On September 26, 2021, I made a point to visit the Eiji Tsuburaya Museum in Sukagawa, Fukushima prefecture, in Japan. The previous day I had visited Seibuen Amusement Park, about which I have already written, but I really wanted to take some time to visit the Eiji Tsuburaya Museum and the Old Man’s hometown before zipping back to Yamaguchi and the beginning of the school year.
And man, Sukagawa is amazing. For fans of tokusatsu, it’s more than worth it—a big part of my monster-loving heart wishes I could live in Sukagawa.
Walking Around Sukagawa
Before I get to the museum itself, let me just say a few things about the pleasures of Sukagawa. The city is small and charming and overflowing with love for Eiji Tsuburaya, and especially with a huge focus on Ultraman. Even at the JR train station there are signs up about how Sukagawa is the sister city with the Land of Light, Nebula 78—Ultraman’s point of origin. Sukagawa has held that distinction since May 5, 2013. In the tourist information section of the station there are scads of Ultraman goodies and a few Godzilla-related things as well—I couldn’t pass up the Ultraman medicine book, which I can now use to keep track of what medicines I am taking. If the dozens of toys, snacks, clear files and so on aren’t enough in the tourist office, there are a few more in the convenience store connected to the station. What’s more, out in front of the station, there is a heroically-posed Ultraman statue, fist to the sky, which looks mighty cool—and that’s just the start of the fun!
Ultraman-related statues are spread out throughout the city, including many iterations of our hero (Ultraman, Ultraseven, Ultraman Ace, Ultra Mother, and several more), as well as a number of Ultraman’s most iconic monster foes and allies. On the streets you can pose next to such notable critters as Zetton, Gomora, Kanegon, and Pigmon, among others… and in the truly cool Sukagawa Civic Center, tette (that’s the name of the building, and no, it isn’t capitalized), there are EVEN MORE Ultraman monsters on the first floor! The Eiji Tsuburaya museum itself is on the fifth floor, and that’s where I will focus most of my attention in this article. Still, I had a ball posing with each of the Ultra-Kaiju and Ultramen (and one woman), trying to come up with amusing poses and pictures. Little kids were going around checking out the monsters with their parents, too, which made me feel like an active part of a larger fandom.
The Eiji Tsuburaya Museum
About the museum itself, again, it is inside the civic center, which houses a remarkable library and facilities for the locals to study and relax, surrounded by the awesome monsters and aliens created by the Master of Monsters. The Eiji Tsuburaya Museum is completely free, and the staff are very friendly—the lady I talked with went out of her way to explain aspects of the museum such as the filming of the Godzilla short film made there (more on that later), where certain Ultraman statues were around the city, she gave me a pin and an Eiji Tsuburaya children’s book—she was awesome! The small town bonhomie of Sukagawa completely won me over—what a great place!
I took my sweet time enjoying the museum. While not particularly large, the attractions are utterly charming—and what’s more, while videos are prohibited, you can take pictures all over with abandon!
Dream Challenge: Godzilla Appears in Sukagawa
The centerpiece of the museum is the short film “Dream Challenge: Godzilla Appears in Sukagawa,” the creation of which merited an entire book published by Hobby Japan (and a copy of which I purchased). Even though the film is very short (14 minutes, and most of that is a making-of documentary), the book is packed with interviews conducted with most of the main staff, tons of behind-the-scenes photos, storyboards from Shinji Nishikawa, and more. The suit made for the short film (created to closely resemble the original Godzilla) is on display in the museum as well. I believe I have encountered this Godzilla costume before—perhaps at the 2018 Godzilla Fes in Tokyo.
The creation of “Dream Challenge” was obviously a passion project made with care and love by all those involved, though the presentation of the film is perhaps a little underwhelming. The staff has the movie playing constantly on a loop on a somewhat sizeable flat screen TV set up with an array of stools for viewers to squat upon. There is no special viewing room, no large movie screen. Watching the creators put together the movie, carry off the special effects, piece together the miniatures—the behind-the-scenes stuff is possibly even better than the short film itself.
Like with many other Godzilla shorts created as attractions in Japan, “Dream Challenge” has very little story. The gist is that Godzilla appears in Sukagawa and begins tromping through the city as the local citizenry run for cover. Buildings from around the city are featured prominently, of course including the civic center in which the museum is installed. These shots are created with a combination of miniatures and splicing shots of the suited actor into real footage of the city.
