Editing Puyi (section)

=== As Emperor ===
[[File:Thronsaal Puyi Changchun.jpg|thumb|The imperial throne room, in the [[Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo]]]]
[[File:Manchukuo Enthronement Medal.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Commemorative medal from Puyi's enthronement]]
On 1 March 1934, Puyi was crowned [[Emperor of Manchukuo]], under the regnal title "Kangde" in Changchun. A sign of the true rulers of Manchukuo was the presence of General [[Masahiko Amakasu]] during the coronation; ostensibly there as the film director to record the coronation, Amakasu served as Puyi's minder, keeping a careful watch on him to prevent him from going off script.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=213}} Wanrong was excluded from the coronation: her addiction to opium, anti-Japanese feelings, dislike of Puyi, and growing reputation for being "difficult" and unpredictable led Amakasu to the conclusion that she could not be trusted to behave.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=228}} Though submissive in public to the Japanese, Puyi was constantly at odds with them in private. He resented being "Head of State" and then "Emperor of Manchukuo" rather than being fully restored as a Qing Emperor. At his enthronement, he clashed with Japan over dress; they wanted him to wear a military uniform like those used by the Manchukuo military, whereas he considered it an insult to wear anything but traditional Manchu robes. In a typical compromise, he wore a Western military uniform to his enthronement{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=275}} (the only Chinese emperor ever to do so) and a dragon robe to the announcement of his accession at the [[Temple of Heaven]].{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=276}} Puyi was driven to his coronation in a Lincoln limousine with bulletproof windows followed by nine Packards, and during his coronation scrolls were read out while sacred wine bottles were opened for the guests to celebrate the beginning of a "Reign of Tranquillity and Virtue".{{sfnp|Fenby|2004|p=243}} The invitations for the coronation were issued by the Kwantung Army and 70% of those who attended Puyi's coronation were Japanese.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=228}} ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine published an article about Puyi's coronation in March 1934.<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=Manchukuo |date=March 1934 |url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Wanrong_and_Puyi_in_Time_magazine_-_March_1934.jpg |magazine=Time}}</ref>

The Japanese chose Changchun as Manchukuo's capital, which was renamed Xinjing. Puyi had wanted the capital to be Mukden (modern [[Shenyang]]), which had been the Qing capital before the [[Qing conquest of the Ming|conquest of the Ming]] in 1644, but was overruled by his Japanese masters. Puyi hated Xinjing, which he regarded as an undistinguished industrial city that lacked the historical connections with the Qing that Mukden had. As there was no palace in Changchun, Puyi moved into what had once been the office of the Salt Tax Administration during the Russian period, and as result, the building was known as Salt Tax Palace, which is now the [[Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo]].{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=214}} Puyi lived there as a virtual prisoner and could not leave without permission.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=253}} Shortly after Puyi's coronation, his father arrived at the Xinjing railroad station for a visit.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=228}} Prince Chun told his son that he was an idiot if he really believed that the Japanese were going to restore him to the Dragon Throne, and warned him that he was just being used. The Japanese embassy issued a note of diplomatic protest at the welcome extended to Prince Chun, stating that the Xinjing railroad station was under the Kwantung Army's control, that only Japanese soldiers were allowed there, and that they would not tolerate the Manchukuo imperial guard being used to welcome visitors at the Xinjing railroad station again.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=229}}

[[File:Hirohito, Pu Yi, Stalin & Chiang Time Cover.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|February 1934 cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' depicting Hirohito, Puyi, [[Joseph Stalin]] and Chiang Kai-shek]]
In this period, Puyi frequently visited the provinces of Manchukuo to open factories and mines, took part in the birthday celebrations for Hirohito at Kwantung Army headquarters and, on the Japanese holiday of Memorial Day, formally paid his respects with Japanese rituals to the souls of the Japanese soldiers killed fighting the "bandits"—as the Japanese called all the guerrillas fighting against their rule of Manchuria. Following the example in Japan, schoolchildren in Manchukuo at the beginning of every school day kowtowed first in the direction of Tokyo and then to a portrait of Puyi in the classroom. Puyi found this "intoxicating". He visited a coal mine and in his rudimentary Japanese thanked the Japanese foreman for his good work, who burst into tears as he thanked the emperor; Puyi later wrote that "The treatment I received really went to my head."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=229–230}}

