--- name: "Gorō Naya" canonical: "https://film.one/person/goro-naya" roles: ["Actor"] born: "17 November 1929" died: "5 March 2013" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 82 updated: "2026-09-17T06:20:23.049026+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Gorō Naya Actor. Born 17 November 1929 in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan. Died 5 March 2013. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 17 November 1929, Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan - **Died:** 5 March 2013 - **Active:** 1979–1984 - **Also known as:** Goro Naya, Gorou Naya, Gorô Naya, Naya Gorou - **Works often with:** [Hayao Miyazaki](https://film.one/person/hayao-miyazaki.md) - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1970s 80 (1), 1980s 85 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2571077, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0623214/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/616 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*Warriors of the Wind*](https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind.md) (85) - **Tubi:** [*The Castle of Cagliostro*](https://film.one/film/the-castle-of-cagliostro.md) (80) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Gorō Naya > A deep, unhurried voice built for captains, narrators and one stubborn policeman. Gorō Naya chased Lupin III as Inspector Zenigata for nearly forty years, and the joke of the pursuit is largely his; the rest of the career is commanders and Hollywood stars speaking Japanese. In *The Castle of Cagliostro* (1979) Inspector Koichi Zenigata turns up, as he always does, a step behind Lupin III, and Gorō Naya's voice tells you at once what kind of policeman this is: not clever, not cruel, simply unable to stop. He has chased the thief across the world and would be lost without him, and the film knows the chase is its real love story. Naya plays it straight. The inspector never seems to notice he is the joke, which is why the joke works. He came to it from the stage and the radio. Naya joined Theatre Echo in 1959 and spent the following years dubbing Hollywood for Japanese audiences, putting his voice to John Wayne, Charlton Heston and Clark Gable, which is a fair description of the instrument: deep, level, and used to being obeyed. When anime found him at the end of the 1960s it gave him captains and villains, the Great Leader of Shocker in *Kamen Rider* (1971), Captain Jūzō Okita in *Space Battleship Yamato* (1974), and a good deal of narration. In 1971 it also gave him Zenigata, and he kept the part until 2010. Miyazaki used him twice at the start of his own career, and the two parts show the two Nayas. Yupa in *Warriors of the Wind* (1984), the shortened version of *Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* that we reviewed, is a supporting part in a film with a great deal else going on, and the voice there is the one he was most often hired for: an authority nobody argues with. We would not build a case on it. Zenigata is the case. We came away from *Cagliostro* liking the inspector more than the thief, which we had not expected, and it is Naya who does it: the pursuit in his voice is so plainly the whole of the man's life that Lupin starts to look like the lucky one. He was not uncritical of himself. He later said he regretted the age and the timbre he had chosen for Okita, and it is a fair note; the risk with a voice like that is that every captain sounds like the last one, and every villain like a captain gone bad. Naya also said he never thought of himself as a voice actor, only an actor given parts, and the claim holds up best in Zenigata, where the voice is doing a character rather than a rank. He gave the part up in 2010, saying, "Zenigata never gets old, but I get older year by year, so it's a little bit difficult to match." Start with *The Castle of Cagliostro*, and notice how far into the film you get before you realise it is on the policeman's side. ## Biography Gorō Naya was a Japanese actor, voice actor, narrator and theatre director. Born on 17 November 1929 in Hakodate, Hokkaido, he died on 5 March 2013 in Chiba from chronic respiratory failure. He voiced Inspector Koichi Zenigata in *The Castle of Cagliostro* (1979) and Yupa in *Warriors of the Wind* (1984). Naya was long associated with the Lupin the Third franchise as the voice of Zenigata. He belonged to the Theatre Echo troupe throughout his career, which began in the 1950s, and was the older brother of actor Rokurō Naya. He was married to actress and voice actress Kachiko Hino. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Warriors of the Wind* (1984), Fi1m 85, as Yupa (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind.md) - *The Castle of Cagliostro* (1979), Fi1m 80, as Inspector Koichi Zenigata (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/the-castle-of-cagliostro.md) ## Also known for - *One Piece* (1999), Crocus (voice) - *Monster* (2004), Blind Old Man (voice) - *Golden Boy* (1995), Narrator (voice) - *Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies* (1986), Bongo (voice) - *Casshern* (2004), Narrator - *Invasion of Astro-Monster* (1965), Astronaut F. Glenn (voice) - *Godzilla vs. Megalon* (1973), Emperor Atonio of Seatopia (voice) - *Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan* (2009), Inspector Koichi Zenigata (voice) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/goro-naya