Masachika Ichimura

Masachika Ichimura is an actor I wish more non-Japanese viewers knew about, because most of them have already heard him without realising it. Born in Kawagoe, Saitama in 1949, he finished a local high school, went on to a theatre college in Tokyo, and built his life on the stage: the Kikuta Kazuo Drama Award, the Golden Arrow Award, and in 2007 the Medal with Purple Ribbon, a national honour for achievement in the arts. That is a career of curtain calls rather than press junkets. And yet, for a great many people, he is Mewtwo. He is also Jack Skellington in the Japanese version of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I enjoy that collision, though I don't think it is really a contradiction. A stage actor spends years learning to carry meaning to the back row of a theatre using nothing but breath and timing. Hand that person a microphone and an animated character and something unusual happens: the drawing acquires a spine, a temperature, an interior life the artwork alone cannot supply. There is a version of prestige in which a serious theatre veteran refuses cartoon work. Japan largely never adopted that snobbery, and its animation and dubbing are better for it. Ichimura is a good argument for the openness. He has also kept working through serious illness and returned to the stage, which tells you something about what the work means to him. My own test for a great actor is simple: can they disappear? Someone who can lead a musical and voice a psychic Pokemon in the same career, and be believed both times, passes it without effort.

Name (English)

Masachika Ichimura

Name (Japanese)

市村正親

Born

January 28, 1949 (age 77)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Ox

Origin

Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, Japan

Height

172 cm

Occupation

actor / television actor

Awards & achievements

• 2007 Medal with Purple Ribbon
• Golden Arrow Award
• Kikuta Kazuo engeki shō

Motto

Private

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/ich__74/
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%82%E6%9D%91%E6%AD%A3%E8%A6%AA

Tags

• Saitama Prefecture
• actor
• television actor

Last updated

2026-07-26

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.