| Ryo Kase | |
| Native Name: | 加瀬 亮 |
| Native Name Lang: | ja |
| Birth Date: | 9 November 1974 |
| Birth Place: | Yokohama, Japan |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
| Occupation: | Actor |
| Years Active: | 2000–present |
| Agent: | Ryo Kase Office |
Kase was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture. He moved to Bellevue, Washington in the United States soon after his birth, due to his father's job being transferred.[3] His father Yutaka Kase, was former chairman and representative director of Sojitz, a major Japanese general trading company.
Kase made his screen debut in Sogo Ishii's in 2000.[3]
That same year, Kase received his major break when he starred in the critically acclaimed film I Just Didn't Do It [4] (2007), directed by Masayuki Suo, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the 31st Japan Academy Prize and the 2nd Asia Film Award, among other domestic and international film awards.
In 2010, Kase played a yakuza mobster in Takeshi Kitano’s highly anticipated return to the crime genre Outrage (アウトレイジ, Autoreiji) which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. The film was a major success, grossing 634 million yen[5] at the Japan Box office, leading to two sequels.
In 2023, Kase reunited with Takeshi Kitano in the Japanese film Kubi about the Honnō-ji Incident. In the film, Kase portrayed the historical figure, Oda Nobunaga, a charismatic military leader revered and feared as a demon king in Japan. His wildly mad-like performance was highly praised by many journalists at the Cannes Film Festival. In Japan, this portrayal of Nobunaga, which diverges greatly from his public image of being cold yet violent but also deeply human and virtuous, has sparked debate. Some audience members felt that the character setting demeaned the historical figure, while others believed the acting was so realistic it seemed to overwrite the actual image of Nobunaga himself. When director Takeshi Kitano shared this original idea with the late director Akira Kurosawa, he was told that if Kitano were to make it, it could become a masterpiece on par with Seven Samurai. This work won several awards at the 47th Japan Academy Prize, including Excellence in Cinematography, Excellence in Lighting, Excellence in Art Direction, Excellence in Sound Recording, and Excellence in Editing. Ryo Kase, who played Nobunaga, also won the award for Excellent Supporting Actor.[6]
From the beginning of his career, Kase took advantage of his English fluency and participated in international films from various countries in Asia, Europe, and America.
His first American film was Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) directed by Clint Eastwood, where he delicately portrayed a complex character of a former military policeman turned young soldier. He made his Cannes Film Festival debut with Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love (2012). He has also appeared in Michel Gondry's Tokyo! (2008), Gus Van Sant's Restless (2011) with Mia Wasikowska, Hong Sang-soo's Hill of Freedom (2014), and Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016). In Paul Weitz's Bel Canto, he starred alongside Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe. In the film Minamata, inspired by a photo collection of Japan's pollution lawsuit taken by the late photographer Eugene Smith,[7] he co-starred with Johnny Depp and Hiroyuki Sanada. In 2014, when Hong Sang-soo's Hill of Freedom was released, he was selected as the Best Actor by CINE21, a Korean film magazine, despite being a foreigner. In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To the Ends of the Earth (2019), he won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 14th Asia Film Awards.
