Japanese Film Legend, Tatsuya Nakadai, Dies Aged 92
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Tatsuya Nakadai has died aged 92. One of Japan’s most celebrated stage and screen actors, a spokesperson from his acting studio reported he died in a Tokyo hospital from pneumonia early on Saturday.
Born on December 13, 1932, as Motohisa Nakadai, he was the second of four siblings. Raised in Chiba, Japan, his father died in 1941, prompting a family move to Aoyama. As a young adult, Nakadai pursued acting as a career, learning at the Haiyuza Training School. He entered the profession through the Shingeki movement, a new theatre movement that emphasised realism over the more traditional, stylised gestures of Kabuki and Noh.
The first two films that Nakadai would appear in were both uncredited. But both were directed by filmmakers he would frequently collaborate with in the future. In the early 1950s, Nakadai was working in a Tokyo shop, where a chance meeting with Masaki Kobayashi would see him star as a prisoner in The Thick-Walled Room. While technically his first acting credit, the film would not be released until 1956. This would make his first on-screen appearance in the 1954 film Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa.
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Nakadai’s acting career had seen him have more than 150 screen credits, working with many filmmakers across his seven-decade career. Filmmakers such as Kon Ichikawa, Mikio Naruse, and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Not being bound by a contract to any one Japanese studio allowed him the freedom to take on any role that came his way. Along with film and television projects, he starred in many theatre productions, including Death of a Salesman, Don Quixote, and Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet and Macbeth.
Nakadai won two Blue Ribbon Awards for Harakiri in 1962, and for both Kagemusha and The Battle of Port Arthur in 1980. The Order of Culture was awarded to him in 2015 for his contributions to the arts and sciences.
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Source: The Independent, Variety
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