Masako Nozawa

Masako Nozawa was born in the Nippori area of Arakawa, Tokyo as the only child of painter Ryoshu Nozawa. Due to the influence of her aunt, Shochiku actress Kiyono Sasaki, Masako became a child actress at the age of three. In 1944, the family moved to Numata, Gunma to avoid the air raids of World War II. Nozawa lived in the city from the third grade of elementary school until she graduated high school. In junior high school, Nozawa joined a theater company and worked as an actress in Tokyo during school holidays. She began voice acting in her late teens. After graduating, she moved to Tokyo. Although she did not plan on it, voice acting saw a boom and became Nozawa's main occupation. She explained, "It was the early days of television, and many foreign dramas were broadcast. At the time, voice dubbing was also done live, so using children to play boy roles was a concern. But adult men's voices have already changed, so women were chosen for child roles."

After handling a guest role on Astro Boy (1963), Nozawa voiced brothers Tonkichi and Kanta Hanamura in Sally, the Witch (1966). Her first lead role was Kitarō in GeGeGe no Kitarō (1968). For the 1973 adaptation of Doraemon, Nozawa took over the role of the title character from Kōsei Tomita, who had voiced the character for the first 13 episodes. She went on to voice Tetsurō Hoshino in Galaxy Express 999 (1978). Although she had reprised the role of Kitarō for the 1971 adaptation of GeGeGe no Kitarō, Nozawa could not do the same for its 1985 adaptation, due to a rule that voice actors could not simultaneously play more than one main character on the same television station. However, she noted that this eventually resulted in her landing the role of Son Goku in Dragon Ball (1986). She was chosen to play Goku by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, who later stated that he would hear Nozawa's voice in his head when writing the original manga.

Nozawa led a lawsuit by 361 voice actors against Nippon Animation in demand of royalties on home video releases of anime series. On August 25, 2004, the Tokyo High Court ruled in the plaintiffs' favor. On April 1, 2006, Nozawa left 81 Produce to establish Office Nozawa. In 2012, she closed the self-owned talent agency. A number of voice actors who were affiliated with her agency went on to affiliate with Media Force.

In 2017, Guinness World Records presented Nozawa with two world records related to her voicing Son Goku in Dragon Ball video games for 23 years and 218 days; "voice actor who voiced the same character in a video game for the longest period" and "longest video game voice acting career".