Whenever the Japanese wanted a law passed, the relevant decree was dropped off at Salt Tax Palace for Puyi to sign, which he always did. Puyi signed decrees expropriating vast tracts of farmland to Japanese colonists and a law declaring certain thoughts to be "thought crimes", leading Behr to note: "In theory, as 'Supreme Commander', he thus bore full responsibility for Japanese atrocities committed in his name on anti-Japanese 'bandits' and patriotic Chinese citizens."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=244}} Behr further noted the "Empire of Manchukuo", billed as an idealistic state where the "five races" of the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Manchus, and Mongols had come together in Pan-Asian brotherhood, was in fact "one of the most brutally run countries in the world{{snd}}a textbook example of colonialism, albeit of the Oriental kind".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=202}} Manchukuo was a sham, and was a Japanese colony run entirely for Japan's benefit.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=203–204}} American historian [[Carter Eckert]] wrote that the differences in power could be seen in that the Kwantung Army had a "massive" headquarters in downtown Xinjing while Puyi had to live in the "small and shabby" Salt Tax Palace close to the main railroad station in a part of Xinjing with numerous small factories, warehouses, and slaughterhouses, the chief prison, and the red-light district.{{sfnp|Eckert|2016|p=162}}

Behr commented that Puyi knew from his talks in Tianjin with General Kenji Doihara and General [[Seishirō Itagaki]] that he was dealing with "ruthless men and that this might be the regime to expect". Puyi later recalled that: "I had put my head in the tiger's mouth" by going to Manchuria in 1931.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=211}}

[[File:Chu Kudō with Emperor Puyi.jpg|thumb|Puyi (right) as Emperor of Manchukuo, with [[Chū Kudō]]]]
From 1935 to 1945, Kwantung Army senior staff officer Yoshioka Yasunori ({{lang|ja|吉岡 安則}})<ref name="Yasunori Yoshioka, Lieutenant-General (1890–1947)">{{cite web |title=Yasunori Yoshioka, Lieutenant-General (1890–1947) |url=http://www.generals.dk/general/Yoshioka/Yasunori/Japan.html |work=The Generals of WWII – Generals from Japan |publisher=Steen Ammentorp, Librarian DB., M.L.I.Sc. |access-date=17 August 2010}}</ref> was assigned to Puyi as Attaché to the Imperial Household in Manchukuo. He acted as a spy for the Japanese government, controlling Puyi through fear, intimidation, and direct orders.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|pp=284–320}} There were many attempts on Puyi's life during this period, including a 1937 stabbing by a palace servant.{{sfnp|Blakeney|1945}}

In 1935, Puyi visited Japan. The Second Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Xinjing, Kenjiro Hayashide, served as Puyi's interpreter during this trip, and later wrote what Behr called a very absurd book, ''The Epochal Journey to Japan'', chronicling this visit, where he managed to present every banal statement made by Puyi as profound wisdom, and claimed that he wrote an average of two poems per day on his trip to Japan, despite being busy with attending all sorts of official functions. Hayashide had also written a booklet promoting the trip in Japan, which claimed that Puyi was a great reader who was "hardly ever seen without a book in his hand", a skilled calligrapher, a talented painter, and an excellent horseman and archer, able to shoot arrows while riding, just like his Qing ancestors. Hirohito took this claim that Puyi was a hippophile seriously, and presented him with a gift of a horse for him to review the Imperial Japanese Army with; in fact, Puyi was a hippophobe who adamantly refused to get on the horse, forcing the Japanese to hurriedly bring out a carriage for the two emperors to review the troops.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=230–232}}

