Kazuya Tatekabe

Kazuya Tatekabe (たてかべ和也、立壁和也) was a Japanese actor and voice actor.

He was born in Kimobetsu, Hokkaidō.

He was represented by Kenyu Horiuchi's Kenyu Office at the time of his death.

He was most known for the roles of Gian (Doraemon), Walsa (Time Bokan), and Tonzura (Yatterman).

Tatekabe has been a voice actor for

61 years, he was affiliated with Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society in the 1950s, then Production Baobab and The Kenyu Office till the time of his death.

In 1977, he was cast in the first Time Bokan series of Yatterman as a short, muscular, squat man with a severe overbite and facial stubble.

In 1979, he was cast in the second Doraemon anime as Takeshi Goda (also known by the name Gian), a strong and quick-tempered local bully who can fight at any time and with any kid he sees, especially Nobita, alongside co-stars Nobuyo Ōyama (Doraemon), Noriko Ohara (Nobita Nobi), Michiko Nomura (Shizuka Minamoto) and Kaneta Kimotsuki (Suneo Honekawa).

After playing the role for 26 years, he handed his role over to Subaru Kimura on April 15, 2005.

He reprised his role, alongside co-stars Noriko Ohara (Doronjo) and Jōji Yanami (Boyacky), in 2008, he reunited with Ohara and Yanami to reprise their roles for the 2008 adaptation.

The sole exception being the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes game released by Capcom for Wii in 2008, in which the role he reprised for his lifetime, he appeared along with Ohara except Yanami and creator Hiroshi Sasagawa in the live-action film adaptation of the series and a customer of the restaurant run by the Dorombo Gang.

Tatekabe died of acute respiratory failure on June 18, 2015, at the age of 80.

Memorial services were held on June 29, 2015, in Aoyama Funeral hall.

+ marks the time before Tatekabe's death