Tokuko Sugiyama was a Japanese actress and voice artist, born on August 16, 1926, in Tokyo, Japan. Before entering the entertainment industry, she worked as a nursery school teacher and in the advertising department of a newspaper. Her path to acting began when she applied to Toho's New Face auditions. She subsequently joined the Bungakuza theater company in 1946 and, after two years of training, became a member of the Haiyūza theater company in 1948, making her stage debut that same year. Her film debut followed in 1949.

While Sugiyama was primarily known for her extensive work in live-action film and television, her career included two notable forays into anime voice acting. In 1968, she provided the voice for the character Chahal in the film "Taiyō no Ōji Horusu no Daibōken" (Hols: Prince of the Sun). Nearly a decade later, in 1977, she voiced the role of the Witch in the anime film "Sekai Meisaku Dōwa: Hakuchō no Ōji" (World Masterpiece Fairy Tales: The Prince of the Swans), a credit that directly connects to the user's query. She also voiced the role of the Stepmother in the 1980 film "Sekai Meisaku Dōwa: Mori wa Ikiteiru" (World Masterpiece Fairy Tales: The Forest is Alive).

In her extensive live-action career, Sugiyama was renowned for her supporting roles, most notably as Tsune, the sister of the main character, in the long-running "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" (It's Tough Being a Man) film and television series. From 1990, she portrayed Hanako Noda in the drama "Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari". Her filmography includes frequent collaborations with director Yoji Yamada. She continued acting into her later years, even after moving to a nursing home in 1992, before retiring from the entertainment industry in 2005. Tokuko Sugiyama passed away on August 28, 2014.