Nobuyuki Hiyama

Hiyama was born in Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima at the Red Cross Hospital,^[2][3] and grew up enjoying casual amateur baseball with friends.^[4] His mother was of Japanese descent, born in Taiwan during the end of World War II and resettling back in Japan after the war.^[5]

Greatly influenced by his father,^[6] Hiyama flourished in history and social studies class since middle school, but was not fond of the idea of participating in extracurricular activities. Despite this, Hiyama had no choice but to pick up at least one activity for each semester due to school regulations, and ended up trying out Go, Shogi, and his school's Radio Club by his second year of middle school.^[4] According to Hiyama, his middle school radio club experience was "in all honesty, awful." and he "was bored to the point of resigning from the club" by his third year, ending his middle school club life with Japanese calligraphy.^[4]

Upon entering high school, Hiyama believed he could "finally start pursuing his dream of not participating in any school clubs," but ended up being reluctantly dragged into his high school's radio club due to a close schoolmate of his wanting to join the club, yet not wanting to enter the club alone.^[7] Hiyama noted his high school radio club experience was "far more interesting" than he expected, as "we get to plan on what to broadcast for morning assembly, and not only that, we even produce our own radio dramas." It was through his interest in radio dramas, along with awareness of the voice acting boom of the 70s and 80s, that made Hiyama took notice early on that there were career opportunities in voice acting and that Tokyo had the training schools for them.^[8]

When the time came for Hiyama to plan his career development during his senior year of high school, he resorted to the mindset of "if I had to bread-win, might as well choose the type of bread that I love to eat."^[9] Therefore, his first choice was to apply for college to become a historian, while his second choice was to go into "something in relation to voice work," since he reflected on how his radio club experience was the one that made him believe this would be the lifestyle that he would truly enjoy.^[9] Due to the tough application requirements of his intended history major,^[9] Hiyama decided to pursue the path of voice acting, and talked it over with his parents. Hiyama recalled their discussion "ended in dispute," with his parents' decision to not support his tuition in fear of "a business that is unheard of."^[10] Hiyama was then left to fend for himself by enrolling into Tokyo Announce Gakuin's (now Tokyo Announce Gakuin Performing Arts College) Broadcasting Voice Actor major through Japan's Newspaper Scholarship grant.^[10]

※ All filmography are organized under Japan's release by year-alphabetical order; roles labeled in Bold are either protagonists, or roles of major importance.