Few voice actors have remained fixtures of Japanese popular culture for as long as Kazuhiko Inoue. During a visit to Delhi last week for the Anime India 2026 convention, where thousands of fans gathered to celebrate the country’s rapidly growing anime community, the veteran performer behind characters such as Kakashi in Naruto, Nyanko-sensei in Natsume’s Book of Friends and Kars in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure reflected on the craft, chance encounters and sheer longevity that have sustained his long career. 

The career in question stretches back to 1973, when Inoue entered an industry that barely resembled the sprawling global anime ecosystem of today, when the route into voice acting was unexpectedly ordinary. “When I was 18, I was aiming to become a pro bowler and even got a job at a bowling alley. But my dream soon shattered,” he recalled during an interview with The Hindu. A friend invited him to visit a voice acting school and, as Inoue explained, “I wasn’t good with people. So, I thought I might get better if I went somewhere and took the professional exam.” Fifty-two years later, that detour has produced one of the most extensive careers in Japanese voice acting, encompassing hundreds of roles across television, film and games.

International audiences know him best as Kakashi Hatake from Naruto, the manga and anime that follows young ninja Naruto Uzumaki’s journey from social outcast to leader of the Hidden Leaf Village. The iconic character enters the story as the masked mentor of Team 7, training Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura; though the series gradually reveals a darker history marked by the death of comrades and the burden of surviving war. Kishimoto himself constructed Kakashi as a teacher whose walled-off interiority concealed profound grief behind his mischievous temperament, and Inoue does not find that contradiction unusual. 

“This duality might seem odd to you in a character, but if you think about it, an actual person can also be many things,” he said. “I myself may think of serious things, or may think of weird things, but it’s all normal within a person. So, as a role, I see Kakashi as a human who has many sides to him.” Asked what Kakashi would do if transported to modern India, Inoue answered without hesitation: “He’d go to a bookstore and see if he could find Icha Icha Paradise (a lewd in-universe manga).”

Few voice actors have occupied as many eras of anime history as Inoue. Over decades, he voiced characters in franchises that defined successive generations of fans: Jerrid Messa in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Kars in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Yoriichi Tsugikuni in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, and most recently the Hero of the South in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. Yet, Inoue speaks about performing with practicality. 

“You may think that it is difficult to nail the voices, but if you practice a little, you can do it. The most difficult thing is how to make the most of the role,” he explained. His method is startlingly direct. “I’ve been doing it for 50 years, so I can get into character in no time. I say, ‘good evening!’, and when I stand up, I become Kakashi (chuckles).”

The simplicity masks decades of accumulated technique. Discussing how he builds a performance, Inoue says, “I build a role with the image of arranging each cell one by one.” Referring to Naruto and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, works created by Masashi Kishimoto and Hirohiko Araki respectively, he observed that “both have a completely different worldview” and that he tries “to understand the world as much as possible.”

That accumulated experience proved particularly useful when he recalled the role he found most difficult: Yamaoka Shirō from Oishinbo, Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki’s long-running culinary manga adaptation. Yamaoka is cynical, often exhausted, occasionally hungover and capable of transforming into an unexpectedly authoritative gourmand when discussing food. Capturing that shifting register presented an unusual challenge. “It’s uncomfortably hard to portray that slurred style of talking,” Inoue admitted, before revealing that he once arrived at recording sessions hungover so he could reproduce the character’s speech patterns more accurately, which later even informed his performance as Kakashi. 

When asked which of his roles he believes deserve greater attention, Inoue identifies one role that he wished had travelled further beyond Japan: Nyanko-sensei from Natsume’s Book of Friends. Adapted from Yuki Midorikawa’s long-running manga first serialised in 2003, the series follows Takashi Natsume, a teenager who inherits the ability to see yōkai, the supernatural beings of Japanese folklore. Inoue voices Nyanko-sensei, a powerful spirit who usually appears as a rotund, sake-loving cat with a sharp tongue. He also singled out Matsuzo Matsuno, the perpetually unemployed father in Fujio Akatsuka’s Osomatsu-kun and its successor Mr. Osomatsu, noting that the character remains relatively unknown outside Japan despite the franchise’s enormous domestic cultural footprint spanning six decades of manga, television and comedy.

When asked what keeps him motivated after half a century in the industry, he laughs, “I’m not motivated at all. But when I was playing these roles, I was enjoying them, and before I knew it, 15 years had passed.”

The industry’s future however, worries him. Japan’s voice acting profession has expanded dramatically over recent decades through specialised schools and talent agencies, producing an unprecedented number of performers. “I feel like in the end, everyone’s voice will become the same and everyone will become the same person,” he said. “There won’t be any individuality.” 

Inoue also acknowledged the growing problem of voice cloning, which has already resulted in unauthorised AI-generated performances circulating online, yet his response was notably pragmatic. “As AI is developing, we do see a lot of issues come up, such as AI being used to copy voices and then upload content on the internet,” he says. “But I think this is because AI is still in the process of being developed. And hopefully, these problems will get resolved in the future.” To illustrate the possibility of coexistence, he pointed to fellow voice actor Yuki Kaji (known internationally as Eren Jaeger in Attack on Titan among many other memorable roles), who has experimented with AI-based projects that reproduce elements of his voice under controlled conditions.

In the second season of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Inoue voices the Hero of the South, a legendary warrior whose words only reveal their full meaning years later, fitting for a series built around the ways people continue to shape others even in their absence. The role prompted Inoue to reflect on his own mentor, veteran voice actor Nagai Ichirō, whose career spanned several generations of Japanese television, from Space Battleship Yamato to Sazae-san, before his death in 2014. “Just like Frieren does with her master Flamme and with the Hero of the South, I came to realise the importance of the teachings of my own master, that is Nagai Ichiro-san, some 10-20 years later,” Inoue says. “Perhaps those who admire my work may also only realise this 10-20 years later themselves.”

Anime India Delhi 2026 was held at the Yashobhoomi Convention Centre in New Delhi on June 6 and 7, drawing over 43,000 attendees across two days, with Inoue headlining a guest lineup that also included Japanese anisong artist YURiKA