Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who starred in Ran, dies at 92
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Tatsuya Nakadai rose to fame when he appeared in the anti-war trilogy The Human Condition, which was released in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
PHOTO: AFP
TOKYO – Japanese stage and movie actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who starred in a string of Akira Kurosawa films, including the lead in Ran, has died at age 92, his acting school said on Nov 11.
Nakadai rose to fame in Japan and internationally under director Masaki Kobayashi, who cast him in his epic anti-war trilogy of the late 1950s and early 1960s, The Human Condition.
Nakadai’s acting school, Mumeijuku, did not say when the actor died or give 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.
Nakadai was the main protagonist in Kurosawa’s Kagemusha in 1980, which won the Palme d’Or top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
He 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.
Together with his late wife, actress Yasuko Miyazaki, Nakadai set up private acting school and troupe Mumeijuku in 1975 to educate 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 in 2025 at a theatre in the Noto region that was still reeling from a deadly earthquake on New Year’s Day in 2024. AFP
