Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6501
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Masami Nagasawa 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.
Masami Nagasawa appears in 22 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masami. Your Name. is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 romance, drama, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michihito Fujii, Shinsuke Sato, Hideaki Anno and others, Masami Nagasawa 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.
Your Name. (2016) as Miki Okudera (voice) · Hokusai's Daughter (2025) as Katsushika Oi · Dollhouse (2025) as Yoshie Suzuki
Career snapshot
Ranked #6501 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
22
2008–2026
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Your Name.
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Your Name.
Most frequent director
Shinsuke Sato
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Shinsuke Sato
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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
2000s
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. La Maison en Petits Cubes — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. La Maison en Petits Cubes.
Most productive era
2020s
14 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.31 film | 8.02 films | 6.27 films |
| Action | — | 6.92 films | 6.95 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.22 films | 6.12 films |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film | 6.82 films |
| Romance | — | 8.71 film | 3.52 films |
| Horror | — | — | 7.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Narrator (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2016Your Name.
8.7 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
The current state of the argument, as Uta Kojima.
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.
22 of 22 films
as Miki Okudera (voice)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
as Minako
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.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Miki Okudera (voice)
Your Name. (2016)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Miki Okudera (voice) gives Masami Nagasawa a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Katsushika Oi
Hokusai's Daughter (2025)
Performance score8.3
Hokusai's Daughter asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Katsushika Oi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Yoshie Suzuki
Dollhouse (2025)
Performance score8.1
Dollhouse asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yoshie Suzuki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Minako
The Parades (2024)
Performance score8.1
The Parades asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Minako 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 Miki Okudera (voice)
Start here. Your Name. is the clearest statement of what Masami Nagasawa does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masami 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 Confidence Man JP - The Movie - (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Your Name. — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Parades (2024)
A deliberate change of key after The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hokusai's Daughter (2025)
Keeps the drama register of The Parades but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dollhouse (2025)
Same director as Hokusai's Daughter, 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.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
4 films together
Notably Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny
Akira Tanaka
Director
2 films together
Notably The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -
Masayuki Suzuki
Director
2 films together
Notably Masquerade Hotel
Kunio Kato
Director
1 film together
Notably La Maison en Petits Cubes
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together
Notably I Wish
Makoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together
Notably Your Name.
Kazuaki Imai
Director
1 film together
Notably Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure Island
Shinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Shin Ultraman
Hideaki Anno
Director
1 film together
Notably Shin Kamen Rider
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably The Parades
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shinsuke Sato
Director
4 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kingdom III: The Flame of DestinyAkira Tanaka
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -Masayuki Suzuki
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Masquerade HotelMakoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Your Name.Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ParadesShinji Higuchi
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shin UltramanHirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I WishKunio Kato
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
La Maison en Petits CubesHideaki Anno
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shin Kamen RiderKazuaki Imai
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doraemon: Nobita's Treasure IslandSix 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
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (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
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kingdom III: The Flame of Destiny
as Yo Tan Wa (Yang Duan He)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (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. Masami Nagasawa 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
10 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
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dollhouse
as Yoshie Suzuki
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Masquerade Hotel
as Naomi Yamagishi
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kingdom: Return of the Great General
as Yo Tan Wa (Yang Duan He)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
La Maison en Petits Cubes
as Narrator (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Your Name.
as Miki Okudera (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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