Biography

Though a frequent on-screen rival, he was good friends with Toshirō Mifune.

Although it was commonplace for actors, evening leading men, in Japan to do their own stunt work in the 1950s through at least the 1970s (when actor's union laws enforced safer conditions on sets), the film sets of Masaki Kobayashi were particularly dangerous for Nakadai. During the filming of "The Human Condition", Nakadai was actually beaten by other actors in a boot-camp scene where his character Kaji is brutalized for rebelling against more experienced soldiers. According to Nakadai, the swelling of his face and some of the blood is real on this scene. Later in The Human Condition, his character collapses in a frozen field and is covered by snow, this was real snow and done by Nakadai himself, who came very near to hypothermia. During the filming of Harakiri (1962) real, sharp samurai swords were used in the battle scenes (according to Nakadai, this is not his only samurai film where real swords were used but is the only one where absolutely no dull, stage swords were utilized), much to Nakadai's very reasonable concern, since a mistimed slash could have been fatal for him or the other actors. Amazingly, no one was seriously injured during filming.

His beard caught fire during the apocalyptic castle-burning scene in Ran (1985).

He played characters of a very different age from his own through his career. In Harakiri (1962), he played a samurai in his 50s while he was 33. In Kwaidan (1964), he played a 18-year-old woodcutter when he himself was 36. In Ran (1985) he played a nearly 80-year-old war lord when he was 56.

After the embarrassing grilling by Kurosawa on the set of Seven Samurai, the then 19 year old Nakadai decided to work very hard on his acting skills so as to be able to reject any future offer by the director. The part in question was an uncredited extra with a few seconds on screen and Nakadai never found out why he was not simply replaced by another actor.

You're willing to take a plunge from any height. There's just something about being in front of a camera. And being in front of an audience is the same thing. It's hopeless. I guess I'm just a ham.

I think I tend to prefer freedom. I've always worked in a manner that I will give it my all; I'll do it to my heart's content, and then the director will tell me, "You can tone it down a little. You don't have to go so far." That's the way I've always worked and I think I don't really prefer that oppressive type of direction.

Japanese cinema was very focused on capturing both the ordinary and the extraordinary, so a lot of the things that we captured tended to be existentialist, as well. In the films, there were influences by Camus or Sartre, different philosophers. In the theater, we referred to Brecht, so in that sense there was a lot of inclination towards existentialism and extraordinary references were very strong. In that sense, I thought this piece - that was based on Abe Kobo's work - was something altogether very different from works by Kurosawa, for instance.

If someone were to ask me on my deathbed what my best film was, I think I'd say it was Harakiri, which I made when I was 29. You could say my most important work was finished by the time I was 29! So I'd like to put Harakiri (1962) on the list. Next is Yojimbo (1961). And then there's a director named Kihachi Okamoto, who did a film called The Sword of Doom - this was a very difficult film for me, one that's been made into a movie many times in Japan. Then there's Ran (1985) - the last film I did with Kurosawa. Before that, I took over for the actor Shintarō Katsu in Kurosawa's Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Lastly, there's Hideo Gosha's The Steel Edge of Revenge (1969), which is a little bit different from an ordinary Samurai film.

I'm quieter than average, and a bit solitary. I think maybe those characteristics have something in common with the positive elements of a Samurai. I'm a loner. I worked hard as a film actor, but essentially I'm a theatre actor. For sixty-some years I served those two masters, but I never signed with a film company. Maybe you can call that lone wolf behavior a connection.