Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa’s Personal Perspective On ‘The Man In The High Castle’
November 10, 2015 admin 0 Comments
By Brittany S Frederick
Source: StarPulse
For Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle is more than just his next acting project. The veteran actor, who plays Japanese minister Nobsuke Tagomi, has a unique perspective on the series that explores an alternate World War II history, because he grew up during that time period as an Asian-American.
Cary shared his personal story with Starpulse during the recent New York Comic Con, sharing his point of view with viewers before the show begins Nov. 20, and illustrating why The Man in the High Castle has potential to be a vastly important addition to the TV landscape.
“We left Tokyo in 1955. My father was in the US Army from Hawaii and my mother’s family was all Imperial Navy…What’s more complicated than to bring their child to America and say we’re going to live here?” he told us. “So this story really speaks to me. I’ve lived on the power and the energy of coming into contact with a very hostile society, to say the least. We lived in the South – Louisiana, Texas and North Carolina when half the US military was from the South. It was an interesting upbringing.”
“For a child at 6 years old to just kind of end up in another universe, I don’t know how I did it,” he continued. “I needed to know who they were. To understand that you needed to understand who you were dealing with…The US won the war, and here you had the enemy that was clearly defeated in a little kid and now he’s part of your society. So they were watching me as much as I was watching them.”
From those experiences and his upbringing, Cary developed a motivation to want to create a different perception of Asian men in this country, particularly the Japanese. He’s carried that with him through a legendary career of almost 30 years to today, where he was able to use that information to help inform some of the other actors as they ventured into this truly unknown territory.
“I would always seek out [other actors], especially Asians,” he explained. “I tell them don’t forget who you are. Do not be putting your culture down. Do not put ancestors down. They’re so busy trying to be American. Be proud of who you are, where you come from, maintain your soul. Your soul can get lost in this country, people lost so much of what was important and so I like to encourage them.”
As he pointed out, that’s the beauty of America; not that one culture is better than the other, but that people from all cultures throughout the world can come here and show what’s unique and special about their community and add it to the melting pot of this country. In playing Tagomi, he’s not just “the bad guy” or “the other.” He’s one of two representatives of the Japanese within High Castle’s main cast, and he does a wonderful job of making his character three-dimensional.
Possibly because in taking this particular role and this particular project, he’s in his element – not just because of his childhood but because of his passion as well. “I’m kind of a World War II buff. I was forced to be because I had to deal with it so much,” he said. “I really delved into what that was about and what that period was about. It’s interesting how Germans and Japanese share some very strong traits together. But they were never allies. They hardly spoke to each other.
“In the scenario in the book, in this series, they’re not together. They’re much at odds and after having joined up to have a reality now they’re not needing each other, it’s like who’s going to take over?” he continued. “I think that would have very much been the case and the Germans clearly had a technological light – they’re the ones that developed the atomic bomb. The only thing the Japanese would have is a deeper spiritual energy.”
Speaking of cooperation, he believes that while we’ll see the Japanese and American cultures in conflict within High Castle, they actually compliment each other quite well in real life. “My sense of it is, if you take the discipline and the spirituality of the Japanese and you take the creativity and freedom of the Americans,” he said, “and you put that together, [they would be] unstoppable.”
“Really that’s been my life, is to experience everything I could and make that a reality and I think this is a great first step for me,” Cary added. “I’m not the average Asian actor.”
The Man in the High Castle premieres with all ten episodes of the first season available Nov. 20 on Amazon Prime. For more on the series, also check out our interview with series star DJ Qualls.