After his return to Xinjing, Puyi hired an American public relations executive, George Bronson Rea, to lobby the U.S. government to recognise Manchukuo. In late 1935, Rea published a book, ''The Case for Manchukuo'', in which Rea castigated China under the Kuomintang as hopelessly corrupt, and praised Puyi's wise leadership of Manchukuo, writing Manchukuo was "...&nbsp;the one step that the people of the East have taken towards escape from the misery and misgovernment that have become theirs. Japan's protection is its only chance of happiness".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=233–234}} Rea continued to work for Puyi until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but he ultimately failed in lobbying Washington to recognise Xinjing. At the second trial relating to the long-running [[Simon Kaspé|Kaspé]] case in Harbin in March–June 1936, the Japanese prosecutor argued in favour of the six defendants, calling them "Russian patriots who raised the flag against a world danger{{snd}}communism".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=233–234}} Much to everyone's surprise, the Chinese judges convicted and sentenced the six Russian fascists who had tortured and killed Kaspé to death, which led to a storm as the [[Russian Fascist Party]] called the six men "martyrs for Holy Russia", and presented to Puyi a petition with thousands of signatures asking him to pardon the six men.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=233–234}} Puyi refused to pardon the Russian fascists, but the verdict was appealed to the Xinjing Supreme Court, where the Japanese judges quashed the verdict, ordering the six men to be freed, a decision that Puyi accepted without complaint.{{sfnp|Stephan|1978|p=167}} The handling of the Kaspé case, which attracted much attention in the Western media, did much to tarnish the image of Manchukuo and further weakened Puyi's already weak hand as he sought to have the rest of the world recognise Manchukuo.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=233–234}}

In 1936, Ling Sheng, an aristocrat who was serving as governor of one of Manchukuo's provinces and whose son was engaged to marry one of Puyi's younger sisters, was arrested after complaining about "intolerable" Japanese interference in his work, which led Puyi to ask Yoshioka if something could be done to help him out. The Kwantung Army's commander [[Kenkichi Ueda]] visited Puyi to tell him the matter was resolved as Ling had already been convicted by a Japanese court-martial of "plotting rebellion" and had been executed by beheading, which led Puyi to cancel the marriage between his sister and Ling's son.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=232–233}} During these years, Puyi began taking a greater interest in [[traditional Chinese law]] and religion{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=307}} (such as [[Confucianism]] and [[Buddhism]]), but this was disallowed by the Japanese. Gradually his old supporters were eliminated and pro-Japanese ministers put in their place.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=298}} During this period Puyi's life consisted mostly of signing laws prepared by Japan, reciting prayers, consulting oracles, and making formal visits throughout his state.{{sfnp|Blakeney|1945}}

Puyi was extremely unhappy with his life as a virtual prisoner in the Salt Tax Palace, and his moods became erratic, swinging from hours of passivity staring into space to indulging his sadism by having his servants beaten.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=243–245}} Puyi later wrote that his orphaned page boy servants, most of whom had had their parents killed by the Japanese, experienced such "wretched" lives in the palace they were the size of 10-year-olds at the age of 18.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=193}} Puyi was obsessed by the fact that the vast majority of Puyi's "loving subjects" hated him, and as Behr observed, it was "the knowledge that he was an object of hatred and derision that drove Puyi to the brink of madness".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=245}} Puyi always had a strong cruel streak, and he imposed harsh "house rules" on his staff; servants were flogged in the basement for such offences as "irresponsible conversations".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=245}} The phrase "Take him downstairs" was much feared by Puyi's servants as he had at least one flogging performed a day, and everyone in the Salt Tax Palace was caned at one point or another except the Empress and Puyi's siblings and their spouses. Puyi's experience of widespread theft during his time in the Forbidden City led him to distrust his servants and he obsessively went over the account books for signs of fraud. To further torment his staff of about 100, Puyi drastically cut back on the food allocated for his staff, who suffered from hunger; Big Li told Behr that Puyi was attempting to make everyone as miserable as he was.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=245–247}} Besides tormenting his staff, Puyi's life as Emperor was one of lethargy and passivity, which his ghostwriter Li Wenda called "a kind of living death" for him.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=243}}

