Canny Hero – Kaneshiro

My inner fan-girl was gleeful when I got word that I’d be meeting Takeshi Kaneshiro. Yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to strut about the place, elbowing the mere mortals out of the way, because I had this nagging, slightly disbelieving feeling about the whole thing. If there was one thing I knew about the pan-Asian superstar, it’s that Takeshi Kaneshiro, though the speaker of several languages (including Mandarin, Japanese, Cantonese, Taiwanese and English), is not given to interviews in any of them. Most likely he doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands, between his glittering career and the legions of young women who’d be paralysed with ecstasy just to get a peek inside his medicine cabinet or cutlery drawer.

But it’s the damnedest thing. For a lad with mammoth visibility and celebrity, when he’s not acting or singing, acting as spokesman for Mitsubishi, Ericsson, Prada and countless other brands, the 31-year old is famed for squirming in the limelight. Nobody knows what he does or where he goes in between filming commitments, and his reticence on such matters is legendary.
Eek. Doesn’t sound like the easiest interviewee, does he? Still, I’m quickly reassured by his warm handshake and jovial manner. In fact, I’m wondering if – feel free to add your own punch lines about Chinese or Japanese phonebooks – I have the right Mr. Kaneshiro. It may well be that he feels emboldened by the presence of his manager, agent, assistant and translator throughout the interview. Heaven knows, it’s enough of a buffer zone to rival J-Lo’s numerous nipple attendants, though I couldn’t quite determine what they were all doing there.
Even the translator was not strictly necessary, for Takeshi speaks perfect American-English peppered with some admirably colonial-sounding vowels. Happily, though I’m half expecting a Stasi-routine, the entourage make for an amiable audience, giggling throughout, which was very nice of them, even if the joke was possibly at the expense of the ditzy Western girl.
“It’s not that I hate doing interviews,” he smiles, “and don’t worry, I wouldn’t let on to you if I did. I can fake it. It’s just that while I don’t mind talking about movies I’ve done I don’t think that I have anything all that important to say.”
Normally, this is the kind of phrase which, when it raises its ugly head during an interview, may well anticipate a series of unadorned ‘yes’/’no’ answers, but it’s entirely in keeping with the star’s self-deprecating, vaguely fatalistic sense of humour.
During a press conference last year, when asked by one keen, cheerleading journalist how he would like to be remembered at the end of his career, Takeshi famously replied, “Just forget me… No reason. When it ends it ends.” It’s such a glum pronouncement it makes you wonder if he sits around playing Onimusha, the beat-‘em-up video game classic in which he stars, battering his virtual image to a bloody pulp.
“No, never,” he reassures me. “I hate getting killed. I don’t mind if Jean Reno gets it, but when it’s me on screen, it’s a lot more personal. I can’t even stay in the room when my friends are playing it. They take great delight in finding new ways to watch me die.”
Thankfully, his notorious taciturnity seems to have been somewhat exaggerated, but I have a fair idea why he might value his privacy having witnessed the British premiere of the sublime House Of Flying Daggers on the previous evening. Calling to mind a feverish Maoist rally on pheromones, what appeared to be the entire female Sino-European populace were out in their best Hello Kitty clobber scrambling for brief glimpses, screaming like an off-night at the Beijing Opera and doing a mean Hard Day’s Night impersonation.
Amidst such fervour, it’s easy to see why he’s frequently referred to as the Asian Johnny Depp. Like Mr. Depp, Takeshi has made a brilliant transition from teen-idol to accomplished thespian. However, rather unlike Mr. Depp, whose erstwhile forays into rock-stardom are best forgotten, the half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese actor shifted millions of albums in his alternative metier as an Asian pop-sensation during the early nineties.
Unfortunately for Takeshi and his hermitic inclinations, his profile looks set to sky-rocket further with the release of House Of Flying Daggers, Zhang Yimou’s splendid homage to the gaudy, gorgeous pulp of Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers studios. A breathtaking work of sheer kinomania, Flying Daggers wisely jettisons the uncomfortable politics of its companion and predecessor, Hero in favour of adrenalin, decadent martial arts spectacle, rainbow palate and heady romance.
As its Mandarin title, Shi Mian Mai Fu (literally, ‘ambush from ten sides’) might suggest, Flying Daggers is not short on ass-kicking wuxia action, but it’s the three-way love story, involving Takeshi Kaneshiro’s dashing Captain Jin, his comrade in arms and best friend, Leo (Andy Lau) and their sometime prisoner, the beautiful blind assassin, Mei (Zhang Ziyi) that lends the film a Shakespearean grandeur. No wonder the epic has conquered at the US box-office or that Takeshi, already a cult figure in the West thanks to his incredible, quirky performances in Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and Returner, has attracted a whole new gaggle of adoring American fans.
“I have been getting more letters from Western girls recently”, the actor admits. I’ll bet he has. Tall, slender, uncannily feline and so boyish he probably gets carded in off-licences, you can’t help but wonder how he managed to lift his sword for the movie, never mind getting all Errol Flynn with it. With some difficulty as it happens.
“I only trained for a month with the sword, so I only learned the basics. I didn’t know what I was doing, so thank you special effects! But this was my first historical film, so I had to master moving around in period costume. Not easy.”
Unsurprisingly, Hollywood has come a courting at Takeshi’s door, or at least at the doors of his agent, manager and all those other people assembled here.
“Hollywood is not something that interests me. It’s not that I wouldn’t say ‘yes’ if I was given an amazing script but I don’t care about making bigger films. I want to create as an actor and Hollywood just doesn’t have good roles for Asians.”
Quite right too. When you can pick and choose from scripts in five different languages, why would you play somebody’s oriental sidekick in a buddy pic? I do wonder though, given Takeshi’s proficiency in all those different tongues and his multicultural background, if his interior monologue is in one particular dialect?
“Well, it’s funny. I count in Japanese but if it’s a calendar thing, then I think in Mandarin. I guess a lot of it is what language got there first, because with the counting for example, it’s because I learned my times-tables in Japanese. So there are bits and pieces of everything in there.”
Yeah, but what language does he sing in the shower with?
“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve never sang in the shower?”
No, not really.
“Ha! Neither would I.”b

House Of Flying Daggers is released in February