Nobuyo Oyama passed away at the age of 90. 26 years of “Doraemon”… achievements that supported the early days of animation.

Actor Nobuyo Oyama (real name Nobuyo Yamashita) died of old age on 29 September, aged 90.Her office announced the news. 　According to those involved, since the beginning of this year she had tended to fall ill and had been in and out of hospital repeatedly.At the end, he was hospitalised on 19 September and left peacefully.In her later years, she also suffered from dementia, but she loved to eat and was said to smile when staff at the facility where he moved in would say “It’s time to eat”.

Mr Oyama was born on 16 October 1933 in Tokyo.An anecdote has it that she had a unique voice from childhood.

Aiming to become an actor, she entered the Haiyu-za training school as a seventh year student, making his debut in 1956 in the NHK drama Kono Hitomi (This Eye).

After graduating from the training school, she joined the Gekidan Shinjin Kai in 1957. Her husky voice caught the attention of the audience, and he made her debut as a voice actor in the dubbing of ‘Meiken Lassie’, broadcast in September 1957.

She then took over the voice of the main character Doraemon in the 1979 Doraemon animation series, a role he held for 26 years until her retirement in 2005, making him one of Japan’s leading voice-over actors.

In addition to Doraemon, Mrs Oyama also played the role of the first Isono Katsuo in the anime Sazae-san.He supported the early days of anime.

In 2001, she was diagnosed with rectal cancer and dropped all other work except for “Doraemon”.Later, she was hospitalised, which led to her withdrawal from “Doraemon”.

In 2010, she returned to voice acting for the first time in five years, playing the role of Monokuma, the mysterious stuffed toy school principal, in the action game Danganronpa, which was also made into an anime.He played a villain for the first time in her life and attracted a lot of attention.

In addition to voice acting, she is also active as an actress and has appeared in popular films such as the film ‘Thinking Back: How Far We’ve Come’, the drama ‘Mito Komon’ and ‘Tore Kasa Tofu: Hunting Bad People’.

She also has a side as a cookery researcher, and has her own programme on TBS called ‘Oyama Nobuyo no Ryori Asaichiban’ (Oyama Nobuyo’s Cooking Morning), in which she presents her cooking.It was later published as a cookbook.She was also a multi-talented singer, scriptwriter and essayist, and worked extensively.

In May 2015, Sunagawa held a press conference and announced that Mr Oyama was suffering from dementia.In ‘To Nobuyo, My Wife Who Became My Daughter’, in which she wrote about her life as a carer, she told the couple in a dialogue, “I can’t die before leaving you sick”, but he died in August 2017, leaving Mrs Oyama behind.