by Anthony Chatfield

Created on: February 14, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

The faces of Asian pop culture have slowly but surely been inundating the American landscape for almost 40 years now. The advent of the Kung Fu genre in the late sixties and early seventies saw the rise of stars like Bruce Lee and the works of Shaw Brothers studios, and in the 90s a whole new generation of stars began to appear with Jet Li and Jackie Chan. The image has been largely Chinese though and more specifically coming out of Hong Kong, a historically open market to the West, largely because of it's British rule up until 10 years ago.

The presence of other Asian cultures in American cinema and pop culture have been markedly less apparent, but as the worlds of cinema and pop culture expand, the possibility of seeing stars from other countries such as Japan and Korea rapidly expand. Japan itself has seen a massive influx of interest from America in recent years as their animation industry has flourished and the video gaming market expands to the point of including and utilizing Japanese pop and movie stars.

But, if you were to question any one person on the street about who they knew that was Japanese, it's entirely likely you'd find their answer to be ignorant or non-existent. Anyone who answers Jackie Chan would not be alone in their assumption, but would unfortunately be racially ignorant and insensitive in their response. A striking example of this ignorance can be seen in the film adaptation of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, in which Chinese actresses are cast in all of the leading roles, in a film that takes place in Japan. Zhang Ziyi is an amazing actress yes, but she is definitely not Japanese, and the assumption by a Hollywood studio that American's can't tell the difference is not acceptable, even if it might be unfortunately true.

So, who are some of the Japanese stars rising in the American film industry? Whose name should you watch out for as the globalization of film causes more and more non-english speaking parts in the films you go and see on a Friday night? Which singers might you be hearing when you play your favorite PS2 game or watch your favorite Anime? Here are a list of Japanese actors, singers, and stars who you may have noticed but never actually noticed.

Ken Watanabe Ken Watanabe found his fame in the states alongside Tom Cruise in the over the top portrayal of an American serviceman as a Samurai warrior in The Last Samurai. The film earned him an academy award nomination and subsequently a role in Batman Begins, Memoirs of

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