Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Abe Hiroshi to appear in Japanese-Chinese joint production movie "KU-KAI" as Abe no Nakamaro

Abe Hiroshi will be appearing in the Japan-China joint production movie "KU-KAI" which features Sometani Shota and Chinese actor Huang Xuan as the leads. He will be playing the role of Abe no Nakamaro who was a Japanese scholar, administrator, and waka poet in the Nara period and sent to China's Tang Dynasty as an envoy. While there, Nakamaro passed the civil-service examination and took up an administrative position before being promoted. When he tried to return to Japan later, the ship to take him back sank not long into the journey, forcing him to remain in China for several more years. His second attempt to go home failed again because the ship he was traveling in was wrecked and ran aground off the coast of Vietnam, but he managed to return to China. Following the An Lushan Rebellion, it became unsafe for him to return to Japan so Nakamaro spent the rest of his life in China until he died. In total, he spent about 50 years of his life in China.

Abe commented that he is honoured to be playing such an outstanding man who was even trusted by Emperor Xuanzong. As such, he will be acting as Nakamaro with the utmost respect and sincerity towards the latter. Abe also remarked that this is the first time that he has participated in a movie with such a big production scale when there were days when they spent the whole day on just one scene. As such, he expressed respect and gratitude for being able to work with the director Chen Kaige.

Besides Abe and Sometani, Matsuzaka Keiko is also acting in this movie which will be shown in 2018.

Sources: Eiga.com / Wikipedia

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