Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, celebrated for his role as the malevolent sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 film adaptation of the video game “Mortal Kombat,” has passed away at 75.

Born in Tokyo to a Japanese actress and an American soldier of Japanese descent, Tagawa relocated to the United States during his childhood, where he began his martial arts training.

Tagawa’s cinematic breakthrough came in the form of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 epic, “The Last Emperor,” where he portrayed Chang, a Chinese eunuch.

This launched a successful Hollywood career, featuring roles in the James Bond film “License to Kill,” the drama “Memoirs of a Geisha,” the WWII action movie “Pearl Harbor,” and the alternative history series “The Man in the High Castle” on Amazon.

Despite his diverse roles, Tagawa is most fondly remembered for his portrayal of Shang Tsung in “Mortal Kombat,” a character he brought to life not only in the film but also in two television series and two video games.

His family confirmed he died of complications of a stroke Thursday morning in Santa Barbara while surrounded by his children, according to Deadline. 

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who played the villainous sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 movie of the video game Mortal Kombat, has died at the age of 75; pictured 2013

Tagawa is pictured with Brigette Wilson in Mortal Kombat, a franchise he returned to not just on film but also in two TV shows and two video games

Tagawa hailed from a showbiz family in Japan, as the son of an actress who performed in an all-female genre of musical revues called Takarazuka. 

He once remarked that ‘my mother was an aristocrat from Tokyo who ran away to join the theatre, so acting is in my genes,’ in an interview with the Guardian.

His father meanwhile was a Japanese American serving in the U.S. Army, who had in fact been in Hawaii at the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Their young song Cary-Hiroyuku had a peripatetic childhood shuttling between American military forts – and learning martial arts along the way.

In his adult life, he studied Japanese karate in Los Angeles and then trained under the tutelage of the Japan Karate Association’s Master Nakayama in Japan itself, as well as at one stage becoming a masseur. 

Tagawa was 35 by the time he landed his first movie role, an uncredited turn in the 1986 John Carpenter comedy Big Trouble in Little China starring Kurt Russell.

Two years later he achieved his breakthrough as a eunuch in The Last Emperor, Bertolucci’s acclaimed historical drama about Puyi, the final monarch to rule China. 

His career continued apace with movies like Timothy Dalton’s last James Bond film License to Kill in 1989 as well as the Sean Connery thriller Rising Sun in 1993, alongside guest shots on such shows as Miami Vice, MacGyver and Baywatch.

His early career featured movies like Timothy Dalton’s last James Bond movie License to Kill in 1989 as well as the Sean Connery thriller Rising Sun in 1993 (right)

After his breakthrough in The Last Emperor, his career continued apace with guest shots on such shows as Miami Vice (pictured), MacGyver and Baywatch

Tagawa earned his most famous role of Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat by showing up to the audition in full costume and standing on a chair to read his sides.

The creative team were bowled over by his performance and cast him at once, even making the character younger than in the video game so as not to require age prosthetics that would tamper with Tagawa’s acting.

Mortal Kombat proved a roaring box office success as a movie and Tagawa became indelibly associated with Shang Tsung, a role he reappeared in for the 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation by way of archival footage.

Tagawa attributed the first movie’s success in part to the ‘genius’ of its director Paul W.S. Anderson, who ‘was the first one in martial arts history to apply such music, really upbeat, driving metal kind of music,’ via Red Carpet TV. 

‘You couldn’t sit still when you heard the music, and it matched the action so well that I think it just became like an anthem,’ added Tagawa.

He observed further that the film came out with the ‘perfect timing’ and ‘struck a nerve’ thanks to the massive popularity of the Mortal Kombat video game, as well as other video games like Double Dragon and Super Mario Bros.

In the 2010s, he guested as Shang Tsung on the TV shows Mortal Kombat: Legacy and Mortal Kombat X: Generations, and in the past few years of his life he played the role for the video games Mortal Kombat 11 and Mortal Kombat: Onslaught.

HIs movie career thundered ahead, with 2001 a particular banner year including the Tim Burton adaptation of Planet of the Apes and Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor.

Tagawa also featured in the Ethan Hawke legal drama Snow Falling on Cedars, the Jennifer Garner comic book romp Elektra and the drama Memoirs of a Geisha (pictured)

His grand late-career role was as the ambivalent Japanese minister Nobusuke Tagomi in the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle from 2015 to 2018

Amid concerns that Pearl Harbor would stoke anti-Japanese sentiment, Tagawa argued that the movie was ‘fair and accurate’ and insisted that the ‘Japanese were treated admirably and true to character,’ in Star Bulletin.

Tagawa also featured in the Ethan Hawke legal drama Snow Falling on Cedars, the Jennifer Garner comic book romp Elektra, the drama Memoirs of a Geisha by Chicago director Rob Marshall and the action fantasy 47 Ronin.

His grand late-career turn was as a Japanese official of initially uncertain loyalties in the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle from 2015 to 2018.

The show was based on a 1962 Philip K. Dick novel about an alternate universe in which the Axis won World War II and the United States has been carved up and occupied by the Germans and the Japanese.

Tagawa converted to Russian Orthodoxy in 2015 and that same year starred in a Russian film called Priest-San: Samurai’s Confession about an Orthodox clergyman who used to be in the Yakuza and gets sucked back into a mafia feud.

He spoke Russian and acquired Russian citizenship in 2016, having felt upon visiting the country that ‘my Japanese origin was very close to the heart and soul of the Russian people,’ he told the website Orthodox Christianity.

‘Most importantly, I noticed that the personalities and souls of these two peoples were indeed similar: you and us are not soldiers, but warriors.’ 

On the personal front, he married his wife Sally in 1984 and welcomed three children with her – a son called Calen and two daughters called Byrnne and Cana – whom they raised together on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.