The Hollywood stars Japanese audiences remember speak in someone else’s voice: Japan’s custom of the “fixed” dubbing voice

Key Points

• In Japan, a voice actor who dubs the same foreign actor over many years is called that star’s “fix” (from the English word). Tessho Genda has voiced Arnold Schwarzenegger for more than 30 years, Yasuo Yamada voiced Clint Eastwood for about 36 years, and Koichi Yamadera voices Eddie Murphy. This is an industry custom, not a contract.
• The custom began with 1950s television. Screens were small and blurry, and subtitles were hard to read, so Japanese TV stations aired large numbers of dubbed foreign series and films. Each station made its own dub, so one film could end up with several Japanese versions.
• Dubbing roles are mostly cast by producers and dubbing directors naming someone directly, not through open auditions. A voice that works is likely to be called back next time, audiences come to remember that voice as the star’s own, and distributors then sell the “familiar voice” as a selling point.
• Because there is no contract, a fixed voice can be replaced at any time, and when a voice actor dies it is hard to name a successor. After Yasuo Yamada died, Eastwood went through several voices and still has no new fixed one. What really keeps the custom alive is the audience’s memory.

On July 6, 2015, Arnold Schwarzenegger stood on a cinema stage in Roppongi, Tokyo, promoting Terminator Genisys. Next to him was the Japanese voice actor Tessho Genda.

It was the first time the two had met. But to Japanese audiences, they had long been “the same person.” Genda had dubbed Schwarzenegger since Conan the Barbarian in 1982, more than 30 years by then. He told Schwarzenegger, “For 30 years I’ve voiced every one of your films.” Schwarzenegger replied, “Please play my voice for 100 years!”

Pairings like this are not unusual in Japan. Tom Cruise’s Japanese voice is most often Toshiyuki Morikawa, Jackie Chan’s is Hiroya Ishimaru, and Eddie Murphy’s is Koichi Yamadera. The Japanese industry calls this kind of long-term pairing a “fix” (フィックス), from the English word, meaning the voice has been fixed in place.

The strange part is that Hollywood studios do not choose voice actors for the Japanese version, and there is no contract between the voice actor and the star. Every new dub could, in theory, use someone else. So how does one voice stay with a star for decades?

“You can’t read the subtitles”: why Japanese TV chose dubbing

The answer starts with television in the 1950s.

Japanese television began broadcasting in 1953. At first there was little programming, and commercial stations bought large numbers of American series to fill airtime. In November 1956, KRT (today’s TBS) began airing the live-action series Adventures of Superman, with Toru Ohira voicing Clark Kent.

Most of these foreign programs were dubbed rather than subtitled. The reason was practical: TV screens were small and low-resolution, and subtitles squeezed into the bottom of the picture were hard to read. Grandparents and children watching together at home could not always keep up with subtitles either. Cinemas could show subtitles; a small TV in the living room could not.

At first the stations did the dubbing themselves. From the early 1960s, specialist dubbing companies such as Tohokushinsha took over. Most voice actors came from theater companies such as Bungakuza and Theatre Echo. Yasuo Yamada joined Theatre Echo in 1958, and the following year won an audition for the role of a young cowboy in the American Western series Rawhide. The actor playing that cowboy was a then-unknown Clint Eastwood.

Starting with that series, Yamada voiced Eastwood for about 36 years. By the time he died in 1995, “Clint Eastwood means Yasuo Yamada” was something Japanese film fans simply took for granted.

One Roman Holiday, six Japanese versions

Looking only at the result, you might think Japan has a system of “one star, one voice.” In fact it was the opposite: Japan had so many dubbed versions that it was chaotic.

From the 1960s to the 2000s, every Japanese TV station had regular slots for foreign films, such as Nippon TV’s Friday Road Show (金曜ロードショー). A station that bought broadcast rights to a film would often hire a dubbing company to make its own Japanese version. Broadcast rights had time limits, and when they expired, use of the dub recordings was often limited too, so when another station aired the film it was frequently dubbed again. As a result, Roman Holiday alone has at least six different Japanese dubs, five of them made by TV stations.

