Though I didn't know about actor Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）until his starring role in the dark 1993 NTV drama "Koko Kyoshi"（高校教師...High School Teacher） (as you can see from the thumbnail, I was somehow able to get a poster promoting the show), I discovered through his J-Wiki and Wikipedia pages that he'd had a long career starting from his days as a child actor in the 1960s. Apparently in this retrospective on Sanada as seen below, he was in front of the camera as young as 5 years old.
Sanada has been in numerous TV shows and movies before and after "Koko Kyoshi", and he eventually broke into Hollywood, and I believe the earliest that I'd ever seen him in an American film was "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe（渡辺謙）. He also got into a couple of the Marvel blockbusters including the one small scene where he was taken to task by Hawkeye in "Avengers: Endgame" last year.
Of course, being the young star actor in Japan, Sanada also had his time in the recording booth with singles and albums released mostly in the 1980s.
Would you get a load of that blow-dry hair on the cover of his 5th single "Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare" (Love Painted In Flames) from November 1981? A little dab really did him! In any case, this was the theme song for a 1981 movie starring Sanada, "Moeru Yuuja"（燃える勇者...The Blazing Valiant） which featured him as a young man who had grown up in Africa coming back to Japan to do battle with a sinister organization.
"Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare" has that heroic arrangement with wailing electric guitar, and I've got a sense of a few influences. Speaking of that arrangement, I get hints of Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）balladry (although Sanada has a softer voice here), some fiery enka from Joji Yamamoto（山本譲二）who had his big hit that year with "Michinoku Hitori Tabi"（みちのくひとり旅）, and to be honest, I also get that feeling of my old favourite karaoke song "Yukiguni"（雪国）by Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）at the end of each delivery of the refrain. Yukinojo Mori and Kazuo Otani（森雪之丞・大谷和夫）were behind the creation of the song.
Sanada is actually not too bad behind the microphone, so now I'm kinda wondering how his old castmate from "The Last Samurai", Ken Watanabe must sound like. He's also released a few singles of his own.
My introduction to Hiroyuki Sanada came from Ninja in the Dragon's Den, a HK kung-fu action flick co-starring Conan Lee. Excellent movie, with Taekwondo master Hwang Jang-Lee as the villain (as he was usually typecast). It seems like most of the young lead actors from that era delved into the music genre. Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Leslie Cheung (RIP), Hiroyuki Sanada. I could be wrong but I think Andy was a massive Cantonese pop singer before he became an actor.
ReplyDeleteEvening, Michael. Yeah, perhaps it was also the case in HK, but in Japan, it seems that if you were an up-and-comer in the acting world, putting out music was also part of the contract for some reason. I guess that the mandatory chorus practice in Japanese education really came in handy.:)
DeleteProbably talent agents wanting to milk their investments for all their worth. There are sharks in the water anywhere there's potential to make big money.
ReplyDeleteThere are few things that can make Yoshii Toranaga nervous. Duetting with Hiromi Iwasaki is apparently one of them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1cK411W7Fy/
I can sympathize with Sanada completely. That's like me being asked to do a duet with Luciano Pavarotti. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a tad there. :) But to sing with someone with the abilities of Ms. Iwasaki!
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