Kon-nichiwa Chandramukhi

[Arunachalam hoarding, at the time of the movie's release, sharing space with other Hollywood biggies in Tokyo's equivalent of Times Square]

It looks like Japan's craze for Rajnikanth and his movies continues unabated. Five Japanese, one of whom is a monk, have travelled all the way to Chennai from Japan to catch his latest flick! Another news item about the five fans talks about an increase in the number of students enrolling in Tamil courses in Japanese universities as a result of Rajnikanth's popularity!

It was with Rajni's Muthu, dubbed Dancing Maharaja in Japan, that the Japanese were introduced to our own Superstar. If I remember correctly, the Muthu DVD was picked up by a Japanese critic who liked it so much that he wrote about it, leading to public awareness about the film. The Japanese found that they loved the feel-good entertainer with all of its comedy, sentiments, fights and colorful song sequences and naturally, became fans of its larger-than-life hero too. Soon, fan clubs and websites(here's one) for Rajnikanth popped up. All his subsequent movies were dubbed and released in Japan and fans started making their way to Chennai to meet him. Rajni even attempted to capitalize on his popularity in Japan by having a Japanese character in Baba but that, like the rest of the gimmicks in that movie, just seemed silly.

With not much talk about his Japanese fans recently and CM not being released in Japan, I thought that Rajni's popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun was on the decline. But with fans like these, I guess he is as popular as ever...