As Godzilla smashes and blows things up, the military arrives, and the scene turns from day to night—the dark contrast adds a sense of drama and likely masks some of the weak points in the special effects. The coolest part of the military force consists of a number of MBT-MB92s. The models look really cool as they rumble along on their abundance of tires. We are treated to Godzilla blasting the MBT-MB92s with his atomic breath and delivering more destruction, and it seems the military cannot stop the monster king—and then the film just basically ends without resolving the conflict.
“Dream Challenge” of course sports a fantastic suit created with the supervision of monster artist Yuji Sakai, and it looks great—if not QUITE exactly like the original suit, close enough to sate the rabid appetites of most fans. I would say that the new suit looks a bit tidier than the rough-hewn original. That said, the special effects, rendered in color, are a bit mixed, with some composite shots convincing, some a bit (understandably) shaky.
The larger weakness is that the film just feels amateurish, and that is mostly because of what the movie is. The movie was made to include Sukagawa, including the Sukagawa landmarks and locals—especially children. The film includes many shots of extras running away, including many kids—many obviously smiling youngsters clearly enjoying the chance to romp and play while appearing in a monster film.
“Dream Challenge” is a gift to tokusatsu fandom, but it is also a Sukagawa project created to celebrate the locals and include them, and since children especially are fans of monster films and projects, it absolutely makes sense that the call for extras might particularly welcome them. And it makes perfect since that those children would be grinning ear-to-ear while performing for the film. Of course, that also means that any feeling of legitimacy or reality in the film is undercut severely, and those big smiles make the movie feel like something shot in a fan’s backyard—even with all the famous names attached to the project.
That said, I don’t want to dismiss the film—fans should embrace “Dream Challenge” and other short projects like this. The movie is worth a watch, and any fan would do well to sit and take a gander at how a traditional suitmation film can be made today—but the museum is so charming and full of wonder that the place would be worth checking out even without the short film.
Museum Displays and AR
The “Dream Challenge” Godzilla suit, as previously mentioned, is on display and makes an impression, but there are many other displays throughout the museum. Many popular Toho kaiju have dedicated displays sporting models of the monsters and spiffy museum-style signage, written up to look like pages out of ancient illustrated kaiju textbooks. The signs giving information about monster designs come sporting intricate illustrations of the creatures’ inspirations, whether biological, mythical, or a mixture of both—dinosaurs for Anguirus, mythical lion-dogs for King Caesar, etc.
I loved just looking at the monsters and their displays, which are further categorized into things like “Imagination Biology” and “World of Tokusatsu and Environmental Studies” as well as mythology and more. Along with the monster models, we also get Mothra and Rodan’s eggs, various imaginary tech from the films such as maser tanks and spaceships, and more.
In addition to the displays of the creations from the films, the museum has a series of elaborate and loving displays depicting Eiji Tsuburaya’s life, with images of his immediate family, illustrations of his influences (such as the 1933 King Kong), posters from his movies, behind-the-scenes shots, and backlit miniature recreations of moments from his life featuring tiny toy-like dolls which are heart-achingly adorable.
In addition to these displays, near the ShodaiGoji suit visitors can interact with a simple AR display—kind of a primitive Kinect-style game. Basically you stand in front of the camera, and your image is projected onto a flatscreen television as one of the alien invaders from the Toho monster universe created via amusing 2D pixelart. The camera at first transformed me again and again into a female Kilaak alien—I think because I was wearing a gray Ultraman hoodie—but after I unzipped it, I became an Xilien and then an ape man. Even non-Godzilla aliens appear, including the Mysterians. It’s simple and silly and a bit poorly implemented (the anatomy of the aliens seems akimbo), but it’s terribly amusing.
In a separate room visitors can also interact with several more miniature displays and watch interviews with tokusatsu legends as they reminisce about the godfather of Japanese tokusatsu, and a video featuring a kaiju artist painting backgrounds. The videos are not supposed to be photographed, though, and also do not feature any English subtitles, so foreign visitors would be advised to come with a knowledge of Japanese if possible.
As for the miniatures, they come in two massive displays—one depicting the creation of a Godzilla film, the other depicting the filming and creation of a war film. The Godzilla film depiction features toy-sized minis recreating the shooting of a scene of monster destruction, including the staff, the wires, the building models, the cameras and lights and chairs and more, laid out in great detail as the set stretches out in elaborate busyness.
Of especial interest is a section BEHIND the Godzilla movie set, where a secondary miniature depiction of a tokusatsu storage area is packed away, depicting how model planes were hung from the ceiling and the storage of monster suits and props. For fans of the genre, it’s unbelievably charming.
The war film recreation is similarly fantastic, this time depicting a battle at sea between the US and Japan, with many tiny toy battleships, cruisers, and gouts of water—