Author’s note. I wish to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this article: Ed Godziszewski, for generously sharing research and memorabilia from his collection, all of which is marked as such in captions; Mariko Godziszewski, for translating research material; and Erik Homenick, for sharing information on Akira Ifukube’s score for Godzilla vs. Mothra and fact-checking my comments on the composer’s career.

(more…)

In October 1992, the Los Angeles Times ran a fateful announcement. “The dinosaur vogue in Hollywood won’t end with Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park next summer. According to industry sources, TriStar Pictures is bringing back the fire-breathing, building-crushing Japanese superstar Godzilla.” While the company’s chairman, Mike Medavoy, refused to comment on the matter, “sources say an official announcement about the project, tentatively scheduled as a Christmas 1994 release, is imminent.”¹ Meantime, halfway around the world, the Japanese studio Toho, which owned the rights to the Godzilla character, was producing its nineteenth entry in the series. Takao Okawara’s Godzilla vs. Mothra premiered two months later and grossed ¥2.22 billion, becoming the top domestic hit of the 1993 movie year and even managing to keep pace with a few foreign imports, such as Chris Columbus’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (¥2.5 billion) and Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive (¥2.25 billion).² A few days after Mothra’s December 12 release, another report emerged from America: Toho was continuing to negotiate a deal permitting TriStar to make its own Godzilla movie, with an anticipated cost of $40 million and a new projected release of Christmas 1993. “We’re really eager to see how a Godzilla film made by Americans will turn out,” said Toho spokesman Takashi Nakagawa. “It’s great news for all Godzilla fans.”³

(more…)

Author’s note. Before we begin, I wish to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this article: Ed Godziszewski, for generously sharing research and memorabilia from his collection, all of which is marked as such in captions; Mariko Godziszewski, for translating research material; and Erik Homenick, for sharing information and fact-checking my comments on Akira Ifukube’s scores for The Three Treasures (1959) and Buddha (1961).

(more…)

In an early scene from Ishiro Honda’s H-Man (1958), a group of policemen interrogate a nightclub singer about the ornate possessions in her apartment. Chief among the items—which the singer insists she, and not her gangster boyfriend, bought—is a Japanese television set. One detective inquires how much she earns in a given month. Her answer: up to ¥60,000—the exact cost of a set at that time. Although the film never comments on the matter, ¥60,000 (about three months’ salary for the average Japanese in 1958) represented a significant drop from the minimum cost of ¥175,000 when broadcasting started in the country five years earlier; the number of TV sets, meanwhile, had increased from 866¹ to 1.5 million. By 1962—the year Honda satirized the ratings racket in King Kong vs. Godzilla—the price had fallen further, and nearly 12 million households spent their evenings watching television.²

(more…)

On May 22, the Japanese press announced that veteran actor Akira Nakao passed away on the 16th that same month, age 81. (The cause of death, per the newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun, was heart failure.)¹ Having grown up at a time when the Heisei Godzilla movies were steadily migrating to the American market and their Millennium counterparts underwent production in Japan, I spent many an hour watching movies featuring military officials or bureaucrats enacted by this distinctive-looking actor, who always stood out with his gravitas, intensity, and expressive eyes.

(more…)

I didn’t write an In Memoriam piece on Toho actress Yumi Shirakawa after her passing on June 14, 2016. Generally speaking, I shy from writing about individual film artists unless I either a) know a sizable amount about them, or b) can come up with something unique to say about their lives and careers; since I knew—and truthfully still know—little about Shirakawa and haven’t seen that many of her movies, I refrained from commenting back then. In hindsight, I regret that decision. Like many readers of this site, I was introduced to Shirakawa through her appearances in Ishiro Honda’s science fiction movies; and while her genre roles were never as memorable as those of, say, Kumi Mizuno’s, there was always something immensely appealing about her which managed to shine through. Her delicate beauty (which garnered her the nickname “the Japanese Grace Kelly”),¹ combined with an aloof on-screen nature, made her one of my favorites in Honda’s “stock company.”

(more…)

In 1937, director Kajiro Yamamoto pitched to the Imperial Army a movie about a young girl raising a colt that, by drama’s end, is sold to the military. At a time of flourishing Japanese expansionism and federal influence in the motion picture industry, the army was quick to back “military support” stories and thus ordered Toho to greenlight the project.¹ Three years of development and twelve months of shooting² ensued before the picture, titled Horse (1941), appeared in cinema houses and was celebrated for its mix of drama and documentary-esque sequences. Kinema Junpo magazine chose it as the year’s second best feature, and Yamamoto’s military sponsors were so pleased they commissioned him to make a navy movie in the same aesthetic. (That project became 1942’s The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya, highlighted by an infamous Eiji Tsuburaya recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor.)³

(more…)

The December 1989 release of Godzilla vs. Biollante marked a number of historical milestones in Toho’s iconic monster movie franchise. Although the picture had been in development since 1985, its going before the cameras after the January ’89 passing of Japan’s Showa emperor Hirohito—and the simultaneous ascension of his son Akihito—meant a Heisei cycle of Godzilla films had begun.¹ It was also a landmark in that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka for the first time entrusted his monster to a director from outside company walls. Following the respectable yet somewhat disappointing box office for 1984’s The Return of Godzilla (¥1.7 billion versus the ¥2 billion hoped for by Toho), audience research concluded that ninety percent of the film’s viewers consisted of young people—namely college students and elementary-age kids—reared on Hollywood entertainment. Noting this, Tanaka deemed his best option for the next movie was to hire a promising director closer to that generation.²

(more…)

There have been moments in my life where I’ve regretted not discovering Japanese science fiction until later than most genre fans. On the one hand, I like to think that my not extensively delving into kaiju eiga until adolescence and early adulthood has allowed me to think more critically about this genre: demanding, in most cases, that these films tell a story in addition to splattering effects on the screen. Nevertheless, there exist certain movies and television shows that, despite leaving me cold as I watch them, seem like something my five-year-old self would’ve adored. Sampling various Ultraman shows in my twenties, for example, I couldn’t help but feel how many parents must feel when forced to endure Godzilla movies; and yet the shows’ mix of simplicity and visual zaniness provided a childlike atmosphere I’d probably latch onto—if only there were that element of nostalgia. (more…)

When it comes to film studies, there’s no shortage of books on Akira Kurosawa. One of the latest is David A. Conrad’s Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan, which takes the unique approach of using the director’s movies to discuss 20th-century history. Patrick Galvan recently sat down with Conrad to talk about his interests in both Kurosawa and history, and how the two resulted in this latest book. (more…)

One of the most commercially successful directors in Japanese film history, Ishiro Honda has long been the subject of both extreme ridicule and glowing praise. For some he was merely a name attached to low-rent junk for children; for others an unfairly maligned visionary worthy of careful consideration. While acknowledging Honda’s historical importance in his 2008 book A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day, Alexander Jacoby nonetheless dismissed him as a rather “pedestrian” filmmaker whose themes were more superficial than searing and who remains known simply for overseeing films made famous by Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects. On the other hand, Japanese historian Inuhiko Yomota’s thoughtful essay “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro’s Godzilla” champions the maker of Godzilla (1954), Matango (1963), and Atragon (1963) as “equally deserving of serious discussion” as his close friend Akira Kurosawa.

