Min Tanaka (田中泯, Tanaka Min, born March 10, 1945) is a Japanese dancer and actor.
Min Tanaka | |
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Born | |
Occupation(s) | Dancer, actor |
Years active | 1966–present |
Tanaka was trained in ballet and modern dance, but in 1974, turned his back on these forms. He began his solo career with a series of nearly-naked primarily outdoor improvisational dances that took place throughout Japan, often dancing up to five times a day. For a time in the 1980s, he was associated with Hijikata Tatsumi and butoh, a loose genre of Japanese dance, but now has broken from that framework as well, and no longer uses that term to describe his dances.
From 1986 to 2010, Tanaka hosted dance workshops based in Body Weather, a movement ideology which "conceives of the body as a force of nature: omni-centered, anti-hierarchic, and acutely sensitive to external stimuli." In 1985, Tanaka and his colleagues founded Body Weather Farm, located four hours west of Tokyo, where he taught summer sessions lasting four to five weeks in Japanese and English. Much of the training workshop students received was centered on the labor of workaday tasks, primarily in agriculture. Tanaka taught that performing such tasks in their environments and with their accompanying physical stimulations functioned as a dance student's teacher itself, overturning the tradition of the environment taking on a subordinate role to the dance student's technique.[2] He received the Chevalier of l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in 1989[3][4] or 1990.[1]
He continues to experiment with new ways to use the body, including drawing inspiration from farming. Starting in 2002, he began to appear in movies and on television. He won the award for best supporting actor at the 26th Japan Academy Film Prize for The Twilight Samurai.[5]
Year | Title | Role | Director | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2002 | The Twilight Samurai | Yoji Yamada | |||
2004 | The Hidden Blade | Yoji Yamada | |||
2005 | House of Himiko | Isshin Inudo | |||
2006 | Tekkon Kinkreet | Suzuki a.k.a. Rat (voice) | Michael Arias | ||
2009 | Map of the Sounds of Tokyo | Isabel Coixet | Spanish film | ||
2011 | Rebirth | Taki | Izuru Narushima | ||
2012 | Gaiji Keisatsu | Kentarō Horikirizono | |||
2013 | Return | Masato Harada | |||
The Eternal Zero | Kageura | Takashi Yamazaki | |||
47 Ronin | Lord Asano | Carl Rinsch | American film | ||
2014 | Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno | Okina | Keishi Ōtomo | ||
Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends | Okina | Keishi Ōtomo | |||
2017 | Blade of the Immortal | Mugai-ryū | Takashi Miike | ||
Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura | Binbōgami | Takashi Yamazaki | |||
2018 | The Scythian Lamb | Katsumi Ōno | Daihachi Yoshida | ||
Vision | Minamoto | Naomi Kawase | |||
The Outsider | Akihiro | Martin Zandvliet | American film | ||
The House Where The Mermaid Sleeps | Yukihiko Tsutsumi | ||||
Modest Heroes | Blind man (voice) | Akihiko Yamashita | |||
Ninomiya Kinjirō | Sho Igarashi | ||||
2019 | The Great War of Archimedes | Tadamichi Hirayama | Takashi Yamazaki | ||
Svaha: The Sixth Finger | Nechung Tenpa | Jang Jae-hyun | South Korean film | ||
Children of the Sea | Jim (voice) | Ayumu Watanabe | |||
2020 | The Memory Eraser | Shin'ichi Sugawara | Yūichirō Hirakawa | ||
2021 | Hokusai | Old Hokusai | Hajime Hashimoto | Lead role | [6] |
A Morning of Farewell | Izuru Narushima | [7] | |||
2022 | The Unnameable Dance | Himself | Isshin Inudo | Documentary film | [8] |
The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai | Kawai Daiemon | Takashi Koizumi | [9] | ||
Yokaipedia | Jizuri (voice) | Takashi Yamazaki | [10] | ||
Amnesiac Love | Wataru Hiranami | Special appearance | [11] | ||
2023 | Black Ox | Zen priest | Tetsuichirō Tsuta | [12] | |
Father of the Milky Way Railroad | Kisuke Miyazawa | Izuru Narushima | [13] | ||
Mom, Is That You?! | Yoji Yamada | [14] | |||
Perfect Days | Homeless man | Wim Wenders | Japanese-German film | [15] | |
2024 | Who Were We? | Tetsuya Tomina | [16] |
Year | Title | Role | Network | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | Ryōmaden | Yoshida Tōyō | NHK | Taiga drama | |
2014 | Gou Gou, The Cat | Wowow | |||
2015 | Mare | NHK | Asadora | ||
To Give a Dream | Wowow | ||||
2016 | Kyoto Love Story | Sei-san | Amazon Prime Video | ||
Gou Gou, The Cat 2 | Akama | Wowow | |||
2017 | A Life: A Love | Isshin Okita | TBS | ||
2019 | Nodoka no Niwa | Ikuo Sakaki | NHK | ||
2021 | The Supporting Actors 3 | Himself | TV Tokyo | ||
2022 | The 13 Lords of the Shogun | Fujiwara no Hidehira | NHK | Taiga drama | [17] |
Teen Regime | Shigeo Hosaka | NHK | Miniseries | [18] | |
2024 | House of the Owl | Ryutaro Ogami | Disney+ | Lead role | [19] |