Extra-Musical Sonic Environments / 1: Voice Actresses Performing Boy Characters. Historical, Political, Social, and Cultural Significance in Postwar Japan

This chapter tackles the peculiar theme of how, in the history of anime production, the conditions for synchronising the visual and auditory aspects have been constructed, focussing on the circumstantial and professional habit of employing voice actresses for boy characters. In one of the very the first tv anime series in a 30-minute weekly format, Tetsuwan Atom (1963–1966), a 26-year-old theatre actress, Mari Shimizu, played the eponymous robot. Thereafter, many boy characters performed by voice actresses appeared both in anime for the whole family and in anime targeted to fans. The chapter, therefore, investigates and clarifies why and how voice actresses started to perform boy characters, arguing that the reasons are closely related to the social and cultural processes in which anime’s professions were shaped in postwar Japan.