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TOKYO — Japanese stage and film actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who starred in a number of Akira Kurosawa films including the title role in “Ran,” has died at age 92, his acting school said Tuesday.
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Nakadai first achieved fame in Japan and abroad under the direction of director Masaki Kobayashi, who cast him in his epic anti-war trilogy The Human Condition of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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His acting school, Mumeijuku, did not say when Nakadai died or provide any other details.
Nakadai played a supporting role in Kurosawa's 1954 classic Seven Samurai, but later effectively replaced Toshiro Mifune as the famed director's leading man after Mifune went his own way.
He was the main character in Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
The actor also played a doomed warlord dividing his kingdom between his sons in Kurosawa's 1985 film Ran, based on Shakespeare's King Lear.
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Nakadai also starred in Kurosawa's 1961 samurai film Yojimbo – opposite Mifune – and worked with other directors including Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kon Ichikawa.
In 1975, with his late wife, actress Yasuko Miyazaki, he founded Mumeijuku, a private acting school and troupe, training young actors.
One former student is Koji Yakusho, who won the Best Actor award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for his role in Wim Wenders' Perfect Days.
Nakadai continued acting until recently, performing this year at a theater in the Noto area, which was still recovering from the deadly earthquake on New Year's Day last year.
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