“80% of Seiyuu Work Part-time to Make Ends Meet”
…says Shirogane Shomu, a guy I’ve never heard of, who happens to be the president of a talent agency I’ve never heard of. Along with veteran seiyuu Takano Urara, Shirogane was interviewed by Ameba (possibly to drum up interest for the radio show they do together?) about the seiyuu business. The article (condensed in an ANN news article) vaguely states that ‘There are approximately 1600 working seiyuu, 10% of whom freelance, and 80% cannot make a living from doing just seiyuu work so they have to do part-time jobs’.
At first I thought – ‘Er… 80% of what – all seiyuu, or 80% of the 10% of all seiyuu who freelance?’ (the exact Japanese is 声優はおよそ1600人といわれています。そのうち１割くらいがフリー声優で、8割は声優の仕事だけでは生活できないのでアルバイトしています。) Then I saw that Shirogane actually means 80% of all seiyuu, a number that does not include people from other fields of entertainment (idols, actors etc) who take on occasional voice work.
Let’s not forget that seiyuu doesn’t only refer to those who provide anime voice work but also includes dubbers, narrators and radio personalities (such as Shirogane himself) in the figures – a lot of whom none of us would ever have heard of. It means that in his calculation, approximately 320 of the 1600 seiyuu in the business earn enough to support themselves and the rest have to work part-time jobs. I’m guessing Suwabe Junichi, with his multitude of electronic gizmos, must be one of them lucky people who’s swimming in the money!
Shirogane doesn’t really go into specifics about who exactly makes up this 80%, but he does mention that more than 850 people (53%) of the total seiyuu population are not fully attached to an agency – instead they are under ‘custody’ (預かり) or ’semi-attached’ (準所属) status [it varies from agency to agency], where their future is decided by their performance. When seiyuu are still in this ‘unconfirmed’ state (perhaps still undergoing voice training), their earnings are unstable and they’re the most likely group that needs to find part-time jobs to supplement meagre earnings from voicing Passerby B or Shop Assistant Z. Off the top of my head, Aoni’s Kano Yui is an example of a seiyuu still under 準所属 status – wonder if she’s working in a maid cafe somewhere?
*shrug* The dubious 80% figure (where’s the source, where’s the cold, hard facts?) if true shouldn’t shock anyone. For seiyuu attached to an agency that focuses on anime voice work – there’s only so many anime made per season, with a limited number of roles – so if a seiyuu fails at auditions = no roles = get a job at the local kombini to pay the bills until the next season of auditions comes around. Assuming that working at a convenience store or family restaurant is what Shirogane means by a ‘part-time job’ and doesn’t include stuff that seiyuu do on the side like radio shows, stage plays, idol careers and so on.
But this supposedly ‘pitiful’ state isn’t specific to the seiyuu business, it is pretty much the same for other parts of Japanese entertainment – the owarai (comedy) talents and wannabe idols, the poor overworked animators; they all earn a pittance (aka a monthly wage that just about enables them to survive on a diet of gruel). And the competition is even more intense; there may be 80,000 potential seiyuu vying for 320 successful working positions (4 out of 1000 succeed), but idol auditions are even worse – AKB48’s third-gen auditions had 12,828 applicants for 13 spots (1/1000) as an example.
Even the most successful idols have little control over the work they do, and this is true for seiyuu also – you get sent to an audition, you get the role, you do it. In fact, seiyuu sometimes have it better in that they get paid per episode – I think it was something like 13-16,000 yen per anime episode (halve the figure for newbie seiyuu), so if someone like Noto Mamiko can pack their schedule with 4-5 regular anime per season + added work for games, radio and live events, I’m sure she can survive just fine. Apparently Koyasu Takehito once wrote on his blog that a seiyuu can make a decent living if he appears in 3 regular roles per season, but I can’t find a source to verify that anymore. That also made me think that Ueda Kana will never run out of work as long as there are Kansai characters in anime – she is the #1 go-to seiyuu for an authentic Kansai accent (used to be Hisakawa Aya).
