SHO Kosugi can kill in at least nine different ways: one for every martial art he has mastered in the past 45 years. But now the man Hollywood dubbed 'Mr Ninja' is keen to prove he can do something else. He wants to show other Asians how to chop, hurl and kick their way into Tinseltown. His goal? A new Bruce Lee for the new millennium.
'If Orientals want to break into Hollywood, the fastest way is through martial arts,' Kosugi says. 'If they can make it there, they can go anywhere in the world.' The 50-year-old action star plans to open a school in Los Angeles in September that he is touting as the first of its kind in the United States, his home for the past three decades.
Aimed at Asian would-be actors who are 'handicapped in the West because of bias', he says the Sho Kosugi Institute (SKI) will teach students all they need to know about the film industry and provide them with the basic tools to make it in the movies: kung fu, karate, taekwondo and kendo as well as the more arcane discipline of ninjutsu, the art of assassination practised in Japan in the 14th century.
Students with little interest in becoming action stars can hone other skills (dancing and singing, for instance, or scriptwriting and directing) but the emphasis is on moulding modern-day 'fu fighters' who can kill with a single blow and communicate in the movie world's lingua franca.
'You can't make it in the West if you don't know English,' he declares, speaking at the speed of a spinning shuriken (a sharp metal star used by ninja to fell opponents).
'In the morning, we teach nothing but intensive English; and in the afternoon, there are classes in acting, action, dancing . . .' A dream eight years in the making, the SKI in Castaic, Los Angeles, will test the waters for a sister school in Tokyo, due to open in September 1999. While the US campus has accepted only 20 students aged 18 and above for the first semester, its Japanese counterpart should have more than 200 pupils, some as young as three.