Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#46794
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Yasukaze Motomiya 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.
Yasukaze Motomiya appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yasukaze. Tokyo Dragon Chef is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 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 mystery, horror, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hiroyuki Tsuji, Koichi Sakamoto, Kyouhei Yamaguchi and others, Yasukaze Motomiya 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.
Tokyo Dragon Chef (2020) as Ryu · Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation (2023) as Licht Kugimiya · Ghost Killer (2025)
Career snapshot
Ranked #46794 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Tokyo Dragon Chef
Average Nutevio score
3.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Tokyo Dragon Chef
Most frequent director
Hiroyuki Tsuji
8 films together
Longest collaboration
8×
With Hiroyuki Tsuji
Most common genre
Action
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.2
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
3.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Curse, Yakuza Powered by Nihon Touitsu, Shogun's Ninja — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
3.2
Across 17 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
3.2
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. Unification of Japan 36.
Most productive era
2020s
17 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 | 0.01 film | 1.16 films |
| Action | 0.01 film | 4.011 films |
| Thriller | — | 4.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.34 films |
| Crime | 0.01 film | 2.88 films |
| Horror | — | 4.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.5 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
2026Yakuza Powered by Nihon Touitsu
The current state of the argument, as Kazuma Kiryu.
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.
18 of 18 films
as Licht Kugimiya
Directed by Kyouhei Yamaguchi
Directed by Unknown
as Narrator (voice)
Directed by Koichi Sakamoto
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
Ryu
Tokyo Dragon Chef (2020)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ryu gives Yasukaze Motomiya a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Licht Kugimiya
Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation (2023)
Performance score7.8
Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Licht Kugimiya is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ghost Killer
Ghost Killer (2025)
Performance score7.2
Ghost Killer 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
Narrator (voice)
Shogun's Ninja (2025)
Performance score6.8
Shogun's Ninja asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Narrator (voice) 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 Ryu
Start here. Tokyo Dragon Chef is the clearest statement of what Yasukaze Motomiya does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yasukaze 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.
Bad City (2022)
Same director as Tokyo Dragon Chef, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation (2023)
Keeps the action register of Bad City but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ghost Killer (2025)
Keeps the action register of Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation but asks for a colder reading of it.
Shogun's Ninja (2025)
Keeps the action register of Ghost Killer but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hiroyuki Tsuji
Director
8 films together
Notably Yakuza Powered by Nihon Touitsu
Yugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Baby Assassins
Kyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together
Notably Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation
Koichi Sakamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Shogun's Ninja
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hiroyuki Tsuji
Director
8 films together · 0.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 8 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Yakuza Powered by Nihon TouitsuKyouhei Yamaguchi
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Koichi Sakamoto
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shogun's NinjaYugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Baby AssassinsSix 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
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Shogun's Ninja
as Narrator (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
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Bad City
as Park
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
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. Yasukaze Motomiya 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in action, 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
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Shogun's Ninja
as Narrator (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Curse
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tokyo Dragon Chef
as Ryu
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kamen Rider THE WINTER MOVIE: Gotchard & Geats Strongest Chemy★Great Gotcha Operation
as Licht Kugimiya
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Baby Assassins
as Ippei Hamaoka
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Bad City
as Park
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
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