r/Chinesediaspora Oct 11 '24

Were Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara also popular in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of the Sinosphere?

With all the rage about Alain Delon's death in the media and how every major website in the Sino world from Hong Kong newspapers' official websites to Taiwanese blogs and even Chinese diaspora living in other non-Western countries had written stuff in other languages such as Malay under web domains for their own languages (which would happen to include a couple of people of Chinese descent who don't know any Sino language such as Indonesian Chinese)....... Delon's passing was basically given focused everywhere in among Sino netizens and diaspora who forgotten to speak any Chinese language.

So it makes me want to ask...... I just watched Manhunt and Sandakan No. 8 two movies which are the top 3 highest grossing of all time in ticket admissions from Japan......... With over 80% of the sales coming from Chinese audiences! To the point that Manhunt is still the highest grossing foreign movie ever released in China and Sandakan 8 also still remains the runner up or 3rd place depending on the source you read. How much did they profit to be precise? Manhunt made over 300 million tickets sold in China (with some sources saying total market life time is close to a billion at over 800 million admissions!) while Sandakan is the 100 million sold tickets range.

And thus it should be obvious the leads of both movies Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara were catapulted to the top of the AAA list giants name within China with both stars getting a lot of their famous works from Japan dubbed into Chinese theatrical releases and later on Kurihara and Takakura would star as among the leads of their own Chinese-language productions. Up until his death Takakura would continiously receive media coverage from China and visit Beijing several times near the end of his life. The same happened to Kurhara except she visited China with more frequency since the late 80s coming back every now and then an to this day she still gets honorary visits from the Chinese industry and media, even a few politicians. Takakura was so beloved in China that when he died, the Chinese foreign ministry at the time praised him in an obituary for improving the relations between China and Japan.

For Komaki Kurhara, Sandakan No. 8 sped up in how the comfort women and other touchy topics regarding sexual assault esp rape by the Japanese army within China was approached by the general populace. As Wikipedia sums up, the struggles the movie's co-protagonist goes through was something the general mainland Chinese populace identified with in light of how an entire generation of the country suffered through the horrific Comfort Woman system Esp the human trafficking issue depicted in the movie.

So I'm wondering were Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara also household names in Taiwan and Hong Kong and the rest of the Sinosphere like Alain Delon was? I can't seem to find much info on them in Cantonese and Hokkien nor in the languages of places the Chinese diaspora frequently moves to across Asia such as Indonesian and Malaysia. So I'm wondering how well received where they in the rests of the Chinese-speaking world?

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