Sessue Hayakawa
Kintarō Hayakawa (Japanese: 早川 金太郎, Hepburn: Hayakawa Kintarō, June 10, 1886 – November 23, 1973), known professionally as Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲, Hayakawa Sesshū), was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was a popular star in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man in the United States and Europe. His "broodingly handsome"[2] good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination, and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood.[3][4][5]
This article is about the actor and matinee idol from Japan. For the United States Senator from California, see S. I. Hayakawa.
After withdrawing from the Japanese naval academy and attempting suicide at 18, Hayakawa attended the University of Chicago, where he studied political economics in accordance with his wealthy parents' wish that he become a banker. Upon graduating, he traveled to Los Angeles in order to board a scheduled ship back to Japan, but decided to try out acting in Little Tokyo. There, Hayakawa impressed Hollywood figures and was signed on to star in The Typhoon (1914). He made his breakthrough in The Cheat (1915), and thereafter became famous for his roles as a forbidden lover. Hayakawa was one of the highest paid stars of his time, earning $5,000 per week in 1915, and $2 million per year through his own production company from 1918 to 1921.[6][7][8] Because of rising anti-Japanese sentiment and business difficulties,[9] Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922 and performed on Broadway and in Japan and Europe for many years before making his Hollywood comeback in Daughter of the Dragon (1931).[10]
Of his talkies, Hayakawa is probably best known for his role as Kuala, the pirate captain in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.[11] Hayakawa starred in over 80 feature films, and three of his films (The Cheat, The Dragon Painter, and The Bridge on the River Kwai) stand in the United States National Film Registry.[12][13][14]
Racial barriers[edit]
Throughout Hayakawa's career, many segments of American society were filled with feelings of anti-Japanese sentiment, partly from nationalism rising from World War I and World War II.[51] Hayakawa was constantly typecast as a villain or forbidden lover and was unable to play parts that would be given to white actors such as Douglas Fairbanks. Hayakawa stated, "Such roles [in The Wrath of the Gods, The Typhoon, and The Cheat] are not true to our Japanese nature... They are false and give people a wrong idea of us. I wish to make a characterization which shall reveal us as we really are."[52] In 1949, he lamented, "My one ambition is to play a hero".[53] Hayakawa's dilemma was analogous to that of Rudolph Valentino, nine years his junior; both were foreign born, and were typecast as exotic or forbidden lovers. Although Hayakawa's contract with Famous Players expired in May 1918, the studio still asked him to star in The Sheik. Hayakawa refused in order to start his own company. With influence from June Mathis, the role went to the barely known Valentino, turning him into a screen icon overnight.[18]
Writing to the "What the Picture Did for Me" section of the Exhibitors Herald in March 1922, a theater owner in Denison, Iowa, with a population of about 3,500, revealed the mixed feelings about Hayakawa in middle America (and the language used to describe him): "The Jap is sure a good actor, but some people don't seem to like him."[54] In 1930, the Production Code came into effect (enforced after 1934) which forbade portrayals of miscegenation in film. This meant that unless Hayakawa's co-star was an Asian actress, he would not be able to portray a romance with her.[44] Hayakawa was placed in this awkward position due to his ethnicity. Naturalization laws at that time prevented him from becoming a U.S. citizen[55] and because of anti-miscegenation laws, he could not marry someone of another race.[56]
Hayakawa's early films were not popular in Japan because many felt that his roles portrayed Japanese men as sadistic and cruel. Many Japanese viewers found this portrayal insulting. Nationalistic groups in particular were censorious.[57] Some Japanese believed that Hayakawa was contributing to increased anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S., and regarded him as a traitor to the Japanese people. After Hayakawa established himself as an American superstar, the negative tone in the press that regarded him as a national and racial shame lessened by a noticeable degree, and Japanese media started publicizing Hayakawa's cinematic achievements instead.[58] His later films were also not popular, because he was seen as "too Americanized" during a time of nationalism.[59]
[[Category:Japanese-Americans