Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#19244
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Takashi Yamanaka works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Takashi Yamanaka appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Takashi. Fragments of the Last Will is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, thriller, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michihito Fujii, Takahisa Zeze, Masaharu Take and others, Takashi Yamanaka helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Fragments of the Last Will (2022) · Rolling Marbles (2020) · Family of Strangers (2019) as Nobuo Shimazaki
Career snapshot
Ranked #19244 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2011–2025
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Fragments of the Last Will
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Fragments of the Last Will
Most frequent director
Michihito Fujii
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Michihito Fujii
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 56m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.6
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
7.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Family of Strangers, The Island of Cats, We Are Little Zombies — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Family of Strangers, The Island of Cats, We Are Little Zombies.
Most productive era
2020s
8 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.14 films | 7.08 films |
| Action | — | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.23 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.21 film |
| Crime | — | 5.92 films |
| Romance | — | 7.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lieutenant Asakura.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Fragments of the Last Will
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025Blue Boy Trial
The current state of the argument, as Dr. Akagi.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
12 of 12 films
Directed by Takahisa Zeze
as White Collar Worker
Directed by Michihito Fujii
as Lieutenant Asakura
Directed by Zhang Yimou
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Fragments of the Last Will
Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Takashi Yamanaka a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
White Collar Worker
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024)
Performance score7.6
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. White Collar Worker is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Rolling Marbles
Rolling Marbles (2020)
Performance score7.5
Rolling Marbles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nobuo Shimazaki
Family of Strangers (2019)
Performance score7.4
Family of Strangers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nobuo Shimazaki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
Start here. Fragments of the Last Will is the clearest statement of what Takashi Yamanaka does — accessible, 134 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Takashi at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Flowers of War (2011)
Keeps the drama register of Fragments of the Last Will but asks for a colder reading of it.
Family of Strangers (2019)
Keeps the drama register of The Flowers of War but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rolling Marbles (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Family of Strangers but asks for a colder reading of it.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Rolling Marbles but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michihito Fujii
Director
3 films together
Notably 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
Zhang Yimou
Director
1 film together
Notably The Flowers of War
Makoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together
Notably We Are Little Zombies
Hideyuki Hirayama
Director
1 film together
Notably Family of Strangers
Shuichi Okita
Director
1 film together
Notably Ora, Ora Be Goin' Alone
Masaharu Take
Director
1 film together
Notably The Gun 2020
Takahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together
Notably Fragments of the Last Will
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michihito Fujii
Director
3 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
18x2 Beyond Youthful DaysTakahisa Zeze
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fragments of the Last WillHideyuki Hirayama
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Family of StrangersZhang Yimou
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Flowers of WarShuichi Okita
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ora, Ora Be Goin' AloneMakoto Nagahisa
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Are Little ZombiesMasaharu Take
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Gun 2020Six degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Fragments of the Last Will
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Fragments of the Last Will
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fragments of the Last Will
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fragments of the Last Will
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fragments of the Last Will
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Takashi Yamanaka has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Fragments of the Last Will
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hard Days
as Masashi Kaji
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
as White Collar Worker
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Gun 2020
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fragments of the Last Will
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Hard Days
as Masashi Kaji
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
as White Collar Worker
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Faceless
as Ashikaga
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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