Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#95966
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Takehiro Murata represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Takehiro is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Takehiro Murata appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Takehiro. Pom Poko is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, romance, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ryuichi Kitahata, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Isao Takahata, Takehiro Murata 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.
Pom Poko (1994) as Bunta (voice) · Labyrinth of Cinema (2020) as Saigo Takamori · A Fool's Love (2024) as Tubaki
Career snapshot
Ranked #95966 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1994–2025
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Pom Poko
Average Nutevio score
4.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Pom Poko
Most frequent director
Ryuichi Kitahata
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ryuichi Kitahata
Most common genre
Drama
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.3
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Pom Poko — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Pom Poko.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 3.02 films |
| Romance | — | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1994Pom Poko
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bunta (voice). 7.0 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
2025今日もカレーですか？
The current state of the argument, as 山川健三郎.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Bunta (voice)
Directed by Isao Takahata
as Saigo Takamori
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
as Tubaki
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Bunta (voice)
Pom Poko (1994)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bunta (voice) gives Takehiro Murata a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Saigo Takamori
Labyrinth of Cinema (2020)
Performance score6.7
Labyrinth of Cinema asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Saigo Takamori is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
山川健三郎
今日もカレーですか？ (2025)
Performance score6.5
今日もカレーですか？ asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 山川健三郎 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tubaki
A Fool's Love (2024)
Performance score6.5
A Fool's Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tubaki 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
as Bunta (voice)
Start here. Pom Poko is the clearest statement of what Takehiro Murata does — accessible, 119 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Takehiro 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.
GOKU-OH 3 (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Pom Poko — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Labyrinth of Cinema (2020)
A deliberate change of key after GOKU-OH 3 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Fool's Love (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Labyrinth of Cinema — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
今日もカレーですか？ (2025)
Keeps the drama register of A Fool's Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Isao Takahata
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pom PokoNobuhiko Obayashi
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Labyrinth of CinemaRyuichi Kitahata
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
今日もカレーですか？Six 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
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Fool's Love
as Tubaki
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Labyrinth of Cinema
as Saigo Takamori
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
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. Takehiro Murata 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.
Career Achievement
Awarded
31 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
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
2 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
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Fool's Love
as Tubaki
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pom Poko
as Bunta (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Labyrinth of Cinema
as Saigo Takamori
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
今日もカレーですか？
as 山川健三郎
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and drama
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Takehiro Murata performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
