Kōsei Tomita

Early life

Tomita was born in Oji Ward, Tokyo Prefecture (now part of Kita Ward) on February 4, 1936. He was raised in the family of a bank employee,^[7][2][8] with his childhood home located near Asukayama Park, famous as a recreation spot ever since the Edo period and would be crowded with people around the time cherry blossoms would bloom.^[2] In his days of childhood, Tomita would run all over the mountains, climb ginkgo trees to gather ginkgo nuts, and go as far as the nearby Meishu Falls to stand under the roaring, plunging waterfall like a mischievous boy.^[2]

Because of the Pacific War, when he was in third grade elementary school, he was evacuated to Kasukawa Village, Seta District, Gunma Prefecture (now known as Kasukawa-chō, Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture) as part of the schoolchildren’s evacuation program.^[2]

In high school, he went to Tokyo Metropolitan Daiyon Commercial High School where he joined the table tennis club and competed in the 8th National Sports Festival that was held in Tokushima Prefecture in 1953.^[2] In addition, he was active in both the drama club and his own theater group.^[9] His senior in the high school drama club was Nobuaki Sekine, and his junior was voice actor Toshio Furukawa.^[10]

Career

After seeing the play The Blue Apple by the Tōgei Theater Company during high school, he aspired to become a stage actor, so he took the Tōgei entrance exam before graduating high school and became a trainee once he graduated.^[2][11] He wanted to become an actor, but because of his parents' opposition, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University, only to drop out after only a year.^[8] He kept dropping out a secret from his parents, but was forgiven two years later with the help of his sister.^[9] He was among the third generation of trainees at Togei.^[12] Amongst his fellow trainees was Isamu Tanonaka,^[10] and a bit later his junior in the "Class of 3.5" was Masako Nozawa.^[12]

Until he was around 25 or 26, he was struggling financially—with there even a time when all he could afford to eat was koppepan—but he didn’t feel he had gone through any particular hardships.^[13] During his time as a trainee, he would do any part-time job he could find to make a living, such as delivering newspapers and working as a sandwich man, and lived with actor Hatsuo Yamaya, who was also in the Tōgei Theater Company, inside a tiny 4.8 square meters room.^[2]

While working as a stage actor at Tōgei,^[14] he also did work in the media such as handling background noise/crowd noises in radio shows such as the Chikage Awashima Show, and appearing as an actor in television dramas during the live broadcasting era.^[11] Tomita's debut as a voice actor was voicing a minor role in a jidaigeki radio drama on NHK Radio.^[15] By the end of the television drama Seven Detectives, which aired on TBS from 1961 to 1969, he had come to portray good and prominent roles.^[11]

When dubbing work came to Tōgei, Tomita, a young member of the troupe, officially began his professional career as a voice actor.^[11] According to him, his debut in Japanese dubbing for foreign projects in Japanese was either in Annie Get Your Gun or Robin Hood,^[16] with his anime voice acting debut being in Astro Boy.^[14][17] As he became extremely busy after starting work as a voice actor, at his peak he had a schedule of performing in 11 regular shows a week and up to 60 a month, a period of getting only 2 to 3 hours of sleep that reportedly lasted for over 15 years.^[11]

In August 1965, he participated in the launch and establishment of the Gendaijin Gekijo theater company.^[18]

After that, through Tonokai^[19] and Tokyo Artist Production,^[20] in 1969 he joined Aoni Production, established as a voice acting production, as a founding member.^[21] In an opening greeting letter, he announced his stage name change to "Kōsei Tomita" (富田 耕生), having been known as "Kōkichi Tomita" (富田 耕吉).^[22] He served as the de facto leader when 16 voice actors dissatisfied with Aoni Production, having grown to a large agency, left the company to establish Production Baobab independently in 1979.^[2][16]

Later on, Baobab would experience members leaving in succession. Mari Shimizu published a book in 2015 that noted only four founding voice actors still remained at that time, consisting of Tomita, herself, Noriko Ohara, and Kenichi Ogata.^[23] However, the other three except Tomita subsequently moved on to other agencies one after another, leaving Tomita as the last founding voice actor that remained with Baobab until the end of his life.

Final years

In 2009, he received an Achievement Award at the 3rd Seiyu Awards.^[24]

In 2014, following the death of Ichirō Nagai on January 27, Tomita officially took over the role of Jirokichi Suzuki in the Great Detective Conan television anime series for six years until his own death.^[25]

Death

Tomita died of a stroke on September 27, 2020, at the age of 84.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the October 3 broadcast of Great Detective Conan that aired the same year, a memorial message screen crawl for Tomita appeared during a scene that featured Jirokichi.^[25]

Anime

Video games

Overseas dubbing