Akihiro Miwa’s theatrical voice makes a wolf goddess and a flamboyant witch formidable company. We recommend his work with Hayao Miyazaki, especially the precise menace and mockery he brings to Moro in Princess Mononoke.
Fi1m perspective
When Moro speaks in Princess Mononoke (1997), Miwa’s theatrical voice feels entirely at home in the wolf goddess. The menace is precise, and the mocking tone gives her something to do beyond sounding fearsome. We were unsettled by that mockery, which suggests a creature who has already found the humans wanting. Miwa could deliver multiple takes in recording to reach a particular tone, and the care suits a film that gives its opposing sides room to be heard. A voice this imposing needs that control.
The voice came to animation after work in chanson, cabaret and theatre, including collaborations with Yukio Mishima and Shūji Terayama. Kinji Fukasaku’s Black Lizard (1968), adapted from Mishima’s play, gave Miwa the title role of a femme fatale jewel thief. An appearance in Terayama’s Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971) belongs to that earlier screen career too. The later Miyazaki roles make sense as a continuation of this theatrical work. Neither a wolf goddess nor a flamboyant witch requires anyone to sound ordinary.
In Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Miwa voices the Witch of the Waste, and the flamboyance fits a fantasy comfortable with being funny and tender. We like the willingness to make the character so conspicuous; understatement would hardly be an automatic improvement. The performance belongs in the same film as that walking castle, with both offering an immediate pleasure before the plot has to be sorted out. We also value the film’s kindness, which gives us something to care about beyond the spectacle.
The caveat is that neither film tells its story as clearly as we might wish. Princess Mononoke is crowded; Howl’s Moving Castle has a more troublesome tangle of plot, which a well-judged voice cannot straighten out. We recommend both, though the force of the forest adventure and its sympathy for the human combatants make it our first choice. Start with Moro, and give the storytelling a little patience.
Biography
Akihiro Miwa, born Akihiro Maruyama, was a Japanese singer, actor and drag queen. He was born on 15 May 1935 in Nagasaki and began his professional singing career in Tokyo in the early 1950s, performing at chanson cafés in the Ginza district.
As an actor he appeared in stage productions associated with Yukio Mishima and Shūji Terayama, and in films including Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971), Black Lizard (1968) and Takeshis' (2005). He voiced Mrs Moro in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997) and the Witch of the Waste in Howl's Moving Castle (2004), and provided the voice of Arceus in Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life (2009). Miwa died on 20 June 2026.
