By now, I would wager that just about everyone has someone they can name off the top of their heads as someone whom they think has been the greatest casualty of the coronavirus. Whether it’s a family member, or family of a friend, or a friend of family, a celebrity, regional personality, or what not, at this point it’s probably not a stretch for people to be able to have been affected to some degree of sadness at the death or someone they cared about.
For me, short of anyone in my family, the news of the passing of actor and martial arts legend, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba is without question, the one death that stands out above all others in my personal little world, and it upset me tremendously to have learned of the passing of this icon.
At 82 years old, it’s not like he hasn’t lived a full and fruitful life in his own right, but the fact that he passed due to pneumonia associated with coronavirus says to me that he still died in a pointless, unfortunate and completely avoidable manner. I won’t sugarcoat the disappointment that I felt to learn that he also wasn’t vaccinated, but given his age, I’m hoping he was more of the type to be concerned over a vaccine of such nature to a person of his age, versus someone who was just anti-vax, and flat out refused it, but this is something that I guess we’ll never know.
I don’t even really know where to go with the rest of this post. I wanted to make sure that even in spite of my complete lack of any time to do any writing, that when I started writing this, I wanted to be clear headed, and relatively available to gather my thoughts and write, because most anyone who knows me probably knows that I’ve always been a die-hard Sonny Chiba fan, and that I saw him as more than a martial artist and an actor, and more like an icon and a personal hero, that started kind of as a joke, but really grew into something genuine and meaningful.
Sonny Chiba became known to me back in 1998, when I was going through a HK film phase in my life, and I watched The Storm Riders, which was a mega blockbuster directed by Andrew Lau. It was aesthetically pleasing and contained a lot of wirework and CG that was fairly revolutionary at that time, and the hipster in me wanted to be ahead of the curve at being knowledgeable about the property in the event that other people began to learn what it was.
Looking back at the film 23 years later, it really wasn’t that great of a movie. Classic HK film syndrome of all visual fluff, but next to no substance at all when it came to a plot. But I remember seeing the preview a hundred times when working at the anime store I worked at when I was 16, and I always remembered seeing “…and Sonny Chiba.” And then thinking of how funny it was that there was some actor named “Sonny,” and how there was no way that was his real name for a Chinese actor.
And then I’d learn that he wasn’t actually Chinese but in fact Japanese, and then I was all more fascinated at this Japanese actor who clearly learned Cantonese and Mandarin to get into that market. All the same, Sonny Chiba was the best part of The Storm Riders, as he was the only guy with any real acting chops, compared to his pretty-but-stale co-stars in Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng.
By happenstance, I would eventually watch Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon on a whim, because it looked old as shit, and the cover of it that I saw specifically stated that it starred Sonny Chiba, and I was curious to see what Sonny Chiba was like 21 years before The Storm Riders. Unbeknownst to me, the film was terribly aged, but I enjoyed it all the same, seeing the low tech and how absurdly OP Sonny Chiba was in the film as Duke Togo AKA Golgo 13. Assassinating white guys in skyscrapers from a rocking boat with a Kalashnikov from nearly 400 yards away, and how he basically took no damage throughout the entire film.
I actually cosplayed as this variant of Sonny Chiba. True story. That’s how entertained and inspired by him I was.
Now, I was a Sonny Chiba fan, because he seemed to always play these nigh-invincible protagonists that there would never be any doubt to whom was going to emerge victorious in any sort of scrum. Even though few of his classic films aged well at all, they were always still fun to watch because it was just decades of Sonny Chiba beating the shit out of people in an entertaining way, and not like in a John Cena kind of way where you eventually tire of it, and then just turn on him and hope to see him lose. No, it never got old watching a prime Sonny Chiba destroying people, and he basically transcended a trope as much as he was kind of a way of life – completely dominant but at the same time always cool.
A lot of people aren’t aware of this factoid, but if my story is straight, The Street Fighter film from 1974, starring Sonny Chiba, was the first film to ever get an X-rating – on violence alone. As in no actual sexual scenes were in this film, that were usually the reasons why a film rose to an X-rating. I’m 99% sure it had to do with a scene where Sonny Chiba’s character stops a girl from being raped, by not only neutralizing the assailant, but literally ripping his testicles from his person in doing so. Obviously, you don’t see any nuggets, but the visual intent is clear based on where Sonny Chiba grabs, rips, and is holding some bloody fabric in his hand.