Myself, I’m not an ardent member of either camp. As I’ve written elsewhere, Honda, to my mind, made some very fine movies, many of which valiantly addressed social issues and thus warrant the serious discussion called for by Yomota; and I am certainly thankful for Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa for contributing to this line of thought. (Their intensely researched biography also served as the primary source of information for this article.) At the same time, the drastically uneven quality of Honda’s work has always distanced me from the camp declaring him one of Japan’s great directors. And I continue to find issue with his handling of certain types of sequences (namely action)—plus the hit-and-miss ratio in which he dramatized subjects—and while he declared himself someone uninterested in style nonetheless feel some of his films would’ve benefited from a director able to wield good-looking shots into a kinetic whole.

That said, there are wonderful movies within the career under discussion (a few of which don’t feature monsters or aliens). Given the right script and sequences within his range, Honda could turn out films—at least individual sequences—of tremendous power. And any career with the lasting pop cultural impact of his is worth talking about.

 

ISE-SHIMA (1949)

Ishiro Honda’s directorial career began with Ise-Shima (1949), a nineteen-minute bunka eiga (“culture film”) documenting the history and people of eastern Mie Prefecture. The film was produced by Toho Educational Film Division, which in the immediate postwar years specialized in short subjects typically focusing on life and tourism in Japan, sometimes exhibited internationally but most often shown in Japanese schools. As a visual document, Ise-Shima is efficient—skillfully photographed and cleverly assembled in post-production by Honda. In one particularly immersive sequence, the director collects footage of different groups of people walking through different parts of Mie—across a field, over a bridge, upon a hillcrest, through a coastal street (the latter framed through a street merchant’s door)—and splices them together with succinct rhythm, jumping from one part of the prefecture to the next, using the subjects’ common action to cinematically link the shots.

Most impressive, however, is an absorbing six-minute scene following a group of ama (“sea women,” female pearl divers) in their hunt for abalone and shellfish. Underwater photography had not been successfully achieved in 1940s Japan, so the first-time director consulted a technician friend to build a metal-and-glass container for his camera. Thanks to this protective construct, Honda’s crew could submerge with the divers and achieve marine footage so breathtaking that a European distributor picked up Ise-Shima for screenings in the Occident. “The fact that Ise-Shima got sold opened up my way to theatrical features,” Honda recalled. And the film itself is so absorbing that one is left sad realizing Honda’s second documentary—1949’s Story of a Co-op—has seemingly been lost to the ravages of time.

 

THE BLUE PEARL (1951)

In one brief moment from Ise-Shima, Honda visually contrasted the rustic lives of Mie Prefecture’s working-class people against the hustle and bustle of modernized, cosmopolitan Japan. For his first dramatic feature, The Blue Pearl (1951), the director expanded upon this subject, bringing back the Mie setting, the focus on ama divers, and his groundbreaking undersea photography. Yukiko Shimazaki stars as Noe, an ama residing in an island village entrenched with feudal traditions and leeriness toward outsiders (read: western-influenced Japanese). Noe’s family wishes her to marry a local, but she falls in love with the new schoolteacher (a visitor from Tokyo played by Ryo Ikebe) and winds up competing for his affections with a fellow ama (Yuriko Hamada) who herself became westernized after a few years in Tokyo.

The Blue Pearl is a modest film hampered somewhat by rough execution. The romance around which the story revolves comes up short thanks to a mechanical performance from Ryo Ikebe—outshone here by Takashi Shimura (demonstrating his signature talent of making great acting look easy) and by Shimazaki, passionate and soulful as the ama caught in the clash between tradition and modernity. She, appropriately, receives the best character in the film, embodying a whole person with fully refined longings and a fascination with the Japan that exists beyond her island home. In one of the picture’s best moments, Noe nervously pours a bucket of water on Ikebe, not knowing he’s oblivious that the action, in her culture, signifies a confession of love. (An amusing footnote: Shimazaki would play the spiritual opposite of this character in another film from 1951: enacting a flirtatious, westernized girl in Mikio Naruse’s Repast.)

Honda’s direction likewise is scattershot, boasting a few wonderful moments in contrast to a few equally clumsy ones. (A romantic scene set in a lighthouse during a thunderstorm ranks with the best material in his oeuvre; and a sequence of Shimazaki visiting Ikebe as he paints the coast is choppily staged and edited.) In the hands of a more experienced director, The Blue Pearl might’ve been a minor classic; as is, it’s charming enough, carried along by its protagonist and the underwater photography which, like that in Ise-Shima, is thoroughly immersive.

 

THE SKIN OF THE SOUTH (1952)

Although his efforts go uncredited, Eiji Tsuburaya shot an impressive landslide sequence for the climax of this melodrama about researchers trying to save a mountain village from disaster. And this historical footnote—the first teaming of Honda and Tsuburaya—is more interesting than the passionless love quadrangle that unfortunately consumes much of the film’s actual run time. All four protagonists are too milquetoast to be very interesting, one of them receiving so little screen time that she never develops into anything resembling a character.

Honda’s direction is more confident than in The Blue Pearl, this time permitting adequate breathing space to individual sequences and maintaining a natural flow between shots. But aside from Tsuburaya’s footage and some interesting scenes of geologists conducting survey work, the picture has little in the way of compelling moments. A merely tolerable programmer that needed more of Yasushi Akutagawa’s riveting score (and more of Takashi Shimura, who steals his one brief scene early on and is sorely missed thereafter).

 

THE MAN WHO CAME TO PORT (1952)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

ADOLESCENCE PART II (1953)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

EAGLE OF THE PACIFIC (1953)

In his book The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, film historian Stuart Galbraith IV speculates the reason Mifune was able to appear in this pacifistic war movie—shot at the same time as Seven Samurai (1954)—was because Kurosawa had been hospitalized in April 1953, thereby putting the latter film’s already extended production on hiatus. Whatever the reason, the actor is squandered on an unmemorable part, showing off a mere fraction of his usual screen presence and charisma. And yet, he prevails as one of the film’s more interesting qualities, in particular outshining Denjiro Okochi and his somnambulistic performance as Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto.

Eagle of the Pacific points the way to what’d become a recurring issue with many of Honda’s science fiction movies: excessive scenes of people sitting around tables talking, photographed in the most pedestrian manner imaginable. In The Skin of the South, Honda and cinematographer Kiyoe Kawamura managed an engaging town meeting scene with spirited performances and the camera rotating in the center of a room, turning constantly from one speaker to the next. By contrast, the conversation scenes in Eagle of the Pacific (photographed by Kazuo Yamada) are mind-numbingly flat in their staging, and most of the actors—even Takashi Shimura—appear more bored than anything else. The docudrama approach Honda assumes finds meager pockets of interest only in cutaways to civilians reacting to Japan’s mounting international tension—which in the second half disappear in favor of flashy yet impersonal battle sequences (a composite of new and recycled effects from Tsuburaya as well as jarringly grainy stock footage of actual battles).

