Still Sounding Young at 85, She Is the Voice of Old Japan

The cast gathered in the recording studio, taking turns at the microphones as animated scenes from one of Japan’s most beloved television cartoons played on screens in front of them.Midori Kato, 85, was the only gray-haired head in the room.

She closed her eyes, appearing to doze for a moment until it was her character’s turn.She stepped up to a microphone, her shoulders slightly stooped and her gnarled hands grasping the paper script.But when she opened her mouth to speak, it was with a cheerful, slightly nasal twang: the voice of a 24-year-old stay-at-home mother.

To generations of Japanese, she is Sazae-san, the titular character of the world’s longest-running animated television series.Since “Sazae-san” began airing on Sundays at 6:30 p.m.in 1969, Ms.

Kato has voiced the bossy but kind, absent-minded woman who is forever sheepish about some mishap.Ms.

Kato was recently honored with a Guinness World Record for the longest career as a voice actor for the same character in an animated TV series.She is the only remaining member of the original cast, and its oldest.“Sazae-san” still airs weekly on Fuji TV in its original time slot.

It portrays the day-to-day antics of Sazae, her husband and 3-year-old son, along with her parents (voiced by actors much younger than Ms.Kato), her mischievous elementary-age brother and sweet younger sister.

The three generations live in a suburban house in Tokyo, mostly frozen in the staunchly traditional time period of the earliest episodes.There is even a phrase, “Sazae-san syndrome,” referring to the Sunday night blues before the workweek begins.The characters, who never age, are named after seafood products.

Sazae (a mollusk that is a culinary delicacy in Japan) has maintained the same distinctive tripartite hairstyle for 55 years.The characters make calls on rotary phones or from telephone booths, and plot points often turn on missed communication that would not occur in the era of texting.We are having tr...