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.