Puyi became a devoted Buddhist, a mystic and a vegetarian, having statues of the Buddha put up all over the Salt Tax Palace for him to pray to while banning his staff from eating meat. His Buddhism led him to ban his staff from killing insects or mice, but if he found any insects in his food, the cooks were flogged.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=246}} One day, when out for a stroll in the gardens, Puyi found that a servant had written in chalk on one of the rocks: "Haven't the Japanese humiliated you enough?"{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=254}} When Puyi received guests at the Salt Tax Palace, he gave them long lectures on the "glorious" history of the Qing as a form of masochism, comparing the great Qing Emperors with himself, a miserable man living as a prisoner in his own palace.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=255}} Wanrong, who detested her husband, liked to mock him behind his back by performing skits before the servants by putting on dark glasses and imitating Puyi's jerky movements. During his time in Tianjin, Puyi had started wearing dark glasses at all times. During the interwar period, dark glasses were worn by Tianjin's homosexual "tiny minority" to signify their orientation. Although Puyi likely knew this, surviving members of his court said that he "really was subject to eye strain and headaches from the sun's glare".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=216}}

[[File:明贤贵妃旧照 局部.jpg|thumb|[[Tan Yuling]], Puyi's concubine|upright=1.2]]
On 3 April 1937, Puyi's younger full brother Prince Pujie was proclaimed heir apparent after marrying Lady [[Hiro Saga]], a distant cousin of Hirohito. The Kwantung Army general [[Shigeru Honjō]] had politically arranged the marriage. Puyi thereafter would not speak candidly in front of his brother and refused to eat any food Lady Saga provided, believing she was out to poison him.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=235}} Puyi was forced to sign an agreement that if he himself had a male heir, the child would be sent to Japan to be raised by the Japanese.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|pp=288–290}} Puyi initially thought Lady Saga was a Japanese spy, but came to trust her after the Sinophile Saga discarded her [[kimono]] for ''[[cheongsam]]s'' and repeatedly assured him that she came to the Salt Tax Palace because she was Pujie's wife, not as a spy. Behr described Lady Saga as "intelligent" and "level-headed", and noted the irony of Puyi snubbing the one Japanese who really wanted to be his friend. Later in April&nbsp;1937, the 16-year-old Manchu aristocrat Tan Yuling moved into the Salt Tax Palace to become Puyi's concubine. Lady Saga tried to improve relations between Puyi and Wanrong by having them eat dinner together, which was the first time they had shared a meal in three years.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=248–249}}

Based on his interviews with Puyi's family and staff at the Salt Tax Palace, Behr wrote that it appeared Puyi had an "attraction towards very young girls" that "bordered on paedophilia" and "that Pu Yi was bisexual, and{{snd}}by his own admission{{snd}}something of a sadist in his relationships with women".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=19}} Puyi was very fond of having handsome teenage boys serve as his pageboys and Lady Saga noted he was also very fond of sodomising them.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=244–245, 248–250}} Lady Saga wrote in her 1957 autobiography ''Memoirs of A Wandering Princess'':
{{blockquote|Of course I had heard rumours concerning such great men in our history, but I never knew such things existed in the living world. Now, however, I learnt that the Emperor had an unnatural love for a pageboy. He was referred to as "the male concubine". Could these perverted habits, I wondered, have driven his wife to opium smoking?{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=249}}}}

When Behr questioned him about Puyi's sexuality, Prince Pujie said he was "biologically incapable of reproduction", a polite way of saying someone is gay in China.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=250}} When one of Puyi's pageboys fled the Salt Tax Palace to escape his homosexual advances, Puyi ordered that he be given an especially harsh flogging, which caused the boy's death and led Puyi to have the floggers flogged in turn as punishment.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=247}}

In July&nbsp;1937, when the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] began, Puyi issued a declaration of support for Japan.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=242–244}} In August&nbsp;1937, Kishi wrote up a decree for Puyi to sign calling for the use of [[corvée]] labour to be conscripted both in Manchukuo and in northern China, stating that in these "times of emergency" (i.e. war with China), industry needed to grow at all costs, and slavery was necessary to save money.{{sfnp|Driscoll|2010|p=275}} Driscoll wrote that just as African slaves were taken to the New World on the "[[Middle Passage]]", it would be right to speak of the "Manchurian Passage" as vast numbers of Chinese peasants were rounded up to be slaves in Manchukuo's factories and mines.{{sfnp|Driscoll|2010|p=xii}} From 1938 until the end of the war, every year about one&nbsp;million Chinese were taken from the Manchukuo countryside and northern China to be slaves in Manchukuo's factories and mines.{{sfnp|Driscoll|2010|p=276}}

