News

80% of Seiyū Take Part-Time Jobs to Make Ends Meet

Ameba News posted the first part of an interview with Shōmu Shirogane, who is a seiyū (voice actor), a narrator, and the president of the Winner Entertainment voice-acting management agency. According to Shirogane, there are about 1,600 people who work as seiyū in Japan. Of that number, about 10% work full-time as freelancing seiyū. However, 80% cannot make ends meet with their voice-acting assignments alone, and have to take on part-time jobs elsewhere. The remainder includes actors, idols, and media talents who perform in other fields. Another 80,000 are said to be potential seiyū and people who are applying to be seiyū.

Many in the latter group are training to be seiyū in over 50 vocational schools for the profession in Japan. Shirogane acknowledges that becoming a seiyū is difficult with little guarantee of success, even for the approximate half of the profession that are affiliated with an agency. Ameba News' second part of the interview will include Urara Takano, another seiyū who runs a seiȳu management agency called Remax.