| Year | Title | Role | Director(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Kamuro | Sogo Ishii | ||
| 2001 | Misuzu | Masasuke | Sho Igarashi | |
| Hush! | Soba-ya cashier | Ryosuke Hashiguchi | ||
| Fisher | Shūsuke Kaneko | |||
| 2002 | Rock'n'Roll Mishin | Kenji Hamada | Isao Yukisada | |
| 2003 | Bright Future | Fuyuki Arita | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | |
| When the Last Sword Is Drawn | Shohei Kondo | Yōjirō Takita | ||
| Kakuto | Shinji | Yūsuke Iseya | ||
| 2004 | Cutie Honey | Todoroki | Hideaki Anno | |
| 69 | Ryo Otaki | Sang-il Lee | ||
| The Taste of Tea | Rokutaro Hamadayama | Katsuhito Ishii | ||
| Nobody Knows | Mini-market employee | Hirokazu Koreeda | ||
| 2005 | Break Throughi! | Hideto Noguchi | Kazuyuki Izutsu | |
| Female | Man | Ryuichi Hiroki Suzuki Matsuo Shinya Tsukamoto | Segment "Tamamushi" | |
| About Love | Tecchan | Ten Shimoyama Yee Chin-yen Zhang Yibai | Segment "Taipei" | |
| Scrap Heaven | Police officer Shingo | Sang-il Lee | ||
| The Passenger | Akira | François Rotger | ||
| Custom Made 10.30 | Probationer angel "Jeff" | Hajime Ishimine | ||
| Dead Run | Yuji Miyahara | SABU | ||
| Su-ki-da | Hiroshi Ishikawa | |||
| 2006 | Funky Forest | Takefumi | Katsuhito Ishii | |
| Hana | Sodekichi | Hirokazu Koreeda | ||
| Honey and Clover | Takumi Mayama | Masahiro Takata | ||
| Strawberry Shortcakes | Nagai | Hitoshi Yazaki | ||
| Letters from Iwo Jima | Superior Private Shimizu | Clint Eastwood | ||
| Retribution | Sailor | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | ||
| 2007 | I Just Didn't Do It | Teppei Kaneko | Masayuki Suo | |
| Megane | Yomogi | Naoko Ogigami | ||
| 2008 | 10 Promises to My Dog | Susumu Hoshi | Katsuhide Motoki | |
| Gururi no koto | Tsuyoshi Tanaka | Ryōsuke Hashiguchi | ||
| The Sky Crawlers | Yūichi Kannami | Mamoru Oshii | ||
| Paco and the Magical Book | Kōichi | Tetsuya Nakashima | ||
| Tokyo! | Akira | Michel Gondry Leos Carax Bong Joon-ho | Segment "Interior Design" | |
| 2009 | A Pierrot | Izumi Okuno | Junichi Mori | |
| 2010 | Outrage | Ishihara | Takeshi Kitano | |
| Sketches of Kaitan City | Haruo Meguro | Kazuyoshi Kumakiri | ||
| About Her Brother | Akira | Yoji Yamada | ||
| 2011 | Restless | Hiroshi | Gus Van Sant | |
| 2012 | Like Someone in Love | Noriaki | Abbas Kiarostami | |
| Outrage Beyond | Ishihara | Takeshi Kitano | ||
| Takeru Sebumi | Yukihiko Tsutsumi | [8] | ||
| 2013 | It's Me It's Me | Tajima | Satoshi Miki | |
| Pecoross' Mother and Her Days | Satoru Okano | Azuma Morisaki | ||
| Takeru Sebumi | Yukihiko Tsutsumi | |||
| Dawn of a Filmmaker | Keisuke Kinoshita | Keiichi Hara | ||
| 2014 | Hill of Freedom | Mori | Hong Sang-soo | |
| My Hawaiian Discovery | Tomoya Abe | Koji Maeda | ||
| Judge! | Akira Nagai | |||
| 2015 | Our Little Sister | Miu Sakashita | Hirokazu Koreeda | |
| Foujita | Kanjiro | Kōhei Oguri | ||
| 2016 | Japanese Girls Never Die | Sawai (Policeman) | Daigo Matsui | |
| Silence | João (Chokichi) | Martin Scorsese | ||
| 2017 | March Comes in Like a Lion | Tōji Sōya | Keishi Ōtomo | |
| March Goes out Like a Lamb | Tōji Sōya | Keishi Ōtomo | ||
| Moonlight Shimo-ochiai | Tasuku Emoto | |||
| 2018 | Mori, The Artist's Habitat | Takeshi Fujita | Shūichi Okita | |
| Lying to Mom | Kōichi Suzuki | Katsumi Nojiri | ||
| Bel Canto | Gen Watanabe | Paul Weitz | ||
| 2019 | To the Ends of the Earth | Iwao | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | |
| 2020 | Minamata | Kiyoshi | Andrew Levitas | |
| The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) | Anders Edström, C.W. Winter | |||
| 2023 | Kubi | Oda Nobunaga | Takeshi Kitano | [9] |
"Minna no Ozu-kai" in Ozu Yasujiro Taizen (The Complete Book of Ozu Yasujiro) by Matsuura Kanji and Miyamoto Akiko (Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc. 2019) [11]