Actor: Tatsuya Nakadai
Tatsuya Nakadai worked with Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Gosha and Naruse, and is usually positioned as the alternative to Mifune, which undersells him. He was a shop assistant discovered by Masaki Kobayashi and appeared as an extra in Seven Samurai before anything else.
Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion for Kobayashi are among the most formally severe films the samurai genre produced, and Nakadai plays both leads with a control that makes the eventual violence unbearable.
He then took the Mifune roles when the Kurosawa partnership ended, starring in Kagemusha and Ran. The dual performance in Kagemusha, a thief impersonating a warlord, requires him to play a man performing another man badly.
He also led The Sword of Doom, whose protagonist is a nihilist swordsman with no redeeming quality at all, and the film ends mid-slaughter with no resolution.
