Tatsuya Nakadai 1932-2025

 

Sword of Doom (1966)

 

Today (which happens to be Remembrance Day) I woke up and turned on my phone to find a WhatsApp message from a friend in Japan informing me that the great Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai had died on November 8 at the age of 92. As some readers will know, I spent around three years writing a book about Nakadai, published in 2021 under the title The Face of an Actor – The Life and Films of Tatsuya Nakadai.

I never met the man myself, although I tried my best to make it happen. In early 2020, I flew to Japan armed with a letter of introduction from the BBC’s Alan Yentob and tickets to see Nakadai on stage in Moliere’s Tartuffe, only to learn on arrival that the performances had been cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, which was still in its very early days at the time. I thought it was just possible that this might work out in my favour as Nakadai would now have more time on his hands at least, so I persuaded my Japanese friend Masa to phone his theatre school, Mumeijuku, and see what he could do. It didn’t come to anything in the end, probably because – understandably – they didn’t want to risk exposing the elderly actor to anyone while the pandemic was in progress, although they were too polite to say so.

I came to write the book in a roundabout kind of way. I had written one previous biography, Beware of the Actor – The Rise and Fall of Nicol Williamson (2017), as a result of which I came to know a wonderful gentleman named Leslie Megahey, who had directed Williamson in the film The Hour of the Pig and on stage in Jack – A Night on the Town with John Barrymore. Leslie had also made a documentary about Akira Kurosawa for the BBC back in 1986 and, after I finished my Williamson biography, it just so happened that he was writing the text to accompany a book showcasing Kurosawa film posters entitled Akira Kurosawa – A Life in Film. When he discovered that I was knowledgable on the films of Kurosawa and, to some extent, on Japanese culture, Leslie hired me to help him with some fact-checking and it was as a result of this that I came to decide upon Nakadai as the subject of my next book.

Before beginning my research, I knew very little about Nakadai beyond his film performances, and I was to be constantly surprised and impressed with what I discovered. He was born into a poor family in 1932 and his father died young from tuberculosis while Nakadai was still a child. During a bombing raid in World War II, a young girl he was trying to help to find shelter was killed in front of his eyes. Late in life, he confessed that he was still tormented by this image in his dreams decades later. It’s no wonder, then, that he took every opportunity to speak out against the horrors of war for his entire adult life.

Considering that Nakadai was an actor famous partly for samurai sword-wielding roles in films such as Sanjuro, Hara Kiri, Sword of Doom and several for director Hideo Gosha, it was surprising to learn that he was a theatre actor who had trained in shingeki, a theatre movement that sought to emulate Western realism and mainly performed Western works in translation – in other words, Nakadai actually began his career playing Westerners on stage! Although he made his 4-second film debut as a ronin wandering through town in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), it was not until Sanjuro (shot in 1961) that he played a proper samurai role on film. 

 

pre-fame in Oban (1957)

 

The most important influences on Nakadai’s career were, firstly, Koreya Senda, the founder of the Haiyuza theatre school where Nakadai trained; secondly, Masaki Kobayashi, who gave him his first really notable screen role in Black River (1957) and went on to cast him in the highly-coveted lead role in his Human Condition trilogy (1959-61) and finally, of course, Kurosawa, who cast him as the pistol-packing opponent of Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo (1961) and would eventually choose him for the lead in his late masterpieces Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985).

Despite all his film success, Nakadai maintained his independence, turning down offers of contracts from the major studios. He stubbornly remained a freelancer in film and never gave up the theatre. He continued as a member of Haiyuza for many years and eventually founded his own theatre school, Mumeijuku, in the late 1970s, a project that he continued right up until his passing. He used the money from his films to fund it, trained hundreds of actors over the years – including international star Koji Yakusho – and never charged an admission fee. It was also not just a school, but a theatre company that staged at least one production per year. In this endeavour, he was greatly helped by his wife, actor and writer Yasuko Miyazaki, who succumbed to cancer in 1996. The late 1990s were, as a result, a low point for Nakadai as he struggled to cope with this loss, but, fortunately, he decided to keep Mumeijuku going, partly as a tribute to his wife. In the 1960s, Yasuko had become pregnant but lost the baby and Mumeijuku had filled a void in their lives, something which was also helped by their adoption of Yasuko’s then 4-year-old niece, Nao, in 1978. 

 

Until the Break of Dawn (2012)

Nakadai’s late film career was disappointing and I’ve never understood why Japanese filmmakers failed to make good use of his talents in the 21^st century. The exception was Masahiro Kobayashi, who created three excellent roles for Nakadai in the films Haru’s Journey (2010), Japan’s Tragedy (2012) and Lear on the Shore (2017).

When I began researching for my book, I had no idea what I might find. It’s one thing to admire an actor’s performances, but this may not necessarily lead to admiration for them as a human being. However, the more I found out about Nakadai, the more my respect for him grew. He worked hard for what he achieved and, when fame arrived, he showed little interest in accumulating personal wealth, preferring instead to focus his energies on doing work he felt to be worthwhile for other reasons. As far as I know, he also remained faithful to his wife - it was difficult, in fact, to find a bad word said about him, at least in terms of the man as a human being (like all actors, he received bad notices occasionally). And just in case this piece has made him sound like some kind of goody-two-shoes, well – there are stories of him getting into drunken fights with fellow actors as well, so he certainly had a colourful side to him too! But there’s no doubt in my mind that we have lost a man who enriched the world by his presence.

The official announcement on the Mumeijuku website reads:

Actor Tatsuya Nakadai passed away at 12:25 AM on Saturday, November 8th due to pneumonia. This year, he played the lead role in the Noto Peninsula Earthquake Recovery Performance "Mother Courage and Her Children" and had just begun rehearsals for his next performance. Known worldwide for his work in the films of directors Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, he was a unique actor who was dedicated to his acting and remained active throughout his life. In accordance with Nakadai's wishes , the wake and funeral will be held only for close relatives, and there are no plans for a farewell party. We ask that you please refrain from offering any offerings or condolence money. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your support up to this day.