Sonny Chiba
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sonny Chiba (22 January 1939 – 19 August 2021) was a Japanese actor and martial artist. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience.
Chiba in popular culture
Christian Slater's character Clarence Worley in True Romance is a big Sonny Chiba fan. In an early scene, he watches a Sonny Chiba triple feature. Writer of True Romance Quentin Tarantino is himself a fan of Sonny Chiba and fittingly worked with Chiba ten years later in Kill Bill.
Samuel L. Jackson's character in the movie Pulp Fiction recites a creed partly based on Ezekiel 25:17, beginning, "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities (sic) of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men," and ending, "...and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." This creed was originally used as the opening scroll in the Sonny Chiba movie, Karate Kiba[1] (English title: The Bodyguard), substituting the words, "...and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard...," in the above passage.