Shinji Kojima was Japan's biggest film star in the 1970s, playing the wandering samurai barber Rising Hawk. He has been recognized for singlehandedly creating the most famous international genre of Asian cinema: father-daughter/samurai/barber vs kaiju (monster) movies. Kojima (who prefers being called 'Koji') wrote, directed, and starred in all fourteen movies in the series.Koji's real-life daughter, Yuki, played his daughter Chick for the entire series, riding on Koji's back in a wooden papoose to cover her father's back.The series came to an abrupt end with Hawk and Chick vs the Giant Butterfly in 1985. Despite earning the highest box office gross in Japanese film history, as well as significant growth of fans overseas, Koji and Yuki both vanished from the Japanese film scene immediately after the film's premiere in Kyoto's Toei Eigamura theme park.Frustrated fans of the beloved samurai father-daughter team have theorized that Yuki had a sudden growth spurt and could no longer fit in Hawk's papoose. Conspiracy theorists have whispered the final two or three films in the series were made with Yakuza money, forcing the Kojima family underground, possibly fleeing to Norway to live out their lives as cod fisherpeople.To this day, sightings of Hawk and Chick are reported across the world, though all have been dismissed as hoaxes: the most unlikely ones include Koji is now a grower of organic mushrooms, and Yuki moving to Newark to become an accountant. Show less «