Masako Nozawa (Japanese: 野沢 雅子, Hepburn: Nozawa Masako, born October 25, 1936) is a Japanese actress. Beginning work as a child actress at the age of three, by the time she became an adult, voice acting had inadvertently become her main occupation. Throughout her career, Nozawa has been affiliated with Production Baobab, 81 Produce, the self-owned Office Nozawa and Aoni Production. She is best known as the voice of Son Goku in the Dragon Ball franchise, which had its first animated adaptation in 1986. She also voices most of the character's male relatives, namely Son Gohan and Son Goten. Nozawa's other roles include Kitarō in GeGeGe no Kitarō (1968, 1971 and 2008), Doraemon in the 1973 anime, and Tetsurō Hoshino in Galaxy Express 999 (1978).
Masako Nozawa was born in the Nippori area of Arakawa, Tokyo as the only child of painter Ryoshu Nozawa.[4] Due to the influence of her aunt, Shochiku actress Kiyono Sasaki, Masako became a child actress at the age of three.[1][4][5] Although she does not remember the titles of her earliest films, she said many depicted the love between a mother and her child.[4] In 1944, the family moved to Numata, Gunma to avoid the air raids of World War II. Nozawa lived in the city from the third grade of elementary school until she graduated high school.[6]
Career
In junior high school, Nozawa joined a theater company and worked as an actress in Tokyo during school holidays.[4] She began voice acting in her late teens.[4] After graduating, she moved to Tokyo. Although she did not plan on it, voice acting saw a boom and became Nozawa's main occupation.[4] She explained, "It was the early days of television, and many foreign dramas were broadcast. At the time, voice dubbing was also done live, so using children to play boy roles was a concern. But adult men's voices have already changed, so women were chosen for child roles."[4]
After handling a guest role on Astro Boy (1963), Nozawa voiced brothers Tonkichi and Kanta Hanamura in Sally, the Witch (1966).[1][3] Her first lead role was Kitarō in GeGeGe no Kitarō (1968).[1][7] It also marked the first time she did magazine interviews and her first fan event.[8] For the 1973 adaptation of Doraemon, Nozawa took over the role of the title character from Kōsei Tomita, who had voiced the character for the first 13 episodes.[3] She went on to voice Tetsurō Hoshino [jp] in Galaxy Express 999 (1978).[3] Although she had reprised the role of Kitarō for the 1971 adaptation of GeGeGe no Kitarō, Nozawa could not do the same for its 1985 adaptation, due to a rule that voice actors could not simultaneously play more than one main character on the same television station. However, she noted that this eventually resulted in her landing the role of Son Goku in Dragon Ball (1986).[9] She was chosen to play Goku by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, who later stated that he would hear Nozawa's voice in his head when writing the original manga.[10]
Nozawa led a lawsuit by 361 voice actors against Nippon Animation in demand of royalties on home video releases of anime series. On August 25, 2004, the Tokyo High Court ruled in the plaintiffs' favor.[11] On April 1, 2006, Nozawa left 81 Produce to establish Office Nozawa. In 2012, she closed the self-owned talent agency. A number of voice actors who were affiliated with her agency went on to affiliate with Media Force.
In 2017, Guinness World Records presented Nozawa with two world records related to her voicing Son Goku in Dragon Ball video games for 23 years and 218 days; "longest video game voice acting career" and "voice actor who voiced the same character in a video game for the longest period".[12][13][14]
^ abcdefg"No. 106 野沢 雅子（のざわ まさこ）". Arakawa City Art Culture Promotion Foundation (in Japanese). Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