 

FAREWELL RABAUL (1954)

After the financial success of Eagle of the Pacific (Toho’s first postwar film to gross 100 million yen, according to some sources), the front office requested another war picture from Honda; and despite reservations from his wife—who questioned whether two consecutive pictures about combat would be wise for her veteran husband—the director went ahead with Farewell Rabaul, a wholly fictional melodrama about Japanese pilots stationed in Papua-New Guinea toward the end of World War II. While not capturing the same attendance as its predecessor, it ended up being a marked improvement over Eagle of the Pacific: featuring stronger direction, remarkable black-and-white cinematography by Kazuo Yamada (the use of shadows on faces is particularly impressive), and confident performances all around.

Ryo Ikebe shines as a fighter pilot who begins the story cold-heartedly preaching victory or death in the attempt but later comes to recognize the senselessness of war. Following an interrogation with a captured American pilot (Bob Booth), who points out the ineffectiveness of good planes in the hands of unqualified pilots—as well as how quickly Japan’s disregard for human life is pushing the island nation toward defeat—Ikebe discovers his humanity and dejectedly watches as his friends are wiped out in enemy attacks. That most tokusatsu fans know Ikebe for his lifeless performances in science fiction is unfortunate; here, as elsewhere in his non-genre career, he proves a wonderfully capable actor.

Farewell Rabaul is not a great film, as it loses steam in a final act placing too much emphasis on a tepid relationship between Ikebe and a nurse played by Mariko Okada. (The more interesting male-female dynamic concerns another pilot—Akihiko Hirata, in his first role for Honda—and an exotic native girl fervently enacted by Akemi Negishi.) Hiroaki Hagiwara’s score is also, at times, comically distracting. Still, the picture—supported by Tsuburaya’s aerial combat scenes—shows Ishiro Honda coming into his own as a craftsman; and later that same year, his interests in war and the human condition would reach their pinnacle, in what ended up being the director’s most iconic movie.

 

GODZILLA (1954)

Writing about the original Godzilla is a daunting task: what can be said about this film that hasn’t been said numerous times already? So I ask the readers’ tolerance of what might seem to be an inappropriately short review.

Looking back on my many viewings of Honda’s masterpiece, I remain haunted by its powerful images, disturbed by its gut-wrenching scenes of human suffering, moved by its statement against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and fascinated by the manner in which Honda and co-screenwriter Takeo Murata rework creature feature formulas for symbolic effect (e.g., the scientist who wants to keep the monster alive in spite of the danger it presents—albeit not for “knowledge” as tends to be motive in American films but rather because Takashi Shimura’s Dr. Yamane hopes that uncovering Godzilla’s ability to survive radiation exposure would benefit mankind).

I could write for pages about the 1954 classic but would only regurgitate what’s been said ad infinitum. So I’ll simply close with this: Godzilla is more than worthy of its reputation as one of the greatest monster movies ever made—because it is so much more than a monster movie.

 

LOVE MAKEUP (1955)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

MOTHER AND SON (1955)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

HALF HUMAN (1955)

Long suppressed from home release due to its unflattering depiction of hideously deformed burakumin villagers, Ishiro Honda’s second monster movie is a clumsily written effort held aloft by fine craftsmanship and a few stellar individual qualities—one of them appropriately being the eponymous creature. Indeed, the picture’s best moments are those that depend on visuals rather than dialogue and zero in on what turns out to be an inherently gentle monster. In introducing the creature, Honda starts off placing his camera inside a tent. As our heroine (Momoko Kochi) sleeps, a humanoid shadow grows across the interior fabric, projected by something enormous outside. Honda then cuts to a wide shot with the shadow lumbering past, the camera pressing in on Momoko Kochi as she sleeps, emphasizing her vulnerability; all in the same shot, we finally draw in on a small gap in the tent—just as the curious monster peers in.

There are other such moments: the yeti rescuing our protagonist (Akira Takarada) from a slow death hanging off the edge of a cliff; the monster and its son receiving an offering from the local burakumin; a stellar suspense scene wherein the creatures, captured by an animal broker (Yoshio Kosugi), break free of their cage during transport. After the younger yeti’s killed by a gunshot, the adult monster tosses its child’s murderer into a chasm. Honda concludes this riveting sequence with another long take that gradually and seamlessly changes the tone from tense to somber: beginning with a close-up of the beast panting in aggravation and then following it as it lumbers to its child’s body and sadly carries it into the forest. No dialogue or voiceover is necessary; all emotions are conveyed through the suit actor’s expressive performance and by Honda’s sensitive filmmaking.

In the film’s detriment is a ponderous cave-set climax and a slew of one-dimensional characters (the generic hero; the generic damsel-in-distress; the generic scientist mouthing exposition). The only person worth caring about is Chika, a young buraku fascinated by civilization (seemingly another instance of Honda’s interest in the clash between old-fashioned lifestyles and modernity). Chika is played by Kurosawa regular Akemi Negishi, whose vibrant performance evokes a conflicted person caught between her people’s way of life and curiosity for the Japan outside her mountain village. Through this character, the monsters, and Honda’s craftsmanship, one can see a much stronger movie fighting to emerge from the merely decent one that is on display.

 

PEOPLE OF TOKYO, GOODBYE (1956)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

NIGHT SCHOOL (1956)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

YOUNG TREE (1956)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

RODAN (1956)

Honda counted this moody and at times very disturbing film among his favorites and cited it as the picture that “put me on my path.” What begins as something of a Japanese take on Them! (1953) segues—with some very clever buildup and a mystery solved through an amnesia subplot—into riveting, action-heavy spectacle wherein the world’s threatened by voracious but ultimately sympathetic monsters.

The first half of Rodan is particularly effective, Honda mixing gruesome scenes of horror with compelling character drama. After several men are slashed to death in a colliery, the local community suspects a missing miner and coldly turn against the man’s sister (Yumi Shirakawa). Honda smartly directs the scenes of Shirakawa being shunned by her neighbors: her respectful bows go unreciprocated, the young woman flees in shame past crowds of judging women as her brother once again fails to appear in a roll call. Shirakawa also forms a natural rapport with leading man Kenji Sahara, who becomes her one ally in a sea of hatred—so warm are they together that it’s all the more disheartening this duo failed to recreate their chemistry in later Honda films.

Takeo Murata and Takeshi Kimura’s screenplay keep early scenes moving with one mysterious event tailing what came before it (the characters have just barely identified the mysterious killer as a prehistoric insect when an earthquake splits open the earth). And while our young protagonists admittedly become spectators once the Rodans surface, Eiji Tsuburaya’s monster-versus-military set pieces more than make up for what’s missing on the human side. One particularly great shot consists of the first Rodan toppling a building after landing in Fukuoka, the rubble knocking over a vat of water, the liquid contents gushing as everything careens toward the ground. “You can just feel the creators’ passion in the details,” Honda once said. “In special effects films like this, it is all about destruction, how beautifully it all crumbles.”

