Today the Japanese press announced the death of one of my favorite Japanese actors, Ken Takakura, also known as the Coolest Man In Japan (not a real title but he was).

Most people in the West will know him from one of two movies: Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck and Dennis Haysbert, and Black Rain, with Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia. Neither is a particularly good movie, but I recommend Black Rain mostly because it shows off almost all of Takakura’s skills as an actor. He had a powerful screen presence, an excellent voice and he could play both bad ass and humble.  Black Rain also has, in his last role, the late Yusaku Matsuda as Sato, one of the best villains in film.

I also recommend Mount Hakkoda where Takakura plays a captain in the Japanese Imperial military in a dramatization of one of Japan’s worst mountaineering disasters. (Warning, you will feel cold watching this one. Keep the heat turned up.)

Finally I recommend the much quieter (and much slower) Poppoya, in which Takakura plays the stationmaster of a train station that’s literally the end of the line. The station is scheduled to be shutdown and he suddenly starts having visions of his late wife and daughter. Very quiet, and a bit slow, but Takakura’s presence carries this movie.  (Also, it takes place in winter. Once again, you will feel cold.)

A friend of mine also recommends  Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza, starring Robert Mitchum and Takakura. Oddly, I’ve never actually seen this one, so I’ll be looking it up myself.

Although he’d slowed down his movie making, one of the things I liked about Ken Takakura is he never went on the countless variety shows. You only saw him at his best, not as a goofy stage prop to actors and comedians who only thought they were cool. I also like that he had a sense of gentleness and yet could turn tough and make both states seem perfectly natural.

He also, unfortunately for some, could make cigarette smoking look cool in his Speak Lark ads for Lark Cigarettes: