Kataoka Nizaemon XII

was a Japanese kabuki actor of the Kamigata tradition; also known as Jinzaemon. His violent death at the hands of a starving writer living on the actor's property has been cited by scholars such as John Dower as an example of the chaos and "social disintegration" in the months and years immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II.

He frequently performed alongside Matsumoto Kōshirō VII and Ichimura Uzaemon XV, among others, and took part in many premiere and revival performances. He is said to have had a somewhat cold and gloomy acting style earlier in his career, when he frequently played alongside onnagata Onoe Baikō VI, though after Baikō's death, when Nizaemon came to more frequently act alongside Uzaemon XV, his style and apparent mood onstage brightened noticeably; this cold, gloomy personality would return, and served him well, however, as it suited perfectly the mood of certain sewamono roles and plays. Gadō played a young Minamoto no Yoshitsune (known as Ushiwakamaru in the play) in the 1912 debut of the dance drama Hashi Benkei, and would play Yoshitsune again on many occasions in Kanjinchō.

He took the name Nizaemon in a shūmei (name succession) ceremony in January 1936. He came to specialize in onnagata roles, i.e. female roles, and those of refined, graceful noblemen such as Yoshitsune is often portrayed. He played the courtesan Agemaki, the chief female role in Sukeroku Yukari no Edo Zakura in a March 1938 performance at the Osaka Kabuki-za.

His life and career were cut short, however, when, on 16 March 1946, he and four others in his household were murdered by Toshiaki Iida , in the actor's home. Iida was a writer who had been living in a detached house on the actor's property. Like the great majority of Japanese in the early post-war, Iida was extremely poor and starving. On this particular day, a quarrel erupted between Nizaemon and Iida who envied and resented the actor's relatively lavish lifestyle; it ended with the writer killing Nizaemon, his wife, his infant son, and two maids (included his sister) with a hatchet.

Iida was arrested in Miyagi Prefecture on 30 March. Feeble-mindedness was accepted in the trial and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 October 1947. He was paroled in the 1960s.