And yet, for all the terror they cause, the Rodans are ultimately victims in their own right, guilty only of trying to survive in a world unlike the one nature intended them for; and their fiery death in a volcanic eruption is among the most somber scenes in any Honda film. Elegantly directed and supported by an unsettling Akira Ifukube score, Rodan has rightly earned its status as a genre classic.

 

GOOD LUCK TO THESE TWO (1957)

Good Luck to These Two was the non-genre film of Honda’s I became most interested in after the release of Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s biography in 2017. In addition to seeing Hiroshi Koizumi and Yumi Shirakawa (two of my favorites in the director’s “stock company”) explore drama greater than typically allotted in their science fiction efforts, the story seemed quasi-autobiographical—bearing similarities to tribulations Honda experienced in his own life. This remained my impression after seeing the movie: again and again I thought back to how Honda and his wife Kimi endured poverty and the disapproval of his wife’s parents in order to start a life together—and how that was mirrored by the experiences of the young protagonists in this film.

I posted more detailed thoughts in an article a few years back, but to summarize, Good Luck to These Two showcases Honda playing to his strengths: guiding his actors through an appealingly uncomplicated story about ordinary life, with no dependency on the visual panache or kinetic action in which he generally struggled. Hiroshi Koizumi and Yumi Shirakawa are equal to their parts, selling the illusion of a couple whose happiness together is threatened by societal and economic pressure; Takashi Shimura, Shizue Natsukawa, Keiko Tsushima, and Toshiro Mifune add humanity to the supporting ranks; and the final shot of this movie—with its two protagonists, having undergone a bumpy patch in their marriage, standing in a dark room, quietly agreeing to work on building a better future together—remains one of the most touching endings I’ve seen in a long while.

 

A TEAPICKER’S SONG OF GOODBYE (1957)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

A RAINBOW PLAYS IN MY HEART: PART 1 (1957)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

A RAINBOW PLAYS IN MY HEART: PART 2 (1957)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

THE WOMAN I CALLED MY SISTER (1957)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

THE MYSTERIANS (1957)

Arguably one of the two or three most historically important Japanese science fictions films, The Mysterians established narrative patterns and tropes that remain staples of the genre to this day. Extraterrestrials who arrive on earth professing peaceful intentions but secretly harbor plans for world domination; characters who initially side with the enemy but later help thwart the invasion at the cost of their own lives; giant monsters controlled by the aliens—these concepts have since become iconic traits of the genre, their origins tracing back to this humanistic spectacle.

The Mysterians is a watermark Honda film also for its presentation of different countries that come together to face a common threat. Honda had hinted at hopes for such cooperation in Godzilla: international parties arrive in Japan as the latter announces plans for an electrical tower defense against the monster, but what—if any—involvement they had in said strategy was never explicitly shown. In The Mysterians, however, all the world’s nations—including the Cold War superpowers—immediately and peacefully unite to help save Japan and themselves. Japan leads the resistance, providing guidance and warning off unwise ideas (such as using nuclear weapons on the aliens who, as we learn, destroyed their own civilization with the same technology), and are first to profess that mankind must not repeat the mistakes of the civilization that just tried to sequester them. As Honda himself once expressed: “I would like to wipe away the [Cold War-era] notion of East versus West and convey a simple, universal aspiration for peace, the coming together of all humankind as one to create a peaceful society.”

The historical importance of The Mysterians outweighs its dramatic effectiveness, as the picture’s held back by characters whose motives are at times hard to figure out (at one point, the young hero and an accomplice discover a secret passage to the aliens’ base but never share their discovery with the authorities) and lack the personality to make up for it. Not showing conflict between the international powers also hampers the novelty of showing them work together; as demonstrated in later (better) genre pictures, people that struggle to forget the past and overcome differences before they cooperate—actively dramatizing the theme—makes for superior storytelling. Instead, the strength of the film derives from its effects sequences, wherein Honda and Tsuburaya effectively mix footage of the humans responding to and interacting with combat and destruction. (Epitomized by a chilling moment of Yumi Shirakawa—caught in a moment of vulnerability—watching the robotic monster Moguera through the window of a public bathhouse.)

At the end of the day, The Mysterians is an efficient if somewhat middle-of-the-road film. But its historical importance cannot be ignored, and many of the themes and ideas touched on here are ones Honda and other filmmakers would explore with terrific results down the road.

 

SONG FOR A BRIDE (1958)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

H-MAN (1958)

A curious entry in Ishiro Honda’s oeuvre, 1958’s H-Man mixes a crime melodrama with science fiction and horror—an undeniably ambitious effort diminished somewhat by a script unsure how to properly develop its genres. Indeed, the picture is at its best when focusing on cops, criminals, and their hassling of a pretty nightclub singer (Yumi Shirakawa). Honda shows a natural talent for the yakuza movie genre, presenting extravagant nightclub scenes and tense interrogations (Hajime Koizumi’s camerawork and the blocking of actors is particularly impressive). Also fun in retrospect are interesting “time capsule” moments: e.g., Yumi Shirakawa explains she can purchase a Japanese TV set because her monthly earnings average 50,000-60,000 yen. (Per Jason Makoto Chun’s book A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973, the average cost of a set in Japan had dropped to roughly that amount the year this movie was made.)

The eponymous creatures provide a few effective horror sequences—including what should’ve been the movie’s climax, wherein the H-Men invade a nightclub during a police bust, crawling up walls, through windows, and underneath the doors of a telephone booth in pursuit of their victims—but aren’t terribly interesting as villains; and the science fiction side of the film yields additional weaknesses that include a boring hero scientist (Kenji Sahara), tedious scenes of technobabble, and a lifeless third act with the monsters being wiped out in an inferno while Sahara effortlessly rescues the damsel-in-distress. (That Sahara and Shirakawa fail to recreate their chemistry from Rodan is another significant problem.) There are impressive images in H-Man (the picture benefits greatly from the work of lighting specialist Choshiro Nishikawa), but the cops and criminals are ultimately more fun than the science fiction story they must contend with.

 

VARAN (1958)

As I’ve written elsewhere, Varan represents something of a watershed moment in Honda’s science fiction career, as this marked his first collaboration with the exuberant screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa and appropriately introduced/brought together plot devices that’d embody many of their efforts moving forward. In Varan, we see: rural, monster-worshiping natives; a plucky female reporter; a climax wherein the military cycles through multiple strategies before finally—with the help of civilians—hitting upon something which can defeat the monster. (A never-filmed scene in Sekizawa’s script—of kids pretending to be Varan—likewise indicates the screenwriter’s interested in youngsters’ fascination with monsters, which would manifest in subsequent movies such as 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, 1964’s Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster, and most notably 1969’s All Monsters Attack.) Varan thus serves as a vital stepping stone in the history of tokusatsu—albeit one pointing the way to better things to come.

