Japanese screen icon reshaped image of cool hero

Ken Takakura, whose death on Nov 10 was announced on Tuesday, was a Japanese movie star who essentially reshaped the aesthetics of screen heroes when his movies made their way into the Chinese market in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Takakura died at a Tokyo hospital where he was being treated for an illness, according to his office.

His tough-guy persona - always brooding and speaking little dialogue - injected a big dose of masculinity into the creation of movie heroes and became an antithesis to the all-smiling archetype then prevalent in Chinese cinema. Several Chinese leading men, including Tang Guoqiang, even fell out of public favor partly because they were seen as the opposite of Takakura-style cool.