The actor was MANAA’s secret source against his own film, “Rising Sun.”
By GUY AOKI
On Thursday, Dec. 4, I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a picture of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa dressed as Shang Tsung, the villain he’d played in the 1995 cult movie favorite “Mortal Kombat.” At the bottom: “1950-2025.” I closed my eyes and cringed.
Because my first thought was of a career unfulfilled.
Cary made a career out of playing evil villains. In “Showdown in Little Tokyo” (1991), after discovering the mole in his criminal organization, he drugged a naked blonde and beheaded her with his sword. He was the recurring villain in the CBS series “Raven” (1993) and the bad guy fighting the superhero “The Phantom” (1996).
Yet it’s only after his death that I can reveal how he was really the hero behind the biggest media campaign instigated by my organization, Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), which put us on the map.
Shortly after our formation in April 1992, we had been concerned about the upcoming film “Rising Sun,” based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton. This latest version of the “yellow peril” brought it closer to home because the Japanese were in Los Angeles and had bought out high-ranking senators to do their bidding — even murdering fellow white people.
The paranoia was all around. Anyone looking Japanese — or Asian — could be subverting our country’s values.
Ron Wakabayashi, head of the L.A. Human Relations Commission, and Dennis Hayashi of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) had met with executives at 20th Century Fox on July 7. Ron invited me to join the follow-up meeting with Fox President Strauss Zelnick and director Philip Kaufman’s producer son Peter for Aug. 10. But at the last minute, Fox told them I couldn’t attend because, as a columnist for The Rafu Shimpo, I was “a working journalist.”
Ron and Dennis decided to go ahead with the secret meeting but were angry at the studio and almost walked out.
On Aug. 17, 1992, MANAA co-founder George Johnston and I did an interview on KPFK radio talking about our concerns about the movie and grievances against Fox. Cary had his assistant record the interview and the actor contacted me through the MANAA Hotline.
He was playing Eddie Sakamura, who was suspected of strangling to death a white woman during rough sex. So Cary had an interest in knowing what our media watchdog organization was going to do.
The actor generally supported our cause because it was clear the images of Asians and Asian Americans in the media were unbalanced. He had been an activist in his younger days and I reminded him of how he used to be. But Cary didn’t think “Rising Sun” was a film deserving of protest.
We met at the Eatz Café near the golfing range on Loz Feliz Boulevard. I told him we needed to know what was going to be in “Rising Sun” because we were planning to mount a major protest against it when it opened.
After a while, he said, “I’ve looked into your eyes. And I trust you.” He gave me a copy of his shooting script. I asked what had been revised and he filled me in as best he could (I shared it with JACL).
Only Johnston, me and a third MANAA board member knew that Cary was my source for the script, and we all understood how crucial it was to keep it a secret. We needed to protect his reputation and not jeopardize his career.
(Months later, an anonymous source supplied me with the finished script. OK, the only thing we didn’t know was what scenes would be cut out for time? And we eventually saw the movie four days before the protest.)
Fox was still playing games with us. They cancelled our Sept. 18 meeting the morning of and postponed it to Oct. 8. We were furious.
MANAA got 16 community and civil rights organizations to sign a petition to Strauss Zelnick asking Fox to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the film saying they didn’t want it to encourage resentment against anybody of Asian descent, and to recognize that hate crimes are a very important concern; to agree to hire more Asian Americans in decision making positions; and to cast more Asian American actors in positive roles.
“What’s in it for me?!” Zelnick yelled at the end of the phone line. He later concluded, “I don’t think your protest is going to affect the success of our movie.”
So on April 1, we went public and garnered unprecedented coverage from every news outlet imaginable. The film didn’t even open until July 30. But by that time, we had controlled the narrative. No, this was not just a murder mystery. This was a dangerous movie that could put Asian Americans at risk.
Fox spent millions of dollars on their press junkets, yet with a minimal budget, MANAA prompted every news outlet to ask the director and actors of “Sun” to respond to our accusations.
We protested outside the Mann Theatre near UCLA for two nights. (From the 5:06- 7:20 mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQHlhn3KUM&t=440s)
Earlier that first day, Cary had given an interview to The L.A. Times, shocking the writer by saying such protests are good because they raise important concerns. Cary was siding with the protestors against his own movie!
In the middle of our demonstration, I went across the street near a gas station to do a live debate with Cary on KCAL-TV. I thought it was going to be chummy where I could say, “Hey you, warubozu!”