The film under discussion began as a joint American-Japanese TV project and was recalibrated for theaters mid-production: glaringly apparent in the fourth-rate script that never adequately answers—among other things—why the eponymous reptile suddenly rises to besiege civilization, and is populated by bewildering characters. (My favorite moment is when the heroine chooses to exploit the mysterious events that killed her brother because, “This is a big scoop!”) Honda does the subpar material no favors with insipid, at times amateurish direction (Kozo Nomura driving a truck of explosives up to the monster before casually jogging to safety), and even Tsuburaya’s effects scenes come off as impersonal. The picture’s noisy, action-heavy second half feels mercilessly drawn-out, chugging along to its not-dramatic conclusion. Varan’s one stellar quality consists of a mesmerizing Akira Ifukube score (among the composer’s best), though no amount of orchestral bravado could redeem so dreadful a production as this.

 

AN ECHO CALLS YOU (1959)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

INAO: STORY OF AN IRON ARM (1959)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

SENIORS, JUNIORS, CO-WORKERS (1959)

[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]

 

BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE (1959)

With this 1959 extravaganza, Honda returned to subjects and tropes previously touched on in The Mysterians: extra terrestrials threatening the earth with domination; a human character who does the aliens’ bidding but ultimately sacrifices himself so his friends may live; and the thoughtful notion of a world in which all of mankind peacefully coexists. The latter is particularly emphasized in Battle in Outer Space, with international conference scenes, long-winded speeches about mutual survival, and shots of multiple countries’ flags waving in unison. Honda attempts to imbue his utopia scenario with more flesh and blood this time: a Japanese scientist greets the son of a Caucasian colleague upon arriving for a conference; a team sent to destroy the aliens’ lunar base consists of scientists from multiple nations; there are even fleeting attempts to humanize nameless characters—such a foreign pilot silently bidding farewell to a female operator (presumably his love interest) before entering battle.

Unfortunately, all of this amounts to little more than good intentions. For Battle in Outer Space repeats the same crucial mistake from The Mysterians in merely presenting global unity rather than effectively dramatizing it: the picture begins with the world powers having already formed peace and, throughout the story, they cooperate all too efficiently, not a moment’s conflict among themselves. (A world in which everyone already gets along versus a story of conflicted people learning to cooperate isn’t nearly as interesting.) Despite more scenes of character interaction, the human element somehow comes across as even more lacking than in the 1957 film, a problem made worse by somnambulistic actors passionlessly enduring their situations (even Yoshio Tsuchiya—normally the bright spot in lackluster pictures—is curiously bland this time around). All of this would potentially be forgivable were there an interesting villain to go up against; alas, the aliens lack personality just as much, mostly represented by a voice rather than presence.

Plodding and lacking gravitas, Battle in Outer Space is little more than a footnote in cold war-era cinema, merely worth acknowledging as part of Honda’s recurring attempt to portray unified worlds. Its only pockets of cinematic interest stem from the often lavish and inventively filmed special effects. Eiji Tsuburaya clearly had fun playing with miniatures, lunar sets, and mobile perspective shots wherein the camera weaves between columns of rocks. But as with most movies overly dependent on special effects, even these sequences become dull after a while, as evident in the picture’s tedious final battle.

 

THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION. NEW REVIEWS WILL BE ADDED IN THE FUTURE.

 

Bibliography

Chun, Jayson Makoto. A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973. New York: Routledge, 2007

Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber & Faber, 2002

Jacoby, Alexander. A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008

Ryfle, Steve and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2017

Yomota Inuhiko. “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro’s Godzilla” in Phillips, Alistair and Julian Stringer (eds). Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. New York: Routledge, 2007

To describe Ishiro Honda’s Varan (1958) as a lesser entry in the director’s science fiction oeuvre is something of an understatement. In a genre career packed end to end with highs and lows, this ill-conceived venture about a giant reptile who—for reasons never adequately explained—rises from his lair to threaten civilization resides near the bottom of the qualitative spectrum. Flatly directed by Honda and headed by bewildering characters (my favorite moment is when the plucky reporter heroine rushes to the place of her brother’s death because “We are planning to solve the mystery of the 20th century! This is a big scoop!”), the picture manages only a few pockets of fun in its first forty-five minutes. After the surreal moment wherein the monster spreads his “wings” and flies away, Varan devolves into impersonal monster-versus-military skirmishes and dreadful scenes that showcase Honda trapped in situations he was seldom proficient at. (Static boardroom meetings photographed in the most pedestrian manner; an abominable “suspense scene” wherein the hero drives a truck of explosives up to the monster and runs—lightly jogs—to safety.)

Initially contracted to shoot a TV movie before being told mid-production to make something for Japanese cinemas, Honda years later looked back on this picture as “a work I am not happy with.” His sentiments are understandable. And yet there is a certain aspect to the 1958 misfire that makes it worthy of acknowledgment in the history of kaiju eiga. Varan marked Ishiro Honda’s first collaboration with Shinichi Sekizawa, the wordsmith later responsible for the fun, witty scripts of such classics as Mothra (1961), King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), and Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)—not to mention several of Jun Fukuda’s science fiction home runs à la The Secret of the Telegian (1960) and Son of Godzilla (1967). Although the original story for Varan came from writer Ken Kuronuma, it was up to Sekizawa to develop concept into script; and while the results certainly don’t launch his partnership with Honda in a particularly auspicious manner, one can see rudimentary forms of tropes that would define their later films.

In Varan, we see: a trio of bantering protagonists—among them is the aforementioned plucky female reporter, something of a progenitor of Yuriko Hoshi’s heroine from Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964). The remote forest where Varan resides is explored by researchers encountering untrusting natives who worship a monster—reminiscent of Half Human (1955), written by Takeo Murata, while pointing the way to Sekizawa’s work on Mothra and Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964). Even the picture’s agonizingly dull climax exhibits a few action patterns now iconic for the genre. As Varan approaches Tokyo, the military enacts strategy after strategy in a vain effort to stop him (this came to mind repeatedly during my most recent viewings of King Kong vs. Godzilla and Mothra vs. Godzilla). In the end, the monster’s defeated via a solution made possible by scientists and civilians—a recurring trope in such pictures of the 1960s as Dogora (1964) and Invasion of Astro-Monster.

Also worth noting is that the original script included an un-filmed scene of children pretending to be Varan, indicating Sekizawa was already shrewdly aware of—and interested in reflecting—youngsters’ interest in kaiju. This, too, would continue as the genre developed into the following decade. In King Kong vs. Godzilla, a child pleads with his mother to take him to see a rampaging Godzilla. In Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster, two boys on a talk show answer “Mothra!” when queried who they’d like to meet. And in 1969’s All Monsters Attack, Sekizawa took youthful fascination with monsters to a new and very personal level, with its young protagonist fantasizing about kaiju to escape the harsh realities of everyday life.

These plot threads and devices didn’t necessarily all begin with Varan, but Sekizawa’s merging of them here nonetheless makes this otherwise unremarkable movie worthy of some acknowledgment—even if primarily as a forerunner of better things to come.