All that Puyi knew of the outside world was what General Yoshioka told him in daily briefings. When Behr asked Prince Pujie how the news of the [[Nanjing Massacre]] in December 1937 affected Puyi, his brother replied: "We didn't hear about it until much later. At the time, it made no real impact."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=242–244}} On 4 February 1938, the strongly pro-Japanese and anti-Chinese [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]] became the German foreign minister, and under his influence German foreign policy swung in an anti-Chinese and pro-Japanese direction. On 20 February 1938, Adolf Hitler announced that Germany was recognising Manchukuo.{{sfnp|Iriye|1987|p=51}} In one of his last acts, the outgoing German ambassador to Japan [[Herbert von Dirksen]] visited Puyi in the Salt Tax Palace to tell him that a German embassy would be established in Xinjing later that year to join the embassies of Japan, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Italy and Nationalist Spain, the only other countries that had recognised Manchukuo. In 1934, Puyi had been excited when he learned that El Salvador had become the first nation other than Japan to recognise Manchukuo, but by 1938, he did not care much about Germany's recognition of Manchukuo.

In May&nbsp;1938, Puyi was declared a god by the Religions Law, and a cult of emperor-worship very similar to Japan's began with schoolchildren starting their classes by praying to a portrait of the god-emperor while imperial rescripts and the imperial regalia became sacred relics imbued with magical powers by being associated with the god-emperor. Puyi's elevation to a god was due to the war, which caused the Japanese state to begin a program of totalitarian mobilisation of society for total war in Japan and places ruled by Japan. His Japanese handlers felt that ordinary people in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were more willing to bear the sacrifices for total war because of their devotion to their god-emperor, and it was decided that making Puyi a god-emperor would have the same effect in Manchukuo.{{sfnp|Dubois|2008|p=309}} After 1938, Puyi was hardly ever allowed to leave the Salt Tax Palace, while the creation of the puppet regime of President [[Wang Jingwei]] in November&nbsp;1938 crushed Puyi's spirits, as it ended his hope of one day being restored as the Great Qing Emperor.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=243}} Puyi became a hypochondriac, taking all sorts of pills for various imagined ailments and hormones to improve his sex drive and allow him to father a boy, as Puyi was convinced that the Japanese were poisoning his food to make him sterile. He believed the Japanese wanted one of the children Pujie had fathered with Lady Saga to be the next emperor, and it was a great relief to him that their children were both girls.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=248–255}}

In 1935, Wanrong engaged in an affair with Puyi's chauffeur Li Tiyu that left her pregnant.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=255–256}} To punish her, Wanrong's baby was killed.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=256}} It is unclear what happened, but there are two accounts of what happened to Wanrong after her baby's murder. One account said that Puyi lied to Wanrong and that her daughter was being raised by a nanny, and she never knew about her daughter's death.<ref>{{multiref | {{Cite news |date=17 December 2006 |title=Cover-up over death of adulteress empress' baby detailed |newspaper=South China Morning Post |url=https://www.scmp.com/article/575773/cover-over-death-adulteress-empress-baby-detailed}} | {{Cite news |date=6 March 2011 |last1=Sheridan |first1=Michael |title=Baby killer secret of the last emperor revealed |work=[[The Times]] |url=https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/asia-travel/china/baby-killer-secret-of-the-last-emperor-revealed-0jlspjcd0xd |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210307164750/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/baby-killer-secret-of-the-last-emperor-revealed-0jlspjcd0xd |archive-date=7 March 2021}} }}</ref> The other account said that Wanrong had found out or knew about her daughter's infanticide<ref>{{Cite book |title=Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: V. 1: The Qing Period, 1644–1911 |page=375}}</ref>{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=256}} and lived in a constant daze of opium consumption thereafter. Puyi had known of what was being planned for Wanrong's baby, and in what Behr called a supreme act of "cowardice" on his part, "did nothing".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=256}} Puyi's ghostwriter for ''Emperor to Citizen'', Li Wenda, told Behr that when interviewing Puyi for the book that he could not get Puyi to talk about the killing of Wanrong's child, as he was too ashamed to speak of his own cowardice.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=256}}

