Ryoko Takizawa

Ryoko Takizawa (Japanese: 滝沢涼子, born 1 January 1969) is a Japanese actor from Kanagawa Prefecture. She has worked continuously in film and television since 1993, and is one of those performers whose face Japanese audiences know long before they know the name, because she has spent thirty years playing the mothers, nurses, section chiefs and neighbours who hold a story’s ordinary world together.

She graduated from the beauty and cosmetology course at Yokohama Municipal Yokohama Commercial High School. Her earliest credits both fall in 1993: the feature film Chibusa and the television drama Sakura Momoko Land: Taniguchi Rokuzo Shoten, in which she played Etsuko. She is represented by the agency Queen-B.

On screen she has worked with a notable run of directors. She appeared in Sogo Ishii’s Angel Dust (1994), in two SABU films, Drive (2002) and The Crab Cannery Ship (2009), in Mika Omori’s Nekonade (2008), and in Miwa Nishikawa’s Dear Doctor (2009) as Kitaoka Sakiko. Mamoru Oshii cast her in 28 1/2: Mousou no Kyojin (2010). Her more recent film work includes Kagurame (2015) as Hatano Eriko and Michio Koshikawa’s Mizu Irazu no Hoshi (2023).

Her television record is longer still. She has returned to the same shows across years rather than passing through them: Aibou in Season 8 (2009) and again in Season 11 (2013), and Detective Seven in both its second series (2016) and its seventh (2021). She played Mikumo Sakiko in Kamen Rider Agito (2001) and, sixteen years later, Izumi Teruyo in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (2017). Other credits include the NHK taiga drama Ryomaden (2010), Bloody Monday Season 2 (2010), GTO (2012), Kodoku no Gurume Season 3 (2013), Kounodori (2015), 99.9 Criminal Lawyer Season 1 (2016), Kinkyu Torishirabeshitsu (2017) and Icy (2025). She has also worked on stage, in a 1996 production of Macbeth among others, and took the leading role in the 1998 NHK-FM radio drama Red Rain.

In Hold on, Harutora-kun (ちょっと待とうよ、春虎くん, MBS, 2026) she plays Kishida Shino, the mother of Kishida Sui. Shino had her only child late and keeps a close, careful watch over him, which puts her at the edge of the story her son is living rather than inside it. The role is listed from the series’ premiere on 14 August 2026.