I think I’ve rambled on enough, I don’t even know if I’m making sense… so in short, Shirogane is telling exaggerated half-truths so you shouldn’t feel sorry for seiyuu or be discouraged if you’re aiming to become one (not in Japan, hopefully). After all, the Japanese entertainment world is a shitty place where the ‘biggest’ stars are paid crap wages and get butt-raeped by the Gollum-like manly Mr. Johnny Kitagawa, while the only trauma seiyuu face is the prospect of getting kimo-ota germs all over their body at handshake events. Also, I’m pretty sure other showbiz people have to work at some other sort of job to make ends meet as well, I’ve heard of athletes having to supplement their income with part-time jobs…
Refer:
Part 1 and Part 2 of Ameba interview
Interview with top idol Ueto Aya
Riuva article on Animators and Seiyuu Being Slaves
>> ..the only trauma seiyuu face is the prospect of getting kimo-ota germs all over their body at handshake events.
Quoted for truth, for most seiyuu. More popular ones are getting death threats.
It doesn’t surprise me that seiyuu is far from Hollywood Z-ranked actors. In the end only top-tier people in the industry will get the money from CD sales etc. Sad, but what can we do except keep supporting them?
Yeah, that number looked weird to me at first because it seemed like a LOT of seiyuu could earn enough money. I had thought that there were only like, 40 or something that made enough.
(Also, the fact that seiyuu need to work other jobs really shouldn’t surprise anyone. How many actors in New York or LA have to work as waiters, bartenders, or baristas?)
seiyuu is strict work.
income is very low,cheap.
We were knowing seiyuu income is,sure… very cheap.
Thanks for pointing out some of the inconsistencies in the earlier report, and at the same time making sense of the matter.
Every time it’s about the bitter facts in the entertainment industry, it’s too easy for me to play Cypress Hill’s “Rock Superstar” (a song about being tempted, then beaten and ripped off by the entertainment industry) in my head.
Down here in the Philippines, voice actors have their hands full on a daily basis — dubbing (and scripting and directing) not just anime but also standard US animation, then soap operas from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South America and Mexico. They also even outsource voice work for most companies, especially game developers and telecoms. Sometimes they also had sidelines such as theater acting and as extras in a live-action feature.
One thing’s for sure: these people are among the most underrated entertainers on the planet.
I was surely not surprised by the article’s heading (I never read the actual article), since it is quite obvious that it is truth in some way. But thanks for clearing up the inconsistencies and stuff, tis always nice to know.
And yes I also agree, these people are often underrated and unsung heroes. How many people who watch anime actually bother about the seiyuu behind their characters’ voices? When Luka was announced and I heard “Asakawa Yuu” I was like “WTF” and people went “Who is that?” God.
Hmm, sounds pretty tough for the up and comers
. I thought they earned quite a lot, to be honest 
The fact that seiyuu get paid peanuts for what they do hasn’t stopped my from being a seiyuu fan. It’s very hard to support seiyuu outside of Japan, so I’m pretty much stuck to just commenting on videos on YouTube and reading blog translations.
This is similar to voice actors in the United States. Dubbing anime isn’t enough to get food on the table. They have to go around town looking for more voice work, i.e. commercials, movie trailers, Western cartoons, etc. And with the poor economy in the states, voice actors are working harder than ever to earn a living.
Hmm, but arent seiyuus kinda mini celebrities? I mean, voice actors in the US don’t get much recognition at all, they don’t even appear on tv on shows (rarely). And seiyuus seem to be on often on tv (like the recent new years special, etc)
Wasn’t the whole scandal with ArtsVision last year, similar to a casting couch situation? Some executive there fed some naive seiyuu wannabe that there would be opportunities for her, only if she played his game? So I guess for the uninformed (i.e., don’t know that seiyuu isn’t as lucrative a field as other entertainers), there can still be very real dangers.
I vaguely remember the Koyasu article you cited. I wonder if that’s changed because of the shift in the industry to create shorter seasons. 13 episodes seems to more of a norm today as “a season”, where it used to be 24-26 range, a few years ago – being at the top of your game and landing 3 series now may only give you stability for a quarter vs. half a year.
@stewie: things work out very differently in the US, and the only “voice actors” who get high profile are those celebrity voices appearing in big-ticket animation features. The real VAs, on the other hand sometimes wind up in conventions and that’s as far as they could go. Even Tiffany Grant had only a few seconds in a feature film.
There are exceptions, though, like the prolific Chuck Jones, who achieved considerable fame beyond the sound booth.
For a look into the US voice acting scene in its heyday as described, check out this article by Mark Evanier (http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL267.htm).
