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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
21st 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.
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