{{multiple image
| align     = right
| direction = vertical
| image1    = Pu Yi (Kang Te) 1940 Japan visit.jpg
| image2    = Emperors Shōwa & Pu Yi (cropped).jpg
| caption1    = Puyi disembarks during his state visit to Japan, June 1940
| caption2    = Puyi shakes hands with Japanese emperor [[Hirohito]] at Tokyo Station
}}
In December&nbsp;1941, Puyi followed Japan in declaring war on the United States and Great Britain, but as neither nation had recognised Manchukuo, there were no reciprocal declarations of war in return.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=242,244}} During the war, Puyi was an example and role model for at least some in Asia who believed in the Japanese pan-Asian propaganda. [[U&nbsp;Saw]], the Prime Minister of Burma, was secretly in communication with the Japanese, declaring that as an Asian his sympathies were completely with Japan against the West. U&nbsp;Saw further added that he hoped that when Japan won the war that he would enjoy exactly the same status in Burma that Puyi enjoyed in Manchukuo as part of the [[Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere]].{{sfnp|Weinberg|2005|p=322}} During the war, Puyi became estranged from his father, as his half-brother [[Jin Youzhi|Pu Ren]] stated in an interview:

{{blockquote|...&nbsp;after 1941 Puyi's father had written him off. He never visited Puyi after 1934. They rarely corresponded. All the news he got was through intermediaries, or occasional reports from Puyi's younger sisters, some of whom were allowed to see him.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=54}}}}

Puyi complained that he had issued so many "slavish" pro-Japanese statements during the war that nobody on the Allied side would take him in if he did escape from Manchukuo. In June 1942, Puyi made a rare visit outside the Salt Tax Palace when he conferred with the graduating class at the Manchukuo Military Academy, and awarded the star student Takagi Masao a gold watch for his outstanding performance; despite his Japanese name, the star student was actually Korean and under his original Korean name of [[Park Chung Hee]] became the dictator of South Korea in 1961.{{sfnp|Eckert|2016|p=351}} In August 1942, Puyi's concubine Tan Yuling fell ill and died after being treated by the same Japanese doctors who murdered Wanrong's baby. Puyi testified at the [[Tokyo war crimes trial]] of his belief that she was murdered. Puyi kept a lock of Tan's hair and her nail clippings for the rest of his life as he expressed much sadness over her loss. He refused to take a Japanese concubine to replace Tan and, in 1943, took a Chinese concubine, [[Li Yuqin]], the 16-year-old daughter of a waiter.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=257}} Puyi liked Li, but his main interest continued to be his pageboys, as he later wrote: "These actions of mine go to show how cruel, mad, violent and unstable I was."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=254–257}}

For much of World War&nbsp;II, Puyi, confined to the Salt Tax Palace, believed that Japan was winning the war, and it was not until 1944 that he started to doubt this after the Japanese press began to report "heroic sacrifices" in Burma and on Pacific islands while air raid shelters started to be built in Manchukuo.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=258}} Puyi's nephew Jui Lon told Behr: "He desperately wanted America to win the war." Big Li said: "When he thought it was safe, he would sit at the piano and do a one-finger version of the [[The Stars and Stripes Forever|Stars and Stripes]]."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=253}} In mid-1944, Puyi finally acquired the courage to start occasionally tuning in his radio to Chinese broadcasts and to Chinese-language broadcasts by the Americans, where he was shocked to learn that Japan had suffered so many defeats since 1942.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=258}}

Puyi had to give a speech before a group of Japanese infantrymen who had volunteered to be "human bullets", promising to strap explosives on their bodies and to stage suicide attacks to die for Hirohito. Puyi commented as he read out his speech praising the glories of dying for the Emperor: "Only then did I see the ashen grey of their faces and the tears flowing down their cheeks and hear their sobbing." Puyi commented that he felt terrified at the fanaticism of ''[[bushido]]'' which negated the value of human life, with dying for the emperor being all that mattered.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=258–259}}