Nobuyuki Hiyama

Biography

Nobuyuki Hiyama was born on August 25, 1967 in Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima, and grew up enjoying casual amateur baseball with friends. His mother was of Japanese descent born in Taiwan during the end of World War II who resettled back to Japan after the war.

Greatly influenced by his father, Hiyama flourished in history and social studies class since middle school, but wasn't fond of the idea of participating in extracurricular activities; yet Hiyama had no choice but to pick up at least one activity for each semester due to school regulations, and ends up wandering through Go, Shogi, and his school's Radio Club by his second-year middle school. According to Hiyama, his middle school radio club experience was "in all honesty, awful." and "was bored to the point of resigning from the club" by his 3rd year and end his middle school club life with Japanese calligraphy.

Upon entering high school, Hiyama believed he could "finally start pursuing his dream of not participating in any school clubs," but ends up being reluctantly dragged into his high school's radio club due to his friend, who has been schoolmates with him since middle school, wanting to join the club yet doesn't want to enter the club alone. Hiyama noted his high school radio club experience was "far more interesting" than he expected, "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 the awareness of the voice acting boom of the 70s and 80s that made Hiyama took notion early on that there were career opportunities in voice acting and that Tokyo has the training schools for them.

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." 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 how his radio club experience was the one that made him believe this will be the lifestyle that he would truly enjoy. In the end, Hiyama chose to dive straight into Tokyo Announce Gakuin (now Tokyo Announce Gakuin Performing Arts College) upon graduation due to the tough application requirements of his intended history major.

Career

Debuting as a Mummy in the OVA version of the original Kaiketsu Zorori anime in 1989, Hiyama spent most of his beginner years delivering newspapers to fulfill his part of the requirement as a Broadcast Scholarship recipient, while at the same time trained under Arts Vision's Nihon Narration Engi Kenkyujyo (Japan Narration Performing Arts Research Center) to improve his physical acting skills whenever he did not receive cases to work. He also noted to have part-timed as a security guard for a short while, and mentioned how he deliberately hid his face in case his colleagues spot him out during a period where he has to overlook a construction site near his recording studio. He received his first official role as the principal villain character, Syndrome of Studio Gallop's Chikyuu SOS Soreike Kororin, a 1992 environmentalist anime television program spanning a half-year recording schedule. With his Kororin gig ending and worrying where his next paycheck will be, he received his agency's call to audition for Yu Yu Hakusho. According to his commentary within Yu Yu Hakusho's Blu-ray release, he first auditioned solely for the role of Kurama, he then tried again for Hiei upon receiving the notice for Yu Yu Hakusho's second round of audition, with the latter becoming his most iconic breakthrough character.

Filmography

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

Online Stream Animation

Drama CDs

※ Determined by role's first appearance within the product.