(Tokyo) Alain Delon, who considered himself “a living God in Japan”, is remembered above all by Japanese women over 50, who were madly in love with the perfect physique of the French actor, who died on Sunday at the age of 88.
The love affair between Japan and the actor began in the 1960s, when the film Full sun by René Clément. Delon plays Tom Ripley, a young seducer of magnetic beauty, brimming with nerve and a cold-blooded murderer.
Three years later, he made his first visit to Japan: the beginning of a long series of stays in the archipelago.
Each of his visits to the archipelago would strengthen this idyll, as the author recounted in 1986. Figaro Magazine who accompanies the French star during one of his tours in Japan.
“Young people, by the hundreds, try to cross the barriers. They run after the three Cadillacs which parade in the streets”, described the weekly at the time, which evokes “the delirium” provoked by his appearances, with real offerings made to the actor, red roses, bowls of fruit, statuettes.
Delon regularly tops a ranking of the country’s most popular celebrities, and his TV appearances automatically boost ratings.
Decades later, witnesses of that time confirm this passion between the local public and the actor who considered himself “a kind of divinity” in Japan.
“My 70 and 80 year old friends were still madly in love with him!” said M.me Seta, a 74-year-old retiree who did not wish to give her first name.
“Even at 88, he looked great. I especially liked Full Sun. I listened to his music every day when I was young. I thought, ‘How is it possible that such an attractive person exists in this world?'” Ms.me Seta, who discovered the news of his death through the question of the AFP journalist.
“He exuded grace. He was handsome, elegant and slightly mysterious. Eighty is not that old (to die), many people live to be 100 these days. It’s sad news,” she lamented.
“The actor with the perfect physique”
Mme Kaoru Fujita, who modestly indicates that he is “nearly 60 years old”, confirms the attraction provoked by Delon, the actor with the perfect physique.
“He was a popular figure in my mother’s generation, but I still saw Full Sun. I also saw him play aristocratic characters. As an actor, he was one of a kind. I was shocked by the news” of his death, she explained.
“Alain Delon’s name was synonymous with ‘handsome man.’ He was so handsome. I don’t know anyone more handsome than him. If I had to think of someone to compare him to, I would say George Clooney or Brad Pitt. But I don’t think there’s anyone who is as ‘classically’ handsome as him,” Fujita adds.
For many Japanese women, Alain Delon embodied the masculine ideal, as for Mikiko Tsuburaya, a 71-year-old woman from Tokyo.
“France and Europe were very distant places for me, so when I was young I always wondered where he came from. I was still a child (when he was popular). I looked at him as someone who lived in another world,” she says.
Time, however, seems to have worn down the star’s image in the archipelago a little, and it is difficult to find in the streets of Tokyo any audience other than women over 50 who are able to talk about the actor.