Actor Kiichi Nakai appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which aired on February 4th. He talked about his memories of Ken Takakura and Ken Ogata.
It is said that whenever Takakura won a film award, he would give a watch as a gift to a close friend. Nakai also received a phone call from Takakura saying, "Hello, I'm coming to your house now," and he drove over in his own car, saying, "Congratulations. I'm glad for you," and handed him a box before leaving. Nakai's name was inscribed on the back of the box, and it read, "From Takakura Ken."
Nakai recalled, "It was cool," and accepted Takakura's thoughts, saying, "There was a watch inside (the box), and I think he gave it to me as a way of passing on time, or connecting time, or as a sign that I should live my life well."
He usually wore a new watch, but one day he was given one with the message, "This is the watch I've been wearing for a long time, but I'm sorry, but could you please use it?" He felt that this meant, "Please pass this on to me." Nakai gave it to actor Junichi Okada, saying, "I'm entrusting this to you." This was because he thought Takakura wanted to give it to Okada, who was thinking about Japanese movies. "I just acted as a middle man," he said.
He also shared unforgettable memories with Ogata Ken. Ogata's final film, the drama "Kaze no Garden" (2008, Fuji TV), which he co-starred in, took six months to film. Because his character was a disowned father and son who fell ill and eventually died, they didn't have many scenes together. He met him about once a month, and he told him, "He was getting thinner every month. I had to lose weight (for the role), too, but he was getting so thin I couldn't keep up." He later learned that only the director knew about Ogata's condition, but he continued filming until the end without telling anyone else.
"He had already been told by his doctor to stop filming, and apparently he had been told that going on location was out of the question. When he returned from filming, his performance figures improved, and I could tell he really loved acting, but he taught me a lot not through his words, but through the way he lived his life," he recalls. He felt that as an actor, he would never be able to live such an honest life as Ogata.
After filming wrapped up, they had a party on the night of the production announcement. When the party ended and Ogata was leaving first, he said, "As I was heading for the exit, Ogata turned around and said, 'See you later,' and I replied, 'Yes, thank you very much.' That was our last exchange, and he passed away five days later."