@chanpon: economics and perhaps the prohibitive costs of producing a risky 52-episode show (consider the near-failure of Blood+, for example) obviously makes sense for most studios to churn out 13 episodes with minimal risk, seeing if that show could earn after that run. Furthermore with so much anime (mostly crap) than ever, and the competition between studios far more intense, and the painful coincidence of an economic crisis, it’s gonna be hard earning the cash. It’s the survival of the fittest.
@stewie: Mini celebs? Yes, for the crowd they serve which is… you know, the Otakus. Unfortunately, being a celeb doesn’t instantly translate to big bucks. There are always a whole line of big corporate bosses to feed them with moola before the little ones below get the cash.
Most will be thinking, “Why not just leave and smack that letter straight into that overfed corporate boss’s face?”
Unfortunately, its a catch-22 situation.
1) Ok, lets be realistic, we need money to buy food, pay bills and so on.
2) Japanese society, I assume most would know, ostracizes the non-employed classifying them within the league of leeches and pests who lives off welfare. In fact, for most Japanese coming from a conservative upbringing, there is nothing worse than facing the ridicule of society and not holding a steady job.
3) Economy. Ok, we all know its not just Japan, the entire world economy’s really screwed up this time and it will take a couple of years just to get it restored back to normal. I don’t even dare to think of when the next ‘boom’ will be. Just bring everything back to normal, and we’ll talk about the next ‘big boom’ in the future. So would one rather be employed earning pittance or unemployed earning not a single YEN?
Getting stuck in between a rock and hard place. Most Seiyuus simply don’t have the choice. Behind the smiles, laughter and that cute voice probably lies a very, very different personality altogether.
There’s a Chinese song that I once heard with a line that literally translates to this:
“Before the curtain falls, the songs, dances and laughters, who would not cheer and love you?
After the curtain falls, the rush of feelings, who would listen to you?”
^
You remind me of a similar song called “Real” by Plumb.
So there leaves some odd questions: why — the seiyuu and the animators — they still keep on doing this? Why so much pain and sacrifice in the name of art when they could’ve combined art and commerce, as that Andy Warhol once proclaimed?
Some commenter on the Riuva blog (http://www.riuva.com/?p=111#comment-453576) said that for all the suffering and abuse, those animators and seiyuu, passionately still believing themselves as true artists and idealists than mere cogs in a machine, they’re proud to see their work broadcasted; they wanted not just little money but to live out a dream.
I’d say there’s two groups of seiyuu – one that treats it as ‘just a job’ and others (mostly the younger crowd who grew up watching anime) who are really passionate about it. But most of them are realistic about the seiyuu profession, and really – they don’t have good job prospects given that a lot go into voice training straight after graduating from high school; stop being a seiyuu = most likely to end up in a convenience store. Might as well stick to voice acting.
Hmm, i wonder if sawashiro miyuki is an otaku and/or if she would manage living as a non seiyuu
(since apparently shes well versed and etc)
@j1m0ne: stop being a seiyuu = most likely to end up in a convenience store
But Yui Horie in a famima outfit was just awesome.
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@Chris: That old grainy video of Ho-chan in a Convenience Store training video? lolz~
Part of me thinks this makes seiyuus more human at heart, seeing as how most movie stars live like royalty (mainly because they’re treated like it). Maybe their low pay also discourages them from getting into drugs and less dangerous but still expensive hobbies like ridiculous spending sprees. You don’t hear about too many seiyuus using anything stronger than alcohol or doing anything more reckless than cheating on their partners and talking about it on their blogs.
But even so, even though no, Minorin and Aya Hirano aren’t living off food stamps, is it right that they should get the next-smallest pieces of the royalties pie (after the pitied animators)? Also, I remember a piece from a few years ago about the economic realities in anime. It mentioned that Yurika Ochiai at one point wasn’t able to pay her electric bill. I remember from your New Year’s post that you seem to think of her as sort of a whiner; what’s your take on this?
Yeah, I would agree with you that seiyuus don’t have it nearly as bad as many, many other people (the active ones still have a job, after all), but they seem to be walking a thin line, and in this economy…
It does seem as if more kids want to be seiyuu than the facts of the profession warrant. But the same goes for actors in North America, 90% or more of whom (figure completely out of thin air, based on some acquaintances) are waiters, models, etc., on the side.
Seiyuu or Actors, same battles.