Masako Nozawa: the Japanese voice of Goku

Masako Nozawa (born October 25, 1936, in Tokyo) is the Japanese actress and voice actress who has voiced Goku since 1986. In the original Japanese Dragon Ball she also plays his sons Gohan and Goten, his father Bardock and his sinister double, Goku Black. A pioneer of voice acting in Japan, in 2025 she became the first person in her profession to be named a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.

Early years: on screen at three

She was born in the Nippori area of Arakawa, Tokyo, the only child of painter Ryoshu Nozawa. Thanks to an aunt who acted for the Shochiku studio, she began appearing in films at the age of three. As a teenager she chose the stage instead, joining a theater company in junior high school and moving to Tokyo after graduating. It was to help that perpetually broke company that she started dubbing: her first voice role, at nineteen, was an Indian boy in a foreign film. At first she preferred the stage, where she could see the audience react; in her thirties she came to love "breathing life into things with only your voice".

A life in animation

Her anime debut came in 1963 with Wolf Boy Ken, along with a guest role in Astro Boy. Her first lead was Kitarō in GeGeGe no Kitarō (1968), chosen by creator Shigeru Mizuki himself. Dozens of characters followed, many of them boys: she was the very first Doraemon in the 1973 series, the mouse Gamba in Gamba no Bōken (1975) and, most famously, Tetsurō in Galaxy Express 999 (1978), cast at the request of Leiji Matsumoto. Decades later she returned to Kitarō's world in a different role, his eyeball father Medama-oyaji, in the 2018 series.

Goku and the Son family

The role of her life came almost by accident. Fuji TV had an unwritten rule that a voice actor could not lead two shows at once. That is why Nozawa did not return as Kitarō for the 1985 version, and why she was free to audition for Goku. Akira Toriyama chose her, and later said he would hear her voice in his head while writing the manga.

When Goku, Gohan and Goten share a scene, Nozawa records all three in the same take, switching voices on the spot. Her colleague Toshio Furukawa, the voice of Piccolo, has said nobody else can do it. She helped shape Goku's distinctive way of speaking, which Japanese fans call "Gokū-go", and she watches every episode twice: once as a fan, for fun, and once to critique herself. During recording she avoids chatting with the actors who play villains, to keep the tension of the scene. And with adaptations, she never reads the source material ahead of time, so her reactions stay genuine. Read more about her most famous role on our Goku page.

Did you know? Goku's famous anime greeting, "Ossu! Ora Goku!" ("Hey! I'm Goku!"), was not in the script: Nozawa ad-libbed it in the recording booth as a joke for the staff, and it stuck.

Records and honors

Nozawa is a vice president of the Japan Actors Union, and she led a lawsuit by 361 voice actors over unpaid royalties from DVD releases, which they won on appeal in 2004. For voicing Goku in video games for more than 23 years, Guinness World Records awarded her two records, including the longest career in video game voice acting.

Why she is irreplaceable

English-speaking fans have known several Gokus, with Sean Schemmel voicing him in Funimation's dubs since 1999. In Japan, though, the voice has stayed the same for forty years: Nozawa has voiced him in every series, from the original Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Daima, and at nearly ninety she returned for Dragon Ball Super: Beerus. For many Japanese fans, Goku simply is her voice.