Beloved Japanese Actor Tatsuya Nakadai, Who Collaborated With Kurosawa and Kobayashi, Dies Aged 92

Tatsuya Nakadai, beloved prima of Japan’s aureate property of cinema and a predominant collaborator of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, has died aged 92.

The actor, who roseate to fame moving with Japanese filmmaker Masaki Kobayashi, died from pneumonia successful a infirmary successful Tokyo connected Saturday, November 8, according to a Japanese quality bureau who cited sources adjacent to the precocious performer, The Guardian reports.

Tatsuya Nakadai connected May 20, 2025. Photo by STR/JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images.

Nakadai had implicit 100 surface credits to his resume, which made up a agelong and varied vocation that lasted implicit 70 years. Internationally, though, helium is astir apt champion known for his enactment successful Kurosawa’s 1985 movie Ran, an epic modeled aft Shakespeare’s King Lear acceptable successful the Sengoku “warning states” period. Nakadai played a warlord named Hidetora Ichimonji successful the project, which helped the filmmaker cinch his 1 and lone Academy Award information for champion director.

Tatsuya Nakadai successful 1985 film, Ran. Photo by Kaku KURITA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Nakadai was well-known for moving successful films that featured samurai themes and for moving with the chanbara sword-fighting benignant successful those projects. Despite his designation for his enactment with Kurosawa, it could beryllium said that Nakadai’s occurrence successful the tract was fostered by Kobayashi. The filmmaker formed him successful the pb relation successful his legendary The Human Condition trilogy of films, which ran from 1959 to 1961, successful the earlier days of Nakadai’s career. Before that, though, helium was formed arsenic a captive successful an uncredited relation for Kobayashi’s 1953 warfare play The Thick-Walled Room, which was the existent commencement of their decades-long collaboration.

Akira Kurosawa and Tatsuya Nakadai astatine the Cannes Film Festival successful 1980. Photo by Bertrand LAFORET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

The histrion was calved eastbound of Tokyo, successful Chiba, to a moving people household successful 1932. In the aboriginal 1950s, helium decided to prosecute acting alternatively of taking connected indebtedness to further his acquisition astatine an costly university. He preferred the signifier to the surface contempt his vibrant movie career, and had epic plays specified arsenic Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, Don Quixote, and Macbeth arsenic portion of his resume implicit the years.

In 1975, helium and his woman Yasuko Miyazaki opened the Mumeijuku schoolhouse for young actors successful Tokyo. In 2015, Nakadai was awarded the Order of Culture, which is Japan’s highest grant for contributions to the arts, by the emperor. Needless to say, helium volition beryllium sorely missed, and his important enactment volition beryllium remembered for years to come.

Lex Briscuso is simply a movie and tv professional and a freelance amusement writer for IGN. You tin travel her connected Twitter astatine @nikonamerica.