But then throughout the years, Sonny Chiba would still continue to emerge in film, transcending literal decades. Even after stuff like The Storm Riders, Sonny Chiba would show up randomly in films, garnering the favor from directors and collaborators in multiple countries. A seeming go-to guy for Andrew Lau, Sonny Chiba would show up in the at-the-time penultimate edition of the Young and Dangerous series, as a major yakuza boss, whose daughter marries a triad player to basically create an alliance.Kinji Fukasaku, the famous Japanese director, incorporated Sonny Chiba into Battle Royale II, and as tragicially bad as the film was, I was tickled pink to see an actor I admired be the literal best part of the entire film, portraying the radical uncle that the cool hacker Mimura from the first film referred to all the time. And although his scene was short, it was undoubtedly the best part of the entire film.
Of course, most American audiences were re-introduced to Sonny Chiba, courtesy of Quentin Tarantino casting him as the legendary figure Hanzo Hattori in Kill Bill, who comes out of retirement for a minute to force Beatrix Kiddo’s new sword.
And of course, I can’t not mention the fact that Sonny Chiba immortalized his position in Hollywood, by having a part in a Fast & Furious film, showing up in Tokyo Drift, as of course, a yakuza boss, who puts honor above family, when he wagers his nephew against whatever his name was white guy, to see who can stay in Tokyo to presumably continue to drift.
Like I said though, beyond being an iconic actor that transcended literal generations, I just plain liked the existence of Sonny Chiba. I would often use Sonny Chiba’s name, if not for myself, but as online handles or other personal identifiers.
In like 2004, when my brother bequeathed to me my first ever wireless router, my first personal wifi network name was, you guessed it, SonnyChiba. Strength: Excellent.
But what a lot of my friends probably know best of me, my hero-worship of Sonny Chiba, and probably learned through osmosis more about Sonny Chiba than they’d ever have thought they would, was probably the stretch between 2002-2006, where I made an annual mix-tape CD that I would give to various friends throughout the years, that were all named after, Sonny Chiba.
It started with Chiba Claus in 2002, followed by chibalution in 2003. NOW That’s What I Call CHIBA was the third edition, followed by CHIBAMANIA in 2005. The final edition kind of hit at a dark point in my life, but five was a nice round number to end things on, and the final chapter of my holiday mix-tapes was simply Sonny Chiba (the self-titled album) because all the greats have self-titled albums and it was long overdue for Sonny Chiba to get one.
None of the music on any of these yearly CDs had anything to do with Sonny Chiba so much as they were just songs to represent those particular years, but as important as the music was, was the artwork on each and every album that I put my heart and creativity into, with each successive year also serving as a showcase of skills that I’d developed in my own graphic design career. I used the fuck out of all sorts of employers’ printers and resources, but that itself was kind of part of the annual tradition too. But I would go to some lengths that people probably weren’t aware of, to showcase the awesomeness of Sonny Chiba himself through the artwork I made every year.
As a whole though, it was me giving my friends slices of my personality, my tastes, and my love for Sonny Chiba, so they could imbibe in my musical tastes at the time, as well as learn a thing or two about the man called Sonny Chiba.
Needless to say, the loss of Sonny Chiba, to me, is more than the sad loss of the life of a talented actor and performer. He was so much more than that to me. He was an inspiration, and an idea, and was basically a style of living life. I probably didn’t live like Sonny Chiba as much as I would have wanted to, but I always had something to strive to, whenever I felt like I needed to dominate the shit out of anything at all.
And the fact that he died as a result of coronavirus is the ultimate punch in the gut, because it’s so preventable and renders the passing a little more senseless than the passing of an 82-year old really should be. But what’s done is done, and the world lost a truly amazing human being all the same.
I hope whatever afterlife y’all may or may not believe in, is ready for the arrival of Sonny Chiba, because he’ll probably be ready to beat the fuck out of, dominate, and rip the nuts off of a whole lot of eternal motherfuckers, whenever they feel like being motherfuckers and need to be brought back to acceptable conduct.
Happy trails, Sonny Chiba. The world is a bigger collective pussy without you around anymore.
