Hiroshi Ōtake

Hiroshi Otake is the kind of guy who spent his entire life doing one thing and doing it with quiet, unshakeable commitment — lending his voice to characters on screen for decades while most people never knew his name, only that something about the TV sounded right. Born in Kawasaki back in 1932, he was part of the generation that built Japanese voice acting from the ground up, before it had award ceremonies or fan bases or any of the cultural cachet it carries today. The fact that he picked up the lifetime achievement award from the Voice Actor Awards in 2015 tells you everything: the industry looked at this man and said, yeah, we owe him one. He passed away in August 2022, somewhere close to ninety years old, and I find that genuinely moving — nearly a century on earth, most of it spent making fictional worlds feel real through nothing but breath and timing. That's a craft worth respecting.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Hiroshi Ōtake (March 14, 1932 – August 1, 2022) was a Japanese voice actor and actor born in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. A veteran of the postwar Japanese entertainment industry, he worked as a voice actor across many decades, contributing to the foundations of Japanese animation and dubbing culture. In 2015 he received the Voice Actor Award for Lifetime Achievement (Kōrō-shō), recognizing his long career and influence on the profession. He passed away on August 1, 2022, at the age of 90.

Name (English)

Hiroshi Ōtake

Name (Japanese)

大竹宏

Reading

おおたけ ひろし

Born

March 14, 1932 – August 1, 2022

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Monkey

Origin

Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan

Blood type

B

Weight

52 kg

Agency

81プロデュース

Occupation

Voice Actor / Actor

High school

Meiji University High School and Junior High School

Awards & achievements

• 2015 — Voice Actor Award, Lifetime Achievement (Kōrō-shō)

Works summary

Appearances

300 (1963–2016)

By year

1963: 1, 1967: 1, 1969: 1, 1971: 2, 1972: 2, 1973: 2, 1974: 2, 1976: 1, 1977: 2, 1978: 1, 1981: 2, 1982: 1, 1983: 2, 1984: 1, 1985: 3, 1986: 2, 1987: 5, 1988: 1, 1989: 3, 1995: 1, 1996: 1, 1997: 2, 1998: 3, 1999: 1, 2010: 1, 2011: 1, 2016: 1

Debut work

狼少年ケン

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%AB%B9%E5%AE%8F
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3136369

Tags

• From Kanagawa
• Voice Actor
• Actor

Last updated

2026-08-26

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.