Photo: 首相官邸 / CC BY 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
A kyogen performer winning Best Actor at the Blue Ribbon Awards is not a sentence I expected to write. Mansai Nomura II, born in Tokyo in 1966 and trained at Tokyo University of the Arts, played Abe no Seimei in Onmyoji and walked off with that prize in 2002. What draws me in is where the authority in his screen presence comes from: a body drilled since childhood in the fixed forms of classical comic theatre. He works as a kyogen artist, a film actor and a stage director, and none of those feels like a detour from the others. Tradition usually gets described as a cage. Watching him, I suspect the opposite is true, and that having a form is exactly what lets him go anywhere.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Mansai Nomura II
- Name (Japanese)
- 二世野村萬斎
- Born
- April 5, 1966 (age 60)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aries / Horse
- Origin
- Tokyo, Japan
- Occupation
- nōgaku artist / actor / theatre director
2. Background
- University
- Tokyo University of the Arts
Awards & achievements
- 2002 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actor
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
- Official sitehttps://www.mansaku.co.jp/actor.html
- Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/mansai.nomura.official/
- Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%8E%E6%9D%91%E8%90%AC%E6%96%8E
Frequently asked questions
When was Mansai Nomura II born?
Born April 5, 1966 (age 60).
Where is Mansai Nomura II from?
Mansai Nomura II is from Tokyo, Japan.
What does Mansai Nomura II do?
Mansai Nomura II works as nōgaku artist, actor, theatre director.
Actor — see all → · More people from Japan →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-07-27
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.