For Takayuki Kayano, the idea of The Busiest Actor On Earth came to him while preparing to meet Kanji Tsuda for tea in Beppu: Kanji Tsuda as the actor that does not get any rest between shoots. Kanji Tsuda was immediately intrigued by the premise. Yet, while he expected to do some extensive interviews so the up-and-coming director could get to know him better, the script for his idol-movie arrived before any such interviews could happen. Much to his surprise, the image the script painted of himself – an image imaged by Kayano – eerily resembled the way he perceived himself.
Yet, make no mistake. Calling The Busiest Actor On Earth Kanji Tsuda’s idol film is not meant to demean the actor nor the film. Takayuki Kayano delivers something truly fresh, even slightly provocative, and will not only please fans of Kanji Tsuda but also invite audiences unfamiliar with him to seek his other work out.
We are thrown into the narrative around the time Kanji Tsuda (Kanji Tsuda) finishes his last shoot for a film and prepares to leave the premises. Before he is able to leave, however, one of the staff members of the film presses him to answer one final question: What’s your favourite acting method? He answers: “I always try to immerse myself in a role.”
Some time later, Tsuda sits around a table with Ryo Shinoda (Ryo Shinoda) and Hiromi Iwasaki (Hiromi Iwasaki) in a makeshift greenroom. His agent Kumi Hoshiko (Yumiko Nakamura) approaches Tsuda surprises him by telling him that Sadahisa Kasanashi (Motoki Kobayashi) contacted her to discuss his next project with him – an offer he cannot refuse awaits.
Not much later, he discovers a strange booklet called A Tired Man: Final Chapter which was owned by an actor called Kanda Minoru or Makoto Kamita. Yet, upon asking his agent and his fellow actors, no one seems to know who he is. Shortly afterwards, while discussing his schedule with his agent over dinner, he happens to catch a sight of his daughter Sachi (Yuri Hirasawa) kissing in a tight embrace with Ryo Shinoda. He tries to find her, yet gets lost in a corridor with Sakura illustrations. He is approached by an employee, yet in the interaction that ensues he is not only unable to recall his own name but also discovers that the place is called Makoto Kamita. He promptly asks her to meet him – in Kamita’s quarters, a disembodied voice suddenly speaks to him.
Kayano inaugurates the spectator within his film with an opening sequence that is both dynamic and energetic. By utilizing floaty dynamic long takes and exploiting the cut, the director creates a visual support that does not only build up to the introduction of the film’s title but amplifies its impact: The Busiest Actor On Earth.
After the opening sequence, the compositional energy calms down and Kayano begins to rely on static shots to frame interactions and visually emphasize that Kanji Tsuda is ever busy with acting – i.e. acting, rehearsals, promotional events, being recognized, … etc. Yet, Kayano exploits the idea he established of Tsuda being relentlessly busy with acting to play with the spectator’s expectations. He utilizes those cuts that introduce Kanji Tsuda within a new context to leave the spectator fleetingly wondering whether they are watching Kanji Tsuda in a different role for a different production or in the role he performs within his daily life. The beauty of the narrative lies in the fact that, despite the fact that the spectator gets a sense of what is reality and what is ‘produced’ fantasy – at the level of situations, enunciations, he can never be sure.
Takayuki Kayano does, not only echo how being oneself is already a kind of performance, but also highlight the dialogical dynamic between the ego, as the self we act to others, and acting, the image we assume in front of the camera in accordance with the script and the indications of the director.
In many ways and at many points in the narrative, Kayano elegantly evokes that the difference between the ego and role is very much like two opposite points on a Möbius strip. While both appear different, at first glance, they ultimately turn out, as we trace a line on the strip, to be structurally very similar. It is not merely the case that the subject performs his ego in a similar way as he would perform a role in the film or on stage, but that, for the onlooker, both appear merely as an image (Psycho-note 1).
Our reading complicates two enunciations made by a director to Kanji Tsuda: “It’s not that you like acting, you just don’t want to be yourself”; “I try to make peace with reality”. How do we define our self and how do others perceive what our self is? What is the reality of the self? In our view, a radicalization of Kanji Tsuda’s plea – “Acting’s all I have. Don’t take it away from me” is needed: Acting is all we have; Acting is something that, given our social nature of our existence, cannot be taken away.
The way Kayano utilizes the cut, in fact, is one element of a larger play with narrative structure. Kayano relies on inter-cutting, repetition (enunciation, visuals), character swapping, and non-diegetic narration. We get a simple narrative thread – the unfolding of a shoot with Kanji Tsuda, Hiromi Iwasaki and Ryo Shinoda, … – complicated by the fluid insertion of loosely related fragments (e.g. the discussion to make a series about Onsen with Kanji Tsuda and Naoto Takenaka, the fan who approaches Kanji Tsuda at the massage parlour, … etc). As the narrative unfolds, this rather loose structure elegantly lets the spectator experience an echo of the disorientation Kanji Tsuda gives expression to – where does acting begin and where does it end?
Yet, near the end of the film, Kayano confronts the spectator with a reframing of one the film’s structuring questions: At what point does acting fall apart? The answer to this question is linked with what can be seen as a critique on the use of ‘idols’ within contemporary Japanese cinema. Does The Busiest Actor On Earth not stage, in a beautiful yet tragic manner, that what takes the lead within contemporary Japanese cinema is the dimension of popularity, i.e. that what seduces fans to flock to the theatres and ensures the generating of profit, and acting-skill is reduced to a mere supporting role. Cinema as commodity, objects-of-consumption to generate pleasure, has eclipsed cinema as art, as interpretative objects that affect the subject.
Takayuki Kayano pleases the spectator with well-composed moments throughout his composition. The opening shot – a dynamic long take – is pure elegance and smartly utilizes the floor-plan of the house and well-placed mirrors and screens to support the flow of the camera. The element of the mirror is also utilized in other shots to create pleasing compositional moments.
The Busiest Actor On Earth is an experience that is not only full of Kanji Tsuda, but also full of surprises. While, at first glance, this originality introduces itself as mere formal and experimental trick, Takayuki Kayano plays with it in such a way it puts the difference between the ego and the notion of the role into question and exposes the performative dynamic that animates both. Recommended.
References:
「俳優の自分役を演じるのはすごく勉強になったので、みんなやったらいいですよ」 『津田寛治に撮休はない』主演、津田寛治さんインタビュー | CinemaGical シネマジカル. (2026, April 26). Cinemagical シネマジカル. https://cinemagical.themedia.jp/posts/58771405/
Factory, C. (2026, January 12). 『津田寛治に撮休はない』新春先行上映舞台挨拶. CINEMA FACTORY. https://www.cinema-factory.jp/2026/01/12/96526/
Notes
Psycho-note 1: The only thing that, at first glance, separates the ego from the role is that only the former is based on and animated by the individual’s subjectivity, his unconscious. However, the actor cannot cancel out his subjectivity during his performance; the bringing to life of a role is only possible by bringing one’s subjectivity into play and instrumentalize it well.