Actor Tatsuya Nakadai has died. He starred in classics like ‘Ran’ and ‘Harakiri’ : NPR

Tatsuya Nakadai, veteran Japanese actor, best known for films such as Running, High and Low And Harakiridied on Saturday at the age of 92. His collaborations with some of Japan's greatest directors cemented him as an icon of the “Golden Age” of Japanese cinema.

According to the department, he died of pneumonia. Mumeijukuacting school and theater troupe founded by Nakadai.

Nakadai began his career as a stage actor and remained committed to the stage throughout his life—in part because, unlike many actors of his time, he refused to sign an exclusive contract with a film studio. It also gave him the freedom to take on different roles – in samurai epics, realistic dramas, crime thrillers and even science fiction – and work with many different directors throughout his career.

After a short cameo role in Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film. Seven Samuraifilm, who is also the most revered actor all over the world, he played the main role in Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy. Human condition (1959–1961). In the series, Nakadai plays a pacifist soldier in World War II Japan.

He attributed much of his success to Kobayashi, whom he considered a mentor. “I owe Kurosawa a lot, though,” he said in an interview on the Criterion Channel. interview translated into English“The director who discovered me and turned me into the working actor I am today was Masaki Kobayashi.”

During filming The human condition which took about four years to complete, Nakadai continued to work with Kurosawa. He starred opposite Toshiro Mifune, another Japanese film legend, in the film Yojimbo in 1961 and High and low in 1963.

WITH HarakiriNakadai's partnership with Kobayashi reached its climax. In the 1962 film, Nakadai plays a lonely samurai who asks a local lord for permission to commit hara-kiri, a form of ritual suicide. The actor used a stylized narration voice to play a character narrating the events that led to his downfall, reminiscent of kabuki, a form of traditional Japanese theater. In 2005 interviewNakadai described the film as a “dialogue drama” that allowed him to apply what he learned on stage to his acting on screen. It is not surprising that the actor, who considered theater his main profession, preferred Harakiri above all his other films.

Perhaps his most famous role came in 1985, in Kurosawa's final epic. Ranloosely based on King Lear. Although he was only in his fifties, Nakadai played the aging warlord Hidetora Ichimonji, wearing heavy makeup to fully embody the character.

The many opportunities Nakadai enjoyed as an actor came with enormous pressure. “For me, when I was twenty, it was like climbing Mount Fuji with a heavy load on my back, huffing and puffing,” he said in 2005. “I felt like I was lifting, and that heavy load was everyone’s masterpiece.”

The “heavy burden” that he bore as a significant contribution to the development of Japanese cinema did not go unnoticed in Japan. In 1996, he was awarded the Japan Medal with Purple Ribbon, given for achievements in the arts and sciences, and in 2015, the Emperor awarded him the Order of Culture, the highest honor given to citizens who have achieved great achievements in the arts and sciences.