Every new dub was a chance to recast. In other words, a star could easily have had several voices in Japan. And some did: Bruce Willis’s Die Hard films were voiced by more than one actor across different TV and home video versions.

So why did most stars end up with a single voice? The key is how roles were cast.

Not auditions, but “you did well last time”

Most dubbing of foreign films in Japan does not use open auditions. Producers or dubbing directors simply name the voice actor they want. Work from a few studios and directors, such as Disney and Steven Spielberg, is the exception and requires auditions.

Casting by name has a natural result: dubbing directors keep a mental list of “who works for whom.” Once a voice actor has made a star convincing, the easiest and least risky choice for the next film is to call them again. After a few repeats, audiences’ ears get used to it, and anyone else sounds like “that’s not him.”

What makes a voice “convincing”? Haruna Miyazawa, a voice actor who specializes in foreign films, has said a dubbing director once told her that casting takes the foreign actor’s build and face shape into account, because people with similar physiques resonate in similar ways when they speak. She herself was cast by two different directors, neither knowing about the other, to voice the same foreign actress.

Technique also makes a voice fit more and more closely. Koichi Yamadera first voiced Will Smith in Independence Day. From photos, he had assumed Smith’s voice was fairly high, but on hearing the original he found it much deeper, so he lowered the whole character’s voice. When practicing, he repeats the original English lines to catch the actor’s rhythm and habits, then brings the English rise and fall into the Japanese lines. When voicing Jim Carrey, he even aspirated the p and t in “party time” (パーティータイム) the way English speakers do, so audiences felt Carrey himself was speaking Japanese.

Eddie Murphy is Yamadera’s most famous pairing. The two were born in the same year, and Yamadera says voicing Murphy had been his dream since the day he started. His first Murphy role was the video release of Harlem Nights. At first Murphy had other voices in Japan too, but since the 2010s nearly all of Murphy’s new films have been voiced by Yamadera. He describes himself as a voice actor “trained” by Murphy’s fast, free way of talking.

That is how a fixed voice forms. The TV era created a huge number of dubbing jobs, casting by name brought successful voices back again and again, voice actors grew closer to their star with each new dub, and audiences came to remember that voice as the star’s own. No one ever gave an order, but everyone’s choices pushed in the same direction.

An “exclusive” voice with no contract, so why can it change overnight?

A custom is not a guarantee.

Rikiya Koyama, who voiced Keanu Reeves in the Matrix films for more than twenty years, has said that playing a role in one film does not mean you will be called for the next. Some productions deliberately recast, and TV broadcasts may use a different set of voice actors.

This uncertainty has turned audiences into the guardians of the custom. Twentieth Century Fox in Japan had a home video line built around dubbing, called “Kings of Dubbing” (吹替の帝王). When it released a Die Hard box set in 2015, the existing Japanese version of Die Hard with a Vengeance had another voice actor as John McClane, so the company brought in Tsutomu Hiura to record it again. The reason: Hiura was the person who had voiced McClane most often in Japan. The voice audiences had in their heads was enough to make a distributor pay a second time for a film that already had a dub.

Distributors know this when promoting new films. A film may cast a popular celebrity in a lead role to create buzz, but several key roles still go to familiar fixed voices to reassure fans. When Japanese fans think of the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, the first name that comes to mind is the voice actor Kazuhiko Inoue. That kind of “if it’s him, it has to be this voice” reaction is itself market value.

When that voice is gone

A fixed voice is most fragile when the voice actor dies.

After Yasuo Yamada died in 1995, Eastwood’s Japanese voice never found a new fixed actor. Different TV versions used veteran voice actors such as Nachi Nozawa, Kiyoshi Kobayashi and Tetsuro Sagawa, all of whom have since died. In March 2024, BS TV Tokyo made a new Japanese version of The Mule, which Eastwood directed and starred in, with the actor Masato Ibu voicing Eastwood. The producer put it plainly: Eastwood’s voices had passed away one by one, and the last Eastwood-starring film with a TV dub was Million Dollar Baby in 2004. Rather than leave a new film without a dub, they decided to make one themselves.

