Chinese actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai makes his Japanese debut alongside stars like Matsuda Shota and former AKB48 member Maeda Atsuko. The movie directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi is called 1905 and is set to be filmed in Japan and Taiwan.
Kurosawa Kiyoshi is the master of the J-Horror genre and 1905 is set to be a large-scale action production with a set in Yokohama based on in the year 1905. Claimed to be an ambitious Japanese production, around 90% of the dialogues will be in Chinese. Kurosawa and Tony Leung met for the first time at the Asian Film Awards in 2009 and showed interest in working with each other at that time. The backdrop of this movie is the 1905 era when where imperialism and globalism was hounding the winds of change.
Western European countries were being perceived as a threat by Asian countries like Japan and China and the Qing Dynasty was approaching its end. Tony Leung plays a loan shark called ‘Yan Yunlong’ and comes to Japan to collect the loaned money from five men. Matsuda plays ‘Kato Tamotsu’, a member of an ultranationalist group called ‘Houkokukai.’ Maeda plays the character of ‘Onishi Miyako’, who basically cooks for ‘Yan’. Kiyoshi hopes to capture the despair and the emotions of those who came to cities like Yokohama 100 years ago, in search of a better life and better opportunities, and escaping their past. The movie will release by fall 2013.
[Via TokyoHive]