Chiba Shinichi, also known as Sonny Chiba, was a Japanese actor, singer, film producer, film director, and martial artist. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience.

Born Maeda Sadaho in Fukuoka, Japan, he was the third of five children in the family of a military test pilot. When he was four years old, his father was transferred to Kisarazu, Chiba, and the family moved to Kimitsu, Chiba.

After Chiba went to junior high school in Kimitsu, the physical education teacher advised him to do artistic gymnastics. He also was passionate about track and field sports, baseball, and volleyball. In high school, Chiba dedicated himself to artistic gymnastics and won the National Sports Festival of Japan while in his third year.

Chiba went to the Nippon Sport Science University in 1957. He was a serious candidate for a place in the Japanese Olympic team in his late teens until he was sidelined by a back injury. While he was a university student, he began studying martial arts with the renowned Kyokushin Karate master Oyama "Mas" Masutatsu (whom he later portrayed in a trilogy of films), which led to a first-degree black belt on October 15, 1965, later receiving a fourth-degree on January 20, 1984.

Sometime around 1960, he was discovered in a talent search (called "New Face") by the Toei film studio, and he began his screen career soon after. His acting career began on television, starring in two tokusatsu superhero shows.

Over the next decade, he was cast primarily in crime thrillers. By 1970, Chiba had started his own training school for aspiring martial arts film actors and stunt performers known as J.A.C (Japan Action Club). Chiba's breakthrough international hit was The Street Fighter (1974) which was brought to Western audiences by New Line Cinema. The film and its sequels established him as the reigning Japanese martial arts actor in international cinema for the next two decades.

Chiba was even busier in the 1980s, doing dozens of movies as well as making forays into television, and with roles in such high-profile adventures as the popular Hong Kong comic-based movie: The Storm Riders (1998), starring alongside Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok. His fame in Japan remained unabated into the 1990s.

In his fifties, the actor resumed working as a choreographer of martial arts sequences. At the dawn of the 21st century, Chiba was as busy as ever in feature films and also starring in his own series in Japan. Roles in Takashi Miike's Deadly Outlaw: Rekka and his work with directors Fukasaku Kenta and Kinji in Battle Royale II effectively bridged the gap between modern-day and yesteryear cinematic cult legends. Chiba's enduring onscreen career received a tribute when he appeared in a key role as Hattori Hanzo, the owner of a sushi restaurant and retired samurai sword craftsman, in director Quentin Tarantino's bloody revenge epic Kill Bill in 2003.

Chiba starred in more than 125 films for Toei Studios and has won numerous awards in Japan for his acting In November 2007, he announced the retirement of the stage name Chiba Shinichi and would be known (in Japan) as J.J. Sonny Chiba as an actor and Wachinaga Rindo as a film director.

Chiba established the Japan Action Club, now Japan Action Enterprise (JAE), to develop and raise the level of martial arts techniques and sequences used in Japanese film and television.

Chiba divorced his first wife, actress Nogiwa Yoko, with whom he had a daughter, Manase Juri, who is also an actress. He had two sons from his second marriage to Chiba Tamami (which lasted from 1996 to 2015), both are actors: Arata Mackenyu, born on November 16, 1996, and Gordon, born in 2000. He currently lives in Yokohama, Japan.

His younger brother, Yabuki Jiro (also known as Chiba Jiro), is a former actor.

He died on 19th August 2021 due to complications caused by COVID-19.

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