RIP Sonny Chiba, Martial Arts Superstar

Sonny Chiba was the anti-Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was all about finesse along with his martial arts; he moved just like the proverbial butterfly who stung like a bee. When Sonny Chiba first made it huge in America as Takuma Tsurugi in The Street Fighter movies, he was a wasp—offended, spoiling for a combat, and reveling within the blood he drew and bones he broke.

But Sonny Chiba was a lot extra than simply his Street Fighter character. Over the course of a profession that spanned over 60 years, he performed superheroes, scientists, assassins, samurai, emperors, detectives, troopers, and extra. He starred in a number of comedian variations, together with 1977’s Golgo 13 and the 1998 blockbuster Storm Riders, based mostly on Wing-Shing’s manhwa of the identical identify. He appeared in a number of movies within the West, too, together with
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Sushi Girl, Iron Eagle III, and the position he’s probably greatest identified for within the U.S.: Hattori Hanzo, the legendary swordmaker who arms Uma Thurman’s Beatrix in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Born Sadaho Maeda in 1938 in Fukuoka, Japan, Sonny Chiba was a star even when he wasn’t on TV or movie screens. He holds six black belts in six martial arts, together with kendo, judo, and ninjutsu(!). In 1970, he began his personal martial arts college for actors and stuntpeople named the Japan Action Club. He was the martial arts choreographer for dozens of movie and TV tasks, solely a few of which he starred in. Chiba was additionally a director, producer, and theater actor, together with in a stage play of Biohazard online game collection, higher identified within the U.S. as Resident Evil.

Tragically, Chiba was one other sufferer of Covid-19, which Oricon experiences that he had been battling for a while. Although he was being handled in a Chiba prefecture hospital, he additionally developed pneumonia, and finally succumbed to it earlier right now. He is survived by his three youngsters, and the cinematic legacy he left behind won’t ever be forgotten.

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