Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#17516
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yohta Kawase works on quiet performance 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.
Yohta Kawase appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yohta. Shape of My Heart is the clearest case: a film rated 6.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shinji Imaoka, Hideo Jojo, Haruhiko Arai and others, Yohta Kawase 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.
Shape of My Heart (2024) · AI Amok (2020) · S-friends: Hatsukoi (2023)
Career snapshot
Ranked #17516 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.5
Shape of My Heart
Average Nutevio score
4.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
AI Amok
Most frequent director
Shinji Imaoka
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Shinji Imaoka
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.1
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
4.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Poca Pon, Shape of My Heart, A Fool's Love — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
4.4
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
4.3
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. Let Me Hear Your Voice, Modern Love.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 6.21 film | 4.26 films |
| Thriller | — | 2.92 films |
| Crime | — | 5.81 film |
| Romance | 3.12 films | 6.44 films |
| Horror | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018Modern Love
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Maeda.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020AI Amok
6.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Poca Pon
The current state of the argument, as Yoshio Matsuo.
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 Shinji Imaoka
Directed by Shinji Imaoka
Directed by Hideo Jojo
Directed by Hideo Jojo
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
Shape of My Heart
Shape of My Heart (2024)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Yohta Kawase a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Let Me Hear Your Voice
Let Me Hear Your Voice (2019)
Performance score6.7
Let Me Hear Your Voice 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#3
S-friends: Hatsukoi
S-friends: Hatsukoi (2023)
Performance score6.6
S-friends: Hatsukoi 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
Sefure no Hinkaku: Ketsui
Sefure no Hinkaku: Ketsui (2023)
Performance score6.6
Sefure no Hinkaku: Ketsui 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 movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
Start here. Shape of My Heart is the clearest statement of what Yohta Kawase does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 6.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yohta 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.
Let Me Hear Your Voice (2019)
Same director as Shape of My Heart, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
S-friends: Hatsukoi (2023)
Keeps the romance register of Let Me Hear Your Voice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sefure no Hinkaku: Ketsui (2023)
Same director as S-friends: Hatsukoi, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Poca Pon (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Sefure no Hinkaku: Ketsui but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hideo Jojo
Director
2 films together
Notably S-friends: Hatsukoi
Shinji Imaoka
Director
2 films together
Notably Shape of My Heart
Yū Irie
Director
1 film together
Notably AI Amok
Kurando Mitsutake
Director
1 film together
Notably Maniac Driver
Haruhiko Arai
Director
1 film together
Notably A Spoiling Rain
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hideo Jojo
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
S-friends: HatsukoiShinji Imaoka
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Shape of My HeartYū Irie
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AI AmokHaruhiko Arai
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Spoiling RainKurando Mitsutake
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Maniac DriverSix 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
AI Amok
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
S-friends: Hatsukoi
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
AI Amok
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
AI Amok
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Shape of My Heart
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. Yohta Kawase 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
7 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
Shape of My Heart
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Maniac Driver
as Fujinaga's Neighbor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Fool's Love
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Poca Pon
as Yoshio Matsuo
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Shape of My Heart
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Shape of My Heart
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Fool's Love
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Maniac Driver
as Fujinaga's Neighbor
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Richmond Arquette
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Bob Stephenson
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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