Bibliography:

Ryfle, Steve and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2017

I started corresponding with Norman England in the summer of 2015, previously knowing him for directing the 2008 documentary Bringing Godzilla Down to Size and authoring numerous articles on Japanese genre cinema for Fangoria magazine in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. We quickly struck up a friendship, our correspondence largely consisting of me delighting in his observations about Japan—where he’s lived since 1992—and his first-hand recollections of visiting the sets of kaiju movies that were an integral part of my adolescence. (Most detailed were the memories of Shusuke Kaneko’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack: that picture he’d followed starting with a private conversation wherein Kaneko sheepishly admitted to Toho offering him the next Godzilla film—before the news had been made public. Norman ended up visiting the live-action and special effects sets almost daily, following production up to GMK’s release in December 2001.) In addition to learning about the movies—and the people who made them—I gained insights on the culture present on a Japanese film set. So you can imagine my excitement when, in 2017, Norman told me about his plans to publish a book on his experiences. And the humility I felt when asked to assist with the editing of it.

(more…)

In April 2020, when covid-19 was shutting down conventions across the United States, I was asked to join a team of people organizing a rather exciting project. Led by genre historian Steve Ryfle, we undertook the task of putting together a free online convention dedicated to informative discussion on kaiju eiga. The result was Kaiju Masterclass, broadcast to YouTube on October 2-4, 2020, featuring a number of info-heavy panels as well as original interviews with directors (Shusuke Kaneko, Shinji Higuchi), composers (Michiru Oshima, David Arnold, Bear McCreary), suit maker Shinichi Wakasa, and more! The event remains something I’m extremely proud to have been a part of; and now it is my sincere pleasure to announce that a follow-up, Kaiju Masterclass II, is around the corner!

Like its predecessor, Kaiju Masterclass II—to be held November 5-7, 2021—will be free to watch via the convention’s YouTube channel. We’ve expanded our organizational team by four people (genre historian Ed Godziszewski; his wife Mariko; translator Amanda Whalen; and Matt Burkett, creator of the popular YouTube channel MONSTROSITIES: A Vlog of Tokusatsu) and assembled a list of guests that include writer/director Kazuki Omori, Millennium Godzilla suit actor Tsutomu Kitagawa, sculptor Fuyuki Shinada, illustrator William Stout (one of the personnel behind Steve Miner’s unmade Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D), and Latitude Zero (1969) cast member Linda Haynes.

The event will also feature interviews/presentations with people who’ve written about the genre and about the Japanese film industry: authors Jasper Sharp, Mike Bogue, Kevin Derendorf, and John LeMay; Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling; and Norman England, who covered the makings of Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) and the Millennium Godzilla films for Fangoria—and who is now publishing a book about his set experiences, Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan’s Biggest Film Sets, to come out from Awai Books this November!

A complete list of guests and contributors is available on the convention’s website, and a schedule is forthcoming. However, there is one last marquee guest I’d like to mention….

It is with great excitement that Kaiju Masterclass II announces a forthcoming interview with none other than Reijiro Koroku, composer of 1984’s The Return of Godzilla! Koroku’s score for the ’84 film is often cited as one of the finest in the series; and as best as our research can tell, he’s never talked about the score with an English language platform. So we are incredibly honored to have him for Kaiju Masterclass year—and hope you’ll join us in learning about the time he wrote the music for Godzilla’s 30th anniversary comeback!

Be sure to check out Kaiju Masterclass’s website and to follow the convention on social media for updates.

One of the fun things about research is that one usually ends up with more material than can reasonably be used in a single run—and rather than pad out an essay to tedious length, findings can be spread across multiple projects. When preparing for my recent Toho Kingdom article Godzilla vs. Destoroyah: The Legacy of Godzilla’s Demise, I reached out to genre historian Ed Godziszewski and Norman England, the latter of whom directed the documentary Bringing Godzilla Down to Size and covered a number of Japanese special effects sets for Fangoria magazine. Both saw Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) during its domestic theatrical run, and so I wanted their first-hand recollections about the marketing and circumstances surrounding Godzilla’s death. Between the two interviews, I got more than enough material and decided to repurpose some of it for this new essay—along with additional comments that couldn’t fit into the first.

My earlier piece focused on historical context: recounting how Godzilla vs. Destoroyah was made at a time when Toho’s flagship property was losing steam at the box office; how the monster was failing to acquire international distribution; how the series was put on hiatus to “make room” for TriStar’s GODZILLA (1998); and how, for all its pretensions, the ’95 Godzilla film comes across more like a publicity stunt than a truly thoughtful sendoff for the monster. It is this last point that I would like to emphasize in this follow-up article—along with anecdotes regarding another series of 1990s kaiju pictures that surpassed anything Toho had done with their monster in quite a spell.

When Toho producer Shogo Tomiyama announced in July 1995 that Godzilla would die in his next movie, the news went around the world, even being reported to American audiences who would not see the picture for a number of years. In Japan, the slogan “Godzilla Dies” was brandished on billboards, posters, and twenty-foot-high signs as part of the pre-release hype.¹ The publicity ultimately worked, as the film garnered an attendance of about four million—a step up from the 3.4 million for the previous year’s Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) and not far beneath the whopping 4.2 million of 1992’s Godzilla vs. Mothra. In terms of response from Japanese fans, the studio allegedly received more than 100,000 protest letters demanding the monster’s resurrection²—despite assurance from studio spokesmen that the hiatus was only temporary.

For some, Godzilla’s death came across as little more than sensationalism: an attempt to get back the numbers on Godzilla vs. Mothra and make the monster ‘relevant’ one more time before the arrival of his Hollywood counterpart. “None of my friends believed this was going to be the last Godzilla movie,” Norman England recalled. “It was obviously PR talk. But a lot of us felt, ‘Well, let’s just get into the spirit of the thing.’ And there was a great deal of publicity for Destoroyah: gas station ads; TV commercials with Godzilla in them; Momoko Kochi, from the first Godzilla (1954), was appearing on the morning shows. I was living in Osaka at the time and went to a suit display at Banpaku Memorial Park, where Expo ’70 had been held. All of that was really fun.” England further stated that the experience of seeing the late Heisei films in Japan was always “more than just the movies. The movies were a little anticlimactic compared to what went on around them.”

The marketing was still in force when Ed Godziszewski visited Japan in January 1996. “Most of the billboards were still up, and those words [“Godzilla Dies”] were as big as life wherever you looked.” The historian also recalled attending an Ariake Coliseum exhibition put together by Toho and the Tokyo metropolitan government. “They had the Cybot from The Return of Godzilla (1984) outside the main entrance, operating ever so clunkily—and this was the first time that I had seen a pretty comprehensive display of props and suits.” Despite the curious absence of Godzilla Junior, the exhibition featured monster costumes from the new movie, plus suits and statues representing creatures from previous ‘90s entries. “It was definitely set up as a Heisei Godzilla exhibit, as there wasn’t much about the original series of consequence—and that felt fair since they were saying goodbye to this Godzilla with the current film.”

