japan via Harbin. From being a star high school baseball pitcher, he became the ace of the newly formed Yomiuri Giants, and after his death, he was one of the first inductees when the 'Baseball Hall of Fame' was established.

Supporting these movements was the following route, which used the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Chinese Eastern Railway (the South Manchuria Railway after 1935) during the pre-war and wartime periods.

In an era when airplanes and cars were not yet common, this route connected Japan with Russia and Europe. It is also a route that clearly illustrates the importance of Manchuria.

Since the end of the Meiji era, international connecting transport across borders using a 'single ticket'—made possible by agreements between Japan, Russia (the Soviet Union), and European nations—extended to Berlin, Paris, and London.

As a result, the journey between Japan and Paris/London was reduced to about two weeks. This was a significant reduction compared to the Pacific route—transcontinental North American railway—Atlantic route (a little under a month) or the sea route via the Suez Canal (about a month and a half). Europe became much closer.

In 1913 (Taisho 2), round-trip tickets for world travel and travel around the Eastern Hemisphere also went on sale. Manchuria blossomed with exotic culture as a 'crossroads connecting Europe and Asia' and a 'gateway to the world.'

(Yoshihiro Kita, Sankei Shimbun, July 24, 2016)

Tsuruga Port was designated as a trading port by the government in 1899 (Meiji 32), and a regular shipping route to Vladivostok was established in 1902 (Meiji 35).

In an era before air travel, Tsuruga became the gateway to Europe via Russia.

After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) ended, the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed, connecting Vladivostok all the way to Europe.

In June 1912 (Meiji 45), a train service from Shimbashi to Tsuruga was established. This train connected with a regular ferry to Vladivostok, which in turn connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway. For this reason, it was called the Europe-Asia International Connecting Train.

This route was suspended for a time due to World War I and the Russian Revolution, but after diplomatic relations between Japan and the Soviet Union were restored in 1925, the Europe-Asia International Connecting Train from Shimbashi to Berlin, London, and Paris was revived.

In the same year, the 'Japan Tourist Bureau' (JTB) was established, and the journey from Shimbashi to Berlin could be made on a single ticket.

(Toshihiko Itaya, Nikko Froggy, December 24, 2021)

Two days ago, I introduced a video of Yul Brynner performing Gypsy songs on American TV (The Ed Sullivan Show).

Yul Brynner "Two Guitars" on the Ed Sullivan Show

Aljoscha Dimitrievich (Alexis <Aliosha> Dimitrievich), who performs with Brynner here, was a fellow Gypsy singer in 1930s Paris and was known as one of the representative Gypsy singers of the 1960s, often called the "last Gypsy singer."

This Aljoscha Dimitrievich also went on a similar flight to that of Yul Brynner.

He came from a Gypsy (Roma) family that had been active in music since the 19th century. He was seven years older than Yul Brynner, but he was in Russia in 1920, the year Yul Brynner was born.

However, like the Brynner family, they fled from Vladivostok to Harbin to avoid the revolution, where the family performed "Gypsy shows."

Based in Harbin, their troupe performed in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and other cities before moving to Japan in 1925. Perhaps if one were to search through Japanese newspapers from that time, one might find mention of them.

After that, they traveled through Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Indonesia), India, the Middle East, and Egypt, reaching France in 1930.

It was there that he met the teenage Yul Brynner.

Later, with the German invasion in 1940, the Dimitrievich family fled to Brazil, then to Argentina, and returned to Paris after the war.

Yul Brynner, who found success in America, never forgot the debt he owed to the Dimitrievich troupe for their care in Paris and continued to support them thereafter.

In 1967, they performed together on The Ed Sullivan Show and later made a record, which was Yul Brynner's way of repaying his debt to them.

I have digressed, but it is clear that the route using the Trans-Siberian Railway in this era connected Europe and Asia, in a sense, more closely than it does today.

In 1940, this was also the route used to save Jews through the 'visas for life' issued by Chiune Sugihara, a diplomat stationed in Lithuania. They used this route to bring Jews to Tsuruga and Yokohama, from where they departed for the United States and other destinations.

Incidentally, the cult film 'Siberian Express' (1996), directed by film critic Haruo Mizuno in his later years, was set on the eve of the outbreak of war between Japan and the U.S. in 1940, with Tomoyuki Yamashita returning from Europe to Manchuria via this route.

The hardships faced by people at the time, with the flames of war rising wherever they went, are beyond imagination, but with this route now unusable, in some respects, borders have become even harder to cross than they were in the past.

The railway route from Vladivostok to Europe via Moscow also appears to be suspended due to the current global situation.

Russians in Paris

The era of Paris when there were many Russian exiles, such as Yul Brynner, has recently been in the spotlight a little.

British author Helen Rappaport published 'After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War' in 2022, which became a topic of conversation in the English-speaking world.

I will introduce some of the content based on book reviews and the like.

According to Rappaport, Russian activities in Paris were flourishing long before the Russian Revolution, starting from the so-called 'Belle Epoque' era at the end of the 19th century.

A prime example is the work of Grand Duke Vladimir, who was the uncle of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

In Paris, he supported Sergei Diaghilev, and the 1910 performance of Stravinsky's 'The Firebird' by his 'Ballets Russes' would go on to cause a sensation.

In Paris at that time, there were both revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries.

Lenin, who was defeated in the 1905 revolution, was also in Paris (1909–1912).

However, Russian nobles and their associates in Paris returned to Russia upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 soon followed, and this time, a wave of Russian refugees, poorer than those before them, flooded into Paris.

However, the White Russians in Paris were disappointed when France recognized the Soviet Union in 1924.

Then, with the Great Depression of 1929, they lost even more jobs and were driven into a corner.

The popularity of Gypsy music in Paris during the 1930s was likely due to the intense longing and lament for their lost homeland felt by those Russians.

The 1930s in Paris was also the era of Tsuguharu Foujita and Taro Okamoto. It is possible they heard Yul Brynner and others singing Gypsy songs in cabarets.

Today, it seems that cabarets and clubs featuring Gypsy music have almost entirely disappeared, not just in Paris, but elsewhere as well.

Yul Brynner's singing voice, as he performs Gypsy songs, exudes the lament and sorrow of the people of that era, while simultaneously overflowing with a passion for life and freedom.

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