Stage and movie actor Tatsuya Nakadai (pic), who starred in a string of Akira Kurosawa films, including the lead in Ran, has died aged 92, his acting school said.
Nakadai first rose to fame in Japan and internationally under director Masaki Kobayashi, who cast him in his epic anti-war trilogy The Human Condition of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
His acting school, Mumeijuku, did not say yesterday when he died or give any other details.
Nakadai had a walk-on part in Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, but later effectively replaced Toshiro Mifune as the famed director’s go-to leading man after Mifune went his own way.
He was the main protagonist in Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980), which won the Palme d’Or top prize at the Cannes film festival.
The actor also played the doomed warlord who divides his kingdom between his sons in Ran, Kurosawa’s 1985 film based on the Shakespeare play King Lear.
Nakadai also starred in Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai film Yojimbo – with Mifune – and worked with other directors, including Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kon Ichikawa.
He set up Mumeijuku in 1975 together with his late wife, the actress Yasuko Miyazaki, educating younger actors.
One former pupil is Koji Yakusho, who won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 for his role in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days.
Nakadai continued acting until recently, performing this year at a theatre in the Noto region that was still reeling from a deadly earthquake on New Year’s Day last year. — AFP