Godziszewski, however, was similarly unconvinced that the monster’s death would be permanent. “Toho’s #1 rule was always that Godzilla can never die, and given that (as I always say) no one is ever really dead in science fiction, it just seemed like misdirection. But this misdirection bought Toho more publicity than they could ever have garnered with just another ‘versus’ film.”

Norman England saw Godzilla vs. Destoroyah on opening day—December 9, 1995. “My friends and I had this tradition where we’d go out for coffee after seeing a new film and talk about it. None of us were really happy with the movie. We felt the opening scenes with Burning Godzilla attacking Hong Kong were visually interesting, and the shot at the end of Godzilla Junior in the smoke looked nice. But the story, the plot, there was nothing to really talk about. My friend Akio had given up on the series after Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991). We practically had to beg him to come with us. And, man, the look of annoyance on his face after seeing Destoroyah was just incredible. ‘The movie was crap,’ he said. ‘This is garbage.’ He put us in a position where we had to defend the movie, because he was so down on it.”

Godziszewski’s memories were a tad more positive. “In retrospect,” the historian told Toho Kingdom, “it seems a ‘death’ was the best way to wrap things up. The suspense for me was just how they would do it. I will admit I was thrown off for a moment when they killed Junior. I gave them some points for the way the ending was handled: having Godzilla’s radiation revive and mature Junior into the new Godzilla. I thought that was a clever way to have your cake and eat it, too. Godzilla’s death was well handled and had some emotional impact. The theater, which was still fairly packed even though the film had been out for almost a month by then, was dead silent. Not just politely quiet; the kind of silence where people are holding their breath. I felt the theater audience really was affected. That’s one of my strongest memories of seeing the film.”

Aside from the ending, though, Godziszewski recalled fairly mixed reception to the 1995 extravaganza. “The reaction from my friends was all pretty much the same: it was a nice way to wrap up the series for the time being, but the film itself was so wildly uneven that it wasn’t anyone’s favorite.” And in summarizing Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, Norman England described it as “an event film. It was more about what it represented than what it actually was.”

Also working against the film, reception-wise, was a superior product from rival studio Daiei. Directed by Shusuke Kaneko and made for a fraction of the cost of the previous few Godzilla movies, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe opened to glowing praise in March 1995. Variety’s Todd McCarthy wrote favorably about this “action-packed monster mash that zestily revives the Japanese megabeast tradition,” noting that it “could find a certain niche [in the U.S.] with clever marketing and placement.”³ Sure enough, Kaneko’s film was given limited theatrical distribution and a home video release in North America in 1997—whereas Toho struggled to sell the Heisei movies to international buyers. “I would say up until Gamera,” England commented, “the Heisei Godzillas were thought of as the best Japan could do, and that’s why Guardian of the Universe was so shocking to everybody. ‘Oh, we can do better! It’s not that Japan can’t make good films. It’s just that the people at Toho can’t make a decent kaiju movie.’”

Over the next few years, as Godzilla went into hiatus and Toho turned to Mothra to fill gaps in its New Years’ schedule, Daiei released two more Kaneko-directed Gamera pictures that similarly met acclaim. Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling had written lukewarmly about Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (“This is all rather silly”)⁴ and unenthusiastically about 1996’s Rebirth of Mothra (“This is less the quoting of a classic and more the mouthing of a tired cliché.”)⁵ but found much to praise in Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999), the finale of Kaneko’s trilogy:

“Those who have lived through a few Japanese natural disasters, including the inevitable earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, can better understand why monster movies have had such a deep and enduring impact here. The bombings of World War II added to the general insecurity—the feeling that one is living under threat from large, inhuman, and horrifically destructive forces—but they certainly didn’t create it. Gamera 3 expresses the psychology of that insecurity, including its mythological underpinnings, with more clarity than the usual genre outing.” Schilling also championed the “awesome battle scenes, edited for maximum impact” and, in comparing Kaneko’s film to the recently released TriStar GODZILLA, wrote: “Gamera […] still has it all over that overgrown iguana from Manhattan.”⁶

In wrapping up, I would like to close with one final contribution from Ed Godziszewski, who offered this personal anecdote of the impression Gamera made outside the kaiju fandom circle: “My wife always cringes watching even small bits of the ‘90s Godzilla films, because the acting is so incredibly bad. But I will always remember how she ducked into my room when I first got a copy of Guardian of the Universe. At first, she rolled her eyes. ‘Now they’re doing Gamera, too?’ But within a couple of minutes, she was hooked, and before you knew it had watched the whole thing. All she could say afterward was: ‘It’s not that this is a good monster movie. It’s a good movie, period.’”

 

Bibliography

1. Ryfle, Steve. Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G.” Toronto: ECW Press, 1998, p. 307
2. Ibid., p. 313
3. McCarthy, Todd. “Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe.” Variety, 4 September 1995
4. Schilling, Mark. Contemporary Japanese Film. Boston: Weatherhill, 1999, p. 189
5. Ibid., p. 265
6. Ibid., p. 186

On July 15, 1995, Toho producer Shogo Tomiyama made an announcement to the Reuters news service that went around the world: the second run of Japanese Godzilla movies—which had started in 1984 and encompassed six entries—was going to end later that year. The studio line-up for the franchise included one more picture, slated for release that December, to climax with a scene described by the filmmakers as “unforgettable.” As CNN correspondent May Lee reported to American audiences who wouldn’t see the picture for several years: “Godzilla will die.” Despite not achieving international distribution, the finished movie, Takao Okawara’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), drew in a domestic attendance of about four million and to this day remains one of the better known and more widely discussed entries in the series.

(more…)

Back in April, when it seemed likely covid-19 would lead to the cancellation of G-FEST 2020, a discussion began among some friends of mine, which turned into the idea of creating an online Godzilla-themed convention. A few days later, we were in serious talks; and now, after much hard work, it is my sincere pleasure to announce Kaiju Masterclass — a free online event dedicated to informative discussions on kaiju eiga — is right around the corner!

Kaiju Masterclass will be held on October 2-4, 2020 — starting that Friday and lasting through Sunday. (A schedule is coming soon.) As mentioned above, the event is free to attend, with all panels streaming to the convention’s YouTube channel. Panels include original interviews with people who’ve worked on the Godzilla series — among the special guests are directors Shusuke Kaneko and Shinji Higuchi, suit maker Shinichi Wakasa, and GODZILLA (1998) composer David Arnold!

Also giving talks will be genre historians Steve Ryfle (the head organizer of this event), Ed Godziszewski, and Stuart Galbraith IV; kaiju set veteran Norman England, whose science fiction film The iDol is now available on Blu-ray; staff members behind the unmade TriStar Godzilla films; the daughters of Nick Adams and Henry G. Saperstein; and many others! A list of confirmed guests can be found here.

I myself will be involved in two panels. The first is a discussion with Akira Ifukube biographer Erik Homenick on Ifukube’s work in Children of Hiroshima (1952), Hiroshima (1953), and the original Godzilla (1954) — a nominal trilogy of post-occupation movies dealing with the subject of nuclear weapons and Japanese society. The second is a conversation with historians Steve Ryfle and Stuart Galbraith IV on the director Jun Fukuda.