Yamada himself felt he was not quite right for the later Eastwood. He said the Eastwood of Rawhide was a simple young man who grew into an ever more rugged actor, which did not match his own “light voice.” Even so, he voiced him to the end, and audiences accepted him to the end. A voice tied to a star for 36 years holds a whole generation’s memories, and that cannot be handed over by appointment.

Something similar happened again in April 2020. Keiji Fujiwara, who voiced Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man, died, and that same month TV Tokyo aired Iron Man in its afternoon film slot. Social media filled with tributes. Many viewers realized only then that the Iron Man they remembered was half the voice of a Japanese voice actor.

From Marty to Doc Brown: will the custom continue?

Foreign film slots on Japanese TV gradually shrank in the 2010s, and budgets for new TV dubs became harder to find. In theory, the ground the fixed voice grew from is getting thinner.

But recent years show the custom has found a new stage. In July 2024 Netflix released Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the first new film in the series in about 30 years. On a streaming platform launching worldwide at once, the Japanese lead was still Koichi Yamadera, and several supporting voice actors returned as well.

In February 2025, Friday Road Show made a brand-new Japanese dub of the Back to the Future trilogy for its 40th anniversary. In his twenties, Yamadera had voiced Marty in the video release. This time he voiced Doc Brown, and Marty went to the next generation’s Mamoru Miyano. A fixed voice is no longer just one person keeping one star; it is starting to be passed down between roles.

Back to that 2015 meeting. Schwarzenegger asking Genda to “play my voice for 100 years” sounds like a joke, but it gets at the heart of the custom: the Hollywood stars Japanese audiences know are made by two people, one acting on screen and one speaking Japanese in the studio. No contract covers this pairing. It lasts for decades because every time producers cast a role, they are betting that audiences still remember that voice, and audiences keep proving that they do.

---

Notes

• The “fix” is a common industry term in Japan (フィックス), not a formal title or contractual relationship. The same star may still be voiced by different actors across TV, home video and streaming versions.
• “Six Japanese dubs of Roman Holiday” refers to the number of versions available on streaming platforms as of 2022.
• Limits on using dub recordings after a station’s broadcast rights expire vary by contract; this article describes the common situation only.

Sources

1. 映画.com｜シュワルツェネッガー、日本語吹き替え30年の玄田哲章と初対面｜2015-07-08
2. 映画.com（Wikipedia 轉載）｜山田康雄
3. ciatr｜山田康雄のクリント・イーストウッド吹替
4. Wikipedia（日本語）｜吹き替え
5. MOVIE WALKER PRESS｜スターチャンネル「激レア地上波吹替版」インタビュー｜2022-08-19
6. テレ東プラス｜宮澤はるなインタビュー（午後のロードショー30周年）｜2026-07
7. 現代ビジネス｜川原繁人×山寺宏一 対談
8. 映画.com（Wikipedia 轉載）｜山寺宏一
9. アニメハック｜山寺宏一、30年ぶりにアクセル・フォーリー吹替｜2024
10. 現代ビジネス｜小山力也インタビュー（マトリックス レザレクションズ）｜2021
11. AV Watch｜「吹替の帝王」ダイ・ハード ラスト・デイ 樋浦勉新録版｜2015-10-20
12. 文春オンライン｜杉山すぴ豊：洋画の吹替キャスティング｜2019-03-03
13. Real Sound｜『運び屋』BSテレ東オリジナル吹替版、伊武雅刀がイーストウッド役に｜2024-03
14. MOVIE WALKER PRESS｜午後のロードショー5000回 岡本プロデューサー インタビュー｜2021-02-07
15. PHILE WEB｜金曜ロードショー『バック・トゥ・ザ・フューチャー』新吹替版｜2025-01-10
16. ciatr｜吹替のフィックス声優まとめ｜2018
17. All About｜洋画の吹き替え定番声優