Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#25824
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yutaka Matsushige represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Yutaka is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yutaka Matsushige appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yutaka. 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mamoru Hosoda, Michihito Fujii, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others, Yutaka Matsushige 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.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024) as Nakazato · Our 30-Minute Sessions (2020) as Fujio Yoshii · Inu-Oh (2022) as Tomona's Father (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #25824 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
Most frequent director
Michihito Fujii
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Michihito Fujii
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
2020s
6.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Scarlet, Faceless, Cloud — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.8
Across 12 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.8
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. Ring, The Spiral.
Most productive era
2020s
12 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 | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.91 film | 6.810 films |
| Action | — | 6.21 film | 6.13 films |
| Thriller | 6.22 films | 6.21 film | 6.73 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.62 films | 6.44 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.93 films |
| Romance | — | 6.91 film | 6.74 films |
| Horror | 6.22 films | — | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Ring
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yoshino.
Highest rated performance
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2022Inu-Oh
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025Scarlet
The current state of the argument, as Cornelius (voice).
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.
16 of 16 films
as Cornelius (voice)
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
as Tomona's Father (voice)
Directed by Masaaki Yuasa
as Fujio Yoshii
Directed by Unknown
as Akihisa Takabayashi
Directed by Michihito Fujii
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
Cornelius (voice)
Scarlet (2025)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cornelius (voice) gives Yutaka Matsushige a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tomona's Father (voice)
Inu-Oh (2022)
Performance score7.5
Inu-Oh asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tomona's Father (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Nakazato
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024)
Performance score7.3
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nakazato is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Fujio Yoshii
Our 30-Minute Sessions (2020)
Performance score7.3
Our 30-Minute Sessions asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fujio Yoshii 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 Cornelius (voice)
Start here. Scarlet is the clearest statement of what Yutaka Matsushige does — accessible, 112 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yutaka 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.
Our 30-Minute Sessions (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Scarlet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Inu-Oh (2022)
Keeps the fantasy register of Our 30-Minute Sessions but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Last 10 Years (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Inu-Oh but asks for a colder reading of it.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024)
Same director as The Last 10 Years, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michihito Fujii
Director
3 films together
Notably 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
Hideo Nakata
Director
1 film together
Notably Ring
Takashi Miike
Director
1 film together
Notably Sukiyaki Western Django
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Tokyo!
Nobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Voice of Sin
Masaaki Yuasa
Director
1 film together
Notably Inu-Oh
Satoshi Miki
Director
1 film together
Notably What to Do With the Dead Kaiju?
Ayuko Tsukahara
Director
1 film together
Notably Last Mile
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Cloud
Mamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together
Notably Scarlet
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michihito Fujii
Director
3 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
18x2 Beyond Youthful DaysMasaaki Yuasa
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Inu-OhNobuhiro Doi
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Voice of SinMamoru Hosoda
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ScarletHideo Nakata
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RingMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tokyo!Ayuko Tsukahara
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Last MileKiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CloudTakashi Miike
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sukiyaki Western DjangoSatoshi Miki
Director
1 film together · 4.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju?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
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
as Nakazato
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
as Nakazato
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Our 30-Minute Sessions
as Fujio Yoshii
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Last Mile
as Kamikura Yasuo
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Scarlet
as Cornelius (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. Yutaka Matsushige 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
27 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
11 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
Inu-Oh
as Tomona's Father (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Voice of Sin
as Yosuke Mizushima
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
as Nakazato
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Spiral
as Yoshino
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Scarlet
as Cornelius (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sukiyaki Western Django
as Toshio
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tokyo!
as (segment "Shaking Tokyo")
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Our 30-Minute Sessions
as Fujio Yoshii
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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