Nakadai Tatsuya

One of the giants of Japanese cinema, Nakadai Tatsuya, died on November 8th, though his death was announced yesterday, the 11th. He was 92. This charismatic actor who gave cinema such a wide diversity of performances throughout a very long career nevertheless primarily considered himself a theatre actor. He starred in a long list of productions, many of them Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare. You know an actor's versatile when he's played Richard III and Falstaff. So it's fitting that his best known role in the west is probably as Ichimonji Hidetora in Kurosawa Akira's adaptation of King Lear called Ran (乱).

Nakadai's large eyes that lent charisma to so many of the characters in his youth became the mad, desperate eyes of the Daimyo whose world is collapsing around him, the betrayal surrounding him revealing the worst of human nature from which he'd theretofore been somehow sheltered. But that was just the last in a series of films he made with Kurosawa Akira. He had a crucial role in Yojimbo (用心棒), one of Kurosawa's most famous films, as the sadistic yakuza gunman. Nakadai's talent as an actor enabled him to play another character in the sequel, Sanjuro (椿三十郎), a man whose life is defined by conscientious observance of duty.

He made eleven films with Kobayashi Masaki and, while I don't myself think of Kobayashi on the same level as Kurosawa, Naruse, or Ichikawa, Nakadai's work for the famed director is certainly impressive. Sword of Doom (大菩薩峠) and Harakiri (切腹) are still well known films among western cinephiles. And few actors have undergone the kind of arduous effort that Nakadai made in Kobayashi's anti-war trilogy, The Human Condition (人間の條件), in which he played a soldier whose experiences form the basis of Kobayashi's unvarnished criticism of Japan's wartime policies and the crimes committed by its officers in China.

He appeared in more conservative films as well, serving as narrator for Japan's Longest Day (日本のいちばん長い日), the star-studded look back on the last days of World War II that portrayed the outgoing wartime staff with honour and dignity.

These films, two of the Kurosawa movies I mentioned as well as the Kobayashi movies and Japan's Longest Day, were all made in the 1960s, a decade in which Nakadai also starred in the haunting sci-fi classic The Face of Another (他人の顔) and had memorable roles in three movies by the great director of domestic dramas, Naruse Mikio, including the film for which Naruse is best remembered now in many countries, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (女が階段を上る時).

I can think of very few actors whose careers could match Nakadai's in terms of longevity and diversity. He's certainly always a welcome sight. Any film he turns up in is one I know will be well worth watching.