< P u
r p o s e >
This website is a tribute to the Japanese actor, Hiroyuki Sanada. The purpose of this site is to promote Sanada-san to international fans. Sanada-san is already very well known to the Japanese people and now it is time for the WORLD to know about him. Right now, most international fans know of his performances in "The Last Samurai" and "Twilight Samurai". But many people may not be aware that Sanada-san has acted in literally hundreds of performances. His first acting experience was at the age of 5 years old. He is an incredibly versatile, talented and hard working actor, starting out in many Japanese Samurai action films with Sonny Chiba and then moving into the world of stage plays, Japanese television series and then to many different types of films, such as mystery, romance, horror and drama.
From our understanding of many interviews that Sanada-san had done, we know that he has certain goals of his own. He often talks about "building bridges" and "knocking down walls". He has been performing in more and more international films, trying to gain knowledge of how other countries' film industries work. It seems that he does it for himself so that he can grow as an actor and it has been clearly stated that he wants to be able to share what he learns with the Japanese film industry.
He also helps to "knock down walls" by acting in movies like the Chinese film, "WuJi". Tensions between Japan and China were running rather high the year this movie was filmed. Hard feelings about the past, misunderstandings and fears take over at times. But people learning from each other is always the best answer. With Sanada-san's professional, thoughtful nature, his presence on the set of a Chinese film can possibly help to relieve some tensions (or misunderstandings) between the Chinese and Japanese actors, film-makers, etc.
The administrator of this website finds Sanada-san's goals to be most admirable and it is our desire to provide information to the English speaking peoples to promote his ideas.
< S i t
e H i s t o r y & O t h e r I n f o
>
This site is actually the marriage of two websites: http://jgraphicdesigns.com/WebGallery and http://sanadahiroyuki.com
http://jgraphicdesigns.com was initially a personal website providing free web graphics, wallpapers, etc. That site started back in 1997. Then in the late summer of 2004 the "WebGallery" was added to provide a nice collection of photos for Sanada-san's fans. http://jgraphicdesigns.com is a HUGE domain that can hold up to 4 gigs of content (which is a LOT) for the web. It's primary content consists of the WebGallery and the Forum for the WebGallery.
The domain name and hosting package for http://sanadahiroyuki.com was purchased late September of 2005. It is considered the "front-end" or main interface for the two joined sites. Both sites have pages that are interlinked, but http://sanadahiroyuki.com is officially the "Home" page for this rather large web endeavor.
And you may wonder why in the WORLD do we call this site "SHIN" all the time. If you take a look at the Flash intro on the sanadahiroyuki.com page, I tried to make it clear. The site name is actually
Sanada Hiroyuki: Inspired
Nuances and if you will note the first letter of every word you
have SHIN. The title is rather lengthy, so we will refer to the
site as SHIN to save a bit of time. ;-) In Nihongo (Japanese) this word means "True; Genuine; Real". It was also an interesting coincidence to discover that the kanji character for SHIN is also the first letter in Sanada-san's name! Funny how these things just happen sometimes and how perfect that this description "True; Genuine; Real" fits Sanada-san's
personality so perfectly!
< S
p
e c i a l S i t e R e q u i r e m e n t s
>
SHIN is just packed full of special effects that quite a few browsers may not be able to handle. This site was designed to run best when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or higher. It has been tested in I.E. browsers and in Mozilla's Foxfire browser extensively. The site has not been tested in any other browsers like Netscape or Opera.
There are many scripts and plugins incorporated into the pages of SHIN. If one wants to take advantage of all of the effects it would be wise to download and install the Flash and Shockwave plugins from macromedia.com and also get the Java plugin from
java.com.
< C r e d i t s
>
Designer/Administrator:
J.L. Hiner
Main Content Contributors:
Ayamesan - Photos, articles, recordings of news interviews and other rare footage
Yuri - Translations from Japanese to English of articles, news interviews, songs, etc.
Reiko - Helps with translations, relays breaking news found on the web and TITLE for SHIN!!!
Misty - Allows us to link to her news, articles and biography pages at www.hiroyukisanada.com
Isra & sister Batool - Contributors of beautifully designed wallpapers for the WebGallery and other projects
Design and Content Inspired by:
Hiroyuki Sanada !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Julia - of www.greenforever.net for web design ideas
Hiroki Suzuki's - Gorgeous Japanese landscape photos
JList - Japanese Observations
Special Mention:
Isra aka Issy - Just for being there ... every day! :)
|
