Lean, wiry leading man who began his career in the 1950s and established himself in the films of director Masaki Kobayashi, notably as the hero of Kobayashi's great trilogy, "The Human Condition" (1959-61). Nakadai has also appeared in films by Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa; he is probably best known to Western audiences as Toshiro Mifune's vain, gun-toting nemesis in "Yojimbo" (1961) and as the Lear character in "Ran" (1985).