Returning to NHK, he portrayed Saitō Yoshitatsu in the 1973 taiga drama Kunitori Monogatari. He has also appeared as Sanada Yukimura in Tokugawa Ieyasu (1983), and as the same warrior in Dokuganryū Masamune (1987).
This is a slot machine based game featuring Yukimura Sanada, Hanzo Hattori and Keiji Maeda as playable characters with their own stories using character models from Samurai Warriors.
Among them are Mōri Hiromoto (in Mōri Motonari, 1997), Sanada Yukimura (Aoi Tokugawa Sandai, 2000), and Honda Masanobu (NHK's Taiga drama Musashi, 2003) in addition to Katakura Kagetsuna.