Be sure to check out Kaiju Masterclass’s website and follow the convention on social media for updates.

When pre-production began on 1984’s The Return of Godzilla, director Koji Hashimoto gathered a team of experts to lend a sense of authenticity to his film. Like Ishiro Honda, under whom he’d worked in the ‘60s, Hashimoto approached his task seriously, wanting to show modern-day Japan responding to an extraordinary situation, and to keep the science fiction elements—fantastic as they were—somewhat in the realm of plausibility. To achieve this, a military analyst was hired to calculate the orbit of satellites equipped to carry nuclear weapons; a journalist provided feedback regarding media reactions; and after science fiction writer Ryuichi Kodama¹ suggested using magnetism to lure Godzilla, geophysicist Hitoshi Takeuchi proposed a few locations where the monster could be trapped. The staff considered finales set at Mount Fuji and the Fossa Magna before ultimately deciding on Mount Mihara, the infamous stratovolcano of Izu Oshima Island.²

Exquisitely photographed and propelled by Reijiro Koroku’s outstanding score, the picture generates rightly earned sympathy when Godzilla—“that strangely innocent and tragic monster,” as so eloquently described in the film’s American re-edit—becomes trapped in the volcano and plunges into the molten rock below.³ At the time of the film’s release, director Hashimoto stated that a sequel was possible; though based on his exact verbiage, it would appear Toho had no concrete plans while the ‘84 film was in immediate circulation.⁴ This was the first Godzilla movie in nine years and the first to be marketed for general audiences since 1968’s Destroy All Monsters.⁵ Given that context, some speculated Godzilla would remain in Mount Mihara⁶: imprisoned on an island which, in centuries past, had been designated for banishing exiles. And inside a volcano with a long history related to death.

(more…)

In the early months of 1969, actress Hideko Takamine journeyed to the home of film director Mikio Naruse, with whom she’d made seventeen movies over the course of twenty-five years. Naruse had been fighting a losing battle with cancer for some time and had recently decided not to be hospitalized again. Perhaps realizing her chances to say goodbye were running out, Takamine paid him a visit and was surprised to find the director talkative and cheery, forthcoming and humorous—the total opposite of the shy, reticent person who’d made such gems as Floating Clouds (1955), When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), and Lonely Lane (1962).

In thinking back on their time working together, Takamine wrote, “[Naruse] was a person whose refusal to talk was downright malicious. Even during the shooting of a picture, he would never say if something was good or bad, interesting or trite. He was a completely unresponsive director [and] there was never an instance in which he gave me any acting instructions.” Another frequent star in these films, Tatsuya Nakadai, had the same experience, saying, “He was the most difficult director I ever worked for. He never said a word. A real nihilist.” On the set of Untamed in 1957, Takamine finally mustered the courage to ask Naruse for guidance on how to play her character, to which he just answered: “It’ll be over before you know it.”

(more…)

On June 30, 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the same organization behind the Oscars) announced through their website their plans to extend “invitations to join the organization to 819 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures.” Among the invitees was composer Michiru Oshima, whom fans of this website know for writing the music of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000), Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla (2002), and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003).

In a 2016 interview with site owner Anthony Romero, Oshima recalled how she had not seen a Godzilla film prior to Megaguirus and how she avoided listening to past kaiju scores even after getting the job. “I wanted to bring out the originality [and] create music without any preconceptions,” she explained. The results were a trio of outstanding scores with an aesthetic of their own—led by a distinctive, drum-heavy theme for the King of the Monsters—fittingly applied to three pictures that themselves were very much alike on a number of fronts. Oshima’s Godzilla music continues to rank with the most popular in the franchise, and deservedly so. 

Which is not to say her achievements in film scoring are limited to those three movies; for throughout her career, Michiru Oshima has continually turned out high quality music acclimating different genres. Example: when I looked up the composer’s name in the Academy’s announcement, I was particularly happy to see they’d included the 1997 romantic tragedy Lost Paradise (or Paradise Lost, as it’s labeled on its OST case) as a sample of her work. Her somber score for that film comprises some of the most hauntingly beautiful music I’ve ever heard in a motion picture; and I was overjoyed to learn via Anthony’s interview that she considers it one of her favorites.

Lost Paradise was the first of ten pictures Oshima scored for Yoshimitsu Morita, a director of tremendous diversity whose every project was unlike what he’d made before, jumping between dark comedies, horror pictures, period dramas, even a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro (1962). And just as his films tended to be drastically different from one another, the music Oshima wrote for him appropriately exhibited a new mood and aesthetic each time, as well: relentlessly solemn in Lost Paradise; quirky and atmospheric in Copycat Killer (2002); quirky and amusing in Like Asura (2003); energetic and spectacular in Tsubaki Sanjuro (2007); playful in The Mamiya Brothers (2006); and so on. Their collaborations continued up through Morita’s last film, Take the “A” Train (2012), which went to theaters a few months after his death in December 2011. One can only imagine what else they might’ve done together had he lived a little longer….

Needless to say, Oshima has turned out exemplary work for other filmmakers. Seijun Suzuki’s musical Princess Raccoon (2005); Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s Memories of Tomorrow (2006), starring Ken Watanabe as a man suffering from an early onset of Alzheimer’s; Isshin Inudo’s mother-daughter tearjerker Bizan: The Mountain of Mother’s Love (2007), for which Oshima won a Japanese Academy Prize. I could keep listing examples—her music for animation; the number of Chinese films she’s scored—but any composer with such an extraordinary output spanning so many genres and styles, I feel, is more than worthy of cross-continental recognition.

One last bit of music-related news. In Chicago last July, Oshima co-conducted a concert for an international crowd of music and genre fans called Kaiju Crescendo: An Evening of Japanese Monster Music. For this event, she herself wielded a baton, conducting suites of her three Godzilla scores—the first time her genre music had ever been performed live—and then premiered Godzilla in Chicago, an original piece written specifically for that night and written around a narrative the composer herself had devised.

“We went over the printed score together,” concert producer and emcee Erik Homenick told Toho Kingdom, “and she explained to me what the various parts of the music represented in this original Godzilla story of her own invention: Godzilla emerges from Lake Michigan and subsequently grapples with a legendary lake monster before laying waste to downtown Chicago. It was a great deal of fun to recount this fanciful story to the audience before Miss Oshima thrilled all of us with the world premiere performance of Godzilla in Chicago.”

The author of this news article was front-row center for the whole evening and cannot encourage people more heartily to pick up the CD or buy the digital download when they become available in the near future. And for a more personal congratulations of Oshima’s invitation from the Academy, I’d like to offer this closing testimony from her Kaiju Crescendo co-conductor, John DeSentis. “I cannot state enough how deserving Michiru is of this honor. She is a composer of colossal musical talent with a wonderful heart to match it. Congratulations, Michiru!”

Michiru Oshima at Kaiju Crescendo in July 2019.
Image Courtesy of Len Medlock