Tatsuya Nakadai (1932-2025)
Among Japan's greatest actors and known for his extensive collaboration with Japan's acclaimed directors, dies at 92.
Considered as one of the greatest actors during the golden age of Japanese cinema, Tatsuya Nakadai appeared in more than 160 films. Internationally, he is known for his frequent collaboration with directors Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi.
Nakadai was born in an impoverished family, and endured a difficult childhood during World War II. After the war, he spent his youth working part-time jobs. He turned to acting as he finds it to be a means to survive. He would then watch films, including foreign films, which made him decide to pursue acting.
At the age of 18, he joined the Haiyuza school in Tokyo, founded by Koreya Senda. There he studied shingeki or “new drama,” a style of theater focus on naturalistic acting, bringing together the old traditional theater and politically oriented experimental plays and modern works. Among his classmates were Utsui Ken and Sato Kei.
In order to make ends meet while studying acting, he worked on radio dramas, which helped him land a role in Inoue Umetsugu’s film Hi no Tori (filmed in 1953, released in 1956). He then received exclusive contract offers, but he chose to work as a freelancer in order to continue working in theater.
During his auditioning, he made an impression in two directors, Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, where he got two uncredited parts in each of their movies.
In Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), he revealed that he had a terrible experience portraying the samurai wandering through town. He assumes that since the role would be filmed in a single shot, and he only needs to walk along the street, it won't require much effort. However, Nakadai never performed this role, let alone donning a kimono and carrying a sword, because he was a novice at the time and his training primarily focused on modern plays. Frustrated, Kurosawa made him to retake the scene starting from 9:00 AM. When the director was satisfied, the scene ended at 3:00 PM. Nakadai felt humiliated as he knows that the crew and his acting idols, Toshirō Mifune and Takashi Shimura were watching the scene. He's also unaware of the director's exhausting perfectionism. He decided never to work again with Kurosawa.
However, Kurosawa was so impressed by his performance in The Human Condition that he insisted on casting him in his next film, Yojimbo (1961). Nakadai initially tried to turn down the offer as he still remembers the humiliation, but Kurosawa persisted. When the actor revealed this experience, the director persuades him that was the reason as a way to win him over.
Nakadai played an uncredited prisoner in Kobayashi's 1953 film The Thick-walled Room. The director is so pleased with his performance that he asked him to play the antagonist in Black River (1957). After that, Nakadai starred in a number of movies, but his second collaboration with Masaki Kobayashi's blockbuster hit, The Human Condition (Trilogy, 1959–1961), turned him into a big star. Their partnership would last for three decades.
Throughout his career, Nakadai appeared in numerous stage productions, including “Hamlet”, “Richard III” and “Driving Miss Daisy”. In 1975, he and his wife founded an acting school, Mumeijuku (Studio for Unknown Performers), which he still runs until his passing. One of their famed students is Koji Yakusho (Perfect Days, Tampopo, The Eel).
With his work, he received awards including Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1996 and the Order of Culture, Japan’s Highest Honor for contribution to the arts and science by the emperor, in 2015.
Sources:
Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese actor of Ran, Yojimbo and Harakiri, dies aged 92 | https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/nov/11/tatsuya-nakadai-japan-actor-kurosawa-ran-yojimbo-kobayashi-cause-of-death
Tatsuya Nakadai | https://www.mumeijuku.net/nakadai/index.html
Senda Koreya: Theater for Change | https://www.international.ucla.edu/institute/article/40075
Nakadai Tatsuya on the Golden Age of Japanese Film (English Translation) | http://kumomi.org/nakadai-tatsuya-on-the-golden-age-of-japanese-film/
