Michiko Nomura

Michiko Nomura, born March 31, 1938, in Yokohama, is a name most people outside Japan will not recognize and most people inside Japan have heard several thousand times. She voiced Shizuka Minamoto in Doraemon, Wakame Isono in Sazae-san, and the title role in The Adventures of Maya the Bee — three characters that between them have run on Japanese television for the better part of half a century. What impresses me is not the longevity but the range hidden inside it. Shizuka is composed, gentle, faintly grown-up; Wakame is a restless small child; Maya is neither. Hearing them as separate people and then learning one throat produced all three is a small shock. Voice acting rewards this kind of invisibility, which is also why it is chronically undercredited. The 2016 Seiyu Awards Merit Award is usually read as a career-length thank-you, and it is, but in her case it also marks something more specific: a demonstration that a whole person can be built out of nothing but sound.

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.

Name (English)

Michiko Nomura

Name (Japanese)

野村道子

Reading

のむら みちこ

Born

March 31, 1938 (age 88)

Origin

Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

150 cm

Weight

43 kg

Occupation

seiyū / actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Tiger

Blood type

A

Awards & achievements

• 2016 Seiyu Awards Merit Award

Spouse

Kenji Utsumi

Works summary

Appearances

145 (1964–2022)

By year (titles with a known year)

1964: 1, 1965: 1, 1967: 3, 1968: 3, 1969: 1, 1970: 1, 1971: 1, 1972: 2, 1973: 1, 1975: 1, 1978: 1, 1979: 2, 1980: 1, 1989: 1, 1990: 1, 1994: 1, 1995: 1, 2006: 1, 2009: 1, 2010: 1, 2022: 1, year unknown: 118

Debut work

Wolf Boy Ken

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiko%20Nomura
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%8E%E6%9D%91%E9%81%93%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1931106

Tags

• Kanagawa Prefecture
• seiyū
• actor

Last updated

September 29, 2026

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.