Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the actor known for wide-ranging roles in Mortal Kombat, The Last Emperor, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Man in the High Castle, has died.
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Tagawa passed away on Thursday in Santa Barbara from complications of a stroke, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 75.
Tagawa is best known to generations of video game and film fans as the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the film, TV, and video game versions of the Mortal Kombat franchise.
According to IMDb, he first portrayed the character in New Line’s 1995 film adaptation and returned for the 1997 sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Tagawa reprised the role in the 2013 TV series Mortal Kombat: Legacy and in a 2015 episode of Mortal Kombat X: Generations. In 2019, he voiced the character in the video game Mortal Kombat 11 and lent his likeness to the 2023 role-playing game Mortal Kombat: Onslaught.
Tagawa played a pivotal role in the 2010 film adaptation of the hit video game Tekken, portraying Heihachi Mishima, a ruthless corporate titan. He also lent his voice to video games such as Soldier Boyz, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, and World of Warcraft: Legion.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s Prolific Career Beyond ‘Mortal Kombat’
Tagawa’s breakout role came in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar-winning film, The Last Emperor. He played Chang, the emperor’s driver, a small but key part in the story.
Tagawa then appeared in several big-budget movies, many of which drew on his martial arts skills and the intersection of Asian and Western cultures. His filmography includes License to Kill, Rising Sun, Snow Falling on Cedars, Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, Elektra, Memoirs of a Geisha, and 47 Ronin.
Though many will recognize Tagawa from these A-list credits, he has appeared in over 150 films, TV shows, and video games. His career began with an uncredited role in the 1986 box office flop that became a cult classic, John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. The following year, his career took off with The Last Emperor and guest spots on network shows like MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Miami Vice.
One of the actor’s most high-profile parts came in 2015 when he played a lead character in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. Tagawa portrayed Nobusuke Tagomi, the Trade Minister of the Pacific States of America, in a nation divided between Japanese and Nazi occupation after World War II.
Throughout his four-decade career, his notable TV roles include Lt. A.J. Shimamura on Nash Bridges, Captain Terry Harada on NBC’s Hawaii, Satoshi Takeda in six episodes of ABC’s Revenge, a six-episode arc on Netflix’s Lost in Space, and most recently, voicing The Swordmaker in Season 1 of Netflix’s animated series Blue Eye Samurai.
Tagawa lived on Kauai, where he and his wife, Sally, raised their two children.
He is survived by his three children, Calen, Brynne, and Cana, as well as two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton.