He is 82, he is the emblem of Japanese martial art movies and his name is Sonny Chiba “The Street Fighter”. The living legend of Japan, starring in more than 200 films and 60 TV series, he is still active and he does not plan to give up. Let’s review his most popular series The Street Fighter a week after its anniversary.
Sonny Chiba
Born Sadaho Maeda, the 22nd of January in Fukuoka, Japan. All his family moved to Chiba Prefecture when he was only 4 years old. Chiba was a very sportive youngster, very active in: artistic gymnastics, baseball, volleyball, track and field. During the university in Yokohama, he had to reconsider the Olympic sport path because of a back injury. At this time, he starts working on TV with the stage name of Shinichi Chiba follows his love for Western movies and studying martial arts under the founder of Kyokushin Karate, master Masutatsu “Mas” Oyama.
Sonny Chiba “The Street Fighter” with the years became one of the symbol of the martial art movies in the world, and the major exponent of the Japanese martial arts through the movies. Establishing a solid base of stunts and martial arts like: Karate, Kendo, Judo, Kempo and Ninjutsu for the future generations of stuntman in Japan. Just to mention two other martial art movie legends: the Japanese stars Hiroyuki Sanada and Etsuko Shihomi, both Chiba’s students.
The Street Fighter series
Sonny Chiba his mainly remembered as the protagonist of the movie series The Street Fighter, a violent trilogy involving Yakuza gangsters. Chiba plays the character of Terry Sugury, a mercenary and martial art expert who wants to take down the organised criminality of Tokyo. The three movies are particularly violent, presenting sensitive content and high martial art performances.
When the movie comes out in 1974, Sonny Chiba was inevitably compared to Bruce Lee. Despite the different backgrounds and origins between the two actors and martial artists, the myth of the recently deceased Bruce Lee boosted his already strong popularity to the next unreachable level, making the “Little Dragon” the most famous martial artist of all times. All the components of The Street Fighter series in term of quality however reach his Chinese counterpart, presenting numerous alternative symbols to distinguish the character of Terry from the one of Chen: like the use of the weapon sai instead of the nunchuks or the mute scream instead of the cry of Bruce.
The Street Fighter heritage
The Street Fighter movies remain anyway one of the best martial art series in history, capable of contributing into the collective imagination this Japanese badass figure that we all expected in a Japanese action movie (or for a Japanese character) when the Katana is not there. From The Street Fighter series were originated another spin-off trilogy called The Sister Street Fighter, in which Chiba returns as Terry Sugury along with the new main protagonist, Etsuko Shihomi in the role of Li Hong-Long.
What do you think of this series? Did you already know it?