Instead, he attacked me over and over again, saying this wasn’t a serious protest because I hadn’t read the book the film was based on. I said it didn’t matter — I had the script (“Uh, including the shooting script which you’d given me, pal!” I thought to myself). But he kept interrupting me: “Yeah, Guy, and the fact that you haven’t read the book …”
The only way for me to see the actor was too look down at a monitor on the ground. So whenever he accused me of something, I probably looked guilty or self-conscious to viewers because I was looking away from his glare.
Some of the protestors wanted to kill him.
The next day, Cary came down to the demonstration with his hand extended. “Hey, Guy, I wanted to apologize.”
“I don’t know if I wanna shake your hand, man!”
“Oh, c’mon!”
“What the hell was that last night?!” He wanted us to talk in his limousine. “Is Fox paying for this?” “Yeah…”
I gave him two enthusiastic thumbs up with a fake smile. He shook his head in disappointment, as if dealing with an immature child.
We wound through the curvy streets of Beverly Hills hashing it out. At the cast screening, Cary had seen how happy people were with the worked they’d done. He got some calls about his L.A. Times interview, so he thought about his career and what he wanted to achieve … Yeah, and siding with us was not a good idea.
The protest was the largest Asian Americans ever mounted against a movie (spanning at least seven cities) and the film was a critical and commercial flop. The impact we made on society was clear when just two weeks after the movie came out, The L.A. Times did a poll about how Asians are covered in the media. While only 17% felt news coverage of Asians was negative, 72% said that our film portrayals were “distorted.”
For years, during our countless conversations, Cary rationalized that he’d rather play a confident villain than a good guy because they’re often boring.
“You end up being dead and the audience wants you dead on top of it! They cheer when you die! Why wouldn’t you want to be the good guy?!”
Finally, months later, he said, laughing, “OK, Guy, OK! Yes! I want to be the hero!”
He later admitted he finally was able to let his son watch one of his movies because he didn’t die in it.
In 1996, Cary called me up all excited. He’s just been cast as Lt. A.J. Shimamura in the “Nash Bridges” TV series starring Don Johnson and Cheech Marin. Apparently, my arguments with him had gotten through. “This is what we’ve been working toward my entire career!” From now on, he would only play good guys.
Earlier that year, I had helped Jesse Jackson organize his protest of the Oscars (where only one black person was nominated for an award). Consequently, Jackson, me and 16 other media and civil rights advocates had a meeting with CBS President Les Moonves, where I praised him for casting Tagawa, because it went against the actor’s typecasting as the Asian villain and marked a significant change in his career.
When I relayed this to Cary, there was silence on the other end of the line. He finally said, “Sh*t, you guys are serious!”
But Cary had problems with Johnson and when the star asked that an episode focusing on Lt. Shimamura be rewritten for himself, Cary left the show. He was often back playing villains again, until it got to the point where he wasn’t even the MAIN villain in TV episodes.
Tagawa proclaimed he was the only person acting in three blockbuster movies that made over $100 million at the box office in 2001 — including “Pearl Harbor” and “Planet of the Apes” — but believed he lost momentum after 9/11.
When he was in town (he was living in Kauai at the time), Cary included me in his entourage to eat at his favorite Japanese restaurant and supported MANAA at its awards dinners. He even came to the first gathering announcing our formation in 1992, a year before “Rising Sun” was released.
I last saw him on March 26, 2015 at the Center for Democracy in Little Tokyo for a screening of “Little Boy.” He played a Japanese American concentration camp internee who becomes the surrogate father of a white boy who hates all Japanese people because his father was away fighting them overseas.
I spread the word to support him, bringing many MANAA and JACL members. At one point during the Q&A, Cary broke down, something I’d never seen before (I forget over what). Talking about the racial injustice that has continued to plague this country, he declared, “If I’d been born black, I’d either be dead or in jail.”
I’m glad his last major project was “The Man in the High Castle” (2015-18), the pilot of which was the most-watched project Amazon Prime had developed. He played the enigmatic Japanese trade minister Tagomi, who ultimately turns out to be … a good guy.
And that’s how I’ll always remember Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa: As someone who was a good guy. And to what extent I could finally reveal that.
I wish I’d had a last conversation with him to learn how he felt his career had gone. Had it lived up to his expectations? Was he frustrated? Reconciled?
As his “Castle” character Tagomi travelled between different dimensions and parallel universes in order to bring peace to warring nations, I hope Cary’s exploring wondrous worlds in the afterlife and that he ultimately found peace here on Earth.