Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, best known as the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 film “Mortal Kombat,” has died at the age of 75 due to complications from a stroke, according to reports.
In addition to playing Shang Tsung in Paul W.S. Anderson’s film and its 1997 sequel, “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation,” Tagawa reprised the role in the 2013 TV series, “Mortal Kombat: Legacy,” and an episode of “Mortal Kombat X: Generations” in 2015. He voiced Shang Tsung in the 2019 video game “Mortal Kombat 11” and lent his likeness from the 1995 film for the mobile game, “Mortal Kombat: Onslaught.”
Outside of the “MK” series, Tagawa is best known for his role as Chang in the Best Picture Oscar-winning film “The Last Emperor.” Millennials may also know him for his performance in the beloved Disney Channel movie “Johnny Tsunami,” as the titular Hawaiian surfing legend who serves as a mentor to his grandson, Johnny Kapahala, as he adjusts to life in Vermont by becoming a snowboarder.
Other films in Tagawa’s career include “License to Kill,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Pearl Harbor,” Tim Burton’s reboot of “Planet of the Apes” and “47 Ronin.” On the TV side, Tagawa’s credits include guest appearances on shows like “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “MacGyver” and “Miami Vice.” But his most prominent role came in 2015 with Amazon Prime’s “The Man in the High Castle” as Nobosuke Tagomi, the trade minister for Japan who tries to do good in his position despite the rise of tyranny in an alternate timeline where the Axis wins World War II, and who fights to prevent a nuclear war between Japan and Nazi Germany.
“Tagomi represents very much of that kind of East-West energy, being Eastern in a Western environment, albeit an environment that is an occupied U.S. environment. He speaks English, he carries on with diplomats, he’s very much in the Western world and feels very much from an Eastern perspective,” Tagawa told The AV Club in 2015. “The East-West paradigm is nothing new to me—it’s something I’ve dealt with my whole life—so that really gives me an opportunity to represent it at a very deep level and provides a very wide perspective of being in America and being Japanese.”
Tagawa is survived by three children, Calen, Brynne and Cana; and his two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton. His death was first reported by Deadline.
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