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While he is best known for his role as the Japan­ese camp com­man­der in The Bridge on the Riv­er Kwai, and oth­er films of the 1950s, Ses­sue Hayakawa was a super­star in the silent era. Among Hollywood’s high­est payed stars, he was in the same league with Fair­banks, Chap­lin and Valenti­no. He found­ed his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny because he resent­ed the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Asians in Hol­ly­wood films. A metic­u­lous actor, he was high­ly influ­en­tial in trans­form­ing film act­ing meth­ods from the broad ges­tures inher­it­ed from stage act­ing to the more restrained tech­niques appro­pri­ate to film. This film, the sec­ond one in which he appeared, was a sto­ry with a Japan­ese set­ting. A cast­away sailor courts a young girl who has been for­bid­den to mar­ry by a tem­ple prophe­cy. Hayakawa was a young man, hav­ing just dropped out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, where he stud­ied eco­nom­ics, but he appears in heavy make­up as the hero­ine’s elder­ly father. The film dis­plays the old­er, melo­dra­mat­ic style of act­ing that Hayakawa was soon to change. The lead­ing female role was played by Tsu­ru Aoki, whom Hayakawa fell in love with and mar­ried dur­ing the pro­duc­tion. Despite the dat­ed act­ing tech­niques, the film holds up well, with some excit­ing action scenes at sea, and some mov­ing moments.

Hayakawa in 1918, four years after this film was made.

Hayakawa led an inter­est­ing life. As a teenag­er in Japan, he attempt­ed sep­puku after fail­ing to qual­i­fy for the naval career his upper class fam­i­ly had planned for him. He played quar­ter­back in Amer­i­can col­lege foot­ball. He stum­bled into act­ing by acci­dent while wait­ing for a ship home, rock­et­ing to star­dom with his good looks. He made for­tunes and lost them gam­bling, lived extrav­a­gant­ly, and became a social lion by buy­ing up a huge stock of liquor just before Pro­hi­bi­tion was enact­ed. He wrote sev­er­al plays and a nov­el. He pro­duced a ver­sion of The Three Mus­ke­teers in Japan. For awhile, broke and out of work, he sup­port­ed him­self by paint­ing water­colours. He moved to France to make films in which he would not be racial­ly stereo­typed — and end­ed up fight­ing in the French Resis­tance. As an mid­dle-aged man, he was able to take on a crowd of young Mex­i­can toughs in a brawl and defeat them hand­i­ly. He retired to become a Zen mas­ter and tutor. Some of his roles won him acco­lades as a mature actor, but he was nev­er pop­u­lar in Japan, where he was con­sid­ered “too American.”

Asian actors in Hol­ly­wood faced com­plex chal­lenges, per­form­ing in the lime­light of a soci­ety that held bizarre and some­times dis­gust­ing atti­tudes about race and eth­nic­i­ty. In the 1920’s, America’s anti-mis­ce­gena­tion laws influ­enced all cast­ing, script-writ­ing and per­for­mance. In the 1930’s the rise of anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ments and the per­va­sive cen­sor­ship of films did fur­ther dam­age. To weave their way through these obsta­cles, Asians had to be resource­ful and strong. Their achieve­ments should not be forgotten.

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