Junko Iwao

Voice work has a strange cruelty to it: a listener decides who a character fundamentally is within a few seconds of hearing them, and the actor has to live inside that verdict. Junko Iwao, born in Beppu, Oita, in 1970, has spent a career proving how much room there is inside a single voice. Most people know her as Tomoyo Daidoji in Cardcaptor Sakura, a performance so gentle and well-mannered that it defines the character's entire moral temperature. Then there is Mima Kirigoe in Perfect Blue, a role that requires the opposite: someone being slowly taken apart. Same instrument, completely different interior. She has also voiced Ceres in Ceres, Celestial Legend and Kikyo in Hunter x Hunter, and works as a singer and radio personality besides. In 2022 she received the Kazue Takahashi Award. She is not the sort of performer who dominates conversation, but she is exactly the sort the industry quietly depends on.

Name (English)

Junko Iwao

Name (Japanese)

岩男潤子

Reading

いわお じゅんこ

Born

February 18, 1970 (age 56)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Dog

Origin

Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

singer / seiyū / radio personality

Awards & achievements

• 2022 Kazue Takahashi Award

• Official sitehttps://www.junkoiwao.jp/
• Xhttps://x.com/iwaojunko
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junko%20Iwao
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B2%A9%E7%94%B7%E6%BD%A4%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q242743

Tags

• Ōita Prefecture
• singer
• seiyū
• radio personality

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.