Culture
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, actor of Mortal Kombat and Memoirs of a Geisha, is no more
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, icon villain of Mortal Kombat, passes away at 75
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the actor who played in Mortal Kombat and The Man in the High Castle, has left us at 75 years old.
The versatile actor was taken by death due to stroke-related complications in Santa Barbara, California, on Thursday, Dec. 4, according to PEOPLE, a confirmation given by his publicist Penny Vizcarra.
It was through the role of the wicked sorcerer Shang Tsung, the first 1995 movie Mortal Kombat directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and various film, TV, and video game adaptations of the franchise that Tagawa gained most of his recognition.
Tagawa was born in Tokyo on Sept. 27, 1950, and relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when he was 5 years old due to his father’s work as an American Army officer. After that, he lived in Louisiana and Texas before moving to California, where he started acting at Duarte High School.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s early life, martial arts, and breakout role
“Being a Japanese who was living in the South during the ’50s was not easy at all,” Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa mentioned in an interview in 2010, as per Deadline, which was the first to report his death.
After he started learning martial arts in Japan, Tagawa kept up with his practice while he was at the University of Southern California. Later on, he went back to Japan to study with Master Nakayama of the Japan Karate Association. When he moved back to Los Angeles, he was teaching his own martial arts style, Chu Shin, and was also getting into acting.
While he was teaching Chu Shin, director Bernardo Bertolucci came across Tagawa and got him to play Chang which was his breakout role in the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor, as per the statement given by Tagawa’s wife, Sally, and shared with PEOPLE. He was 37 years old then.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa remembers The Last Emperor and his iconic characters
In a 2015 interview with The AV Club, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa described working on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor as an “amazing experience.” He recalled, “It was mind blowing. To think, very suddenly, I am working with one of the top-10 directors in the world, and the shooting is in China, I almost shouted, ‘How much do I need to pay?’ It was just like a dream come true.”
Back in 1991, Tagawa played the role of Heihachi Mishima in Tekken, a movie that later became the source of a video game franchise, as per Deadline. While on the other hand, his name is mostly associated with the character of Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat, which he did in 1995. He took the role again in the 1997 film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, the 2013 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, and the 2015 web series Mortal Kombat X: Generations.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s great career and final days
Tagawa in 2019 brought back his role of Shang Tsung by providing the voice of the character in Mortal Kombat 11 and by giving his appearance for the 2023 game Mortal Kombat: Onslaught.
He has a lifetime credits tally of more than 150 across film, TV, and video games. In his career span of over 50 years, he cooperated with top directors like Ivan Reitman (Twins), Philip Kaufman (Rising Sun), Tim Burton (Planet of the Apes), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor), and Rob Marshall (Memoirs of a Geisha).
Furthermore, Tagawa was featured in well-known TV shows such as MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Miami Vice. His last major role was that of Nobusuke Tagomi in the 2015 Amazon Prime series The Man in the High Castle.
According to publicist Penny Vizcarra, Tagawa was with his wife Sally, their three children Calen, Byrnne, and Cana, and two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton at the time of his last days on the island of Kauai.
