Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese Film Legend That Starred in ‘Ran,’ ‘Harakiri’ and ‘The Human Condition’ Trilogy, Dies at 92

Tatsuya Nakadai, one of Japan’s most celebrated stage and screen actors who was a frequent collaborator of director Masaki Kobayashi and led Akira Kurosawa titles such as “Ran,” “Kagemusha” and “High and Low,” has died. He was 92.

Nakadai’s death was reported Tuesday in Japan by The Japan News.

With more than 100 screen credits through his seven-decade-spanning career, Nakadai’s body of work spanned a veritable who’s-who of Japanese cinema for the second half of the twentieth century, working with filmmakers like Hiroshi Teshigahara, Mikio Naruse and Kon Ichikawa. He considered himself primarily a theater actor, and he never signed an overall contract with any Japanese studio, leaving him free to work with many different directors.

His on-screen debut was an uncredited role playing a prisoner in Kobayashi’s 1953 drama “The Thick-Walled Room,” beginning a partnership that would continue through the next three decades and include titles like “Samurai Rebellion” and “Kwaidan.