Tatsuya Nakadai, a veteran Japanese actor best known for films such as Ran, High and Low and Harakiri , died on Saturday at the age of 92. His collaborations with some of the greatest directors in Japan cemented him as an icon of the "Golden Age" of Japanese cinema.

He died from pneumonia, according to a statement from Mumeijuku , the acting school and theater company that Nakadai founded.

Nakadai began his career as a theater actor, and remained committed to the stage throughout his life — in part because, unlike many actors at the time, he declined to sign an exclusive contract with a film studio. Doing so also gave him freedom to take on different roles — in samurai epics, realist dramas, crime thrillers, and even science fiction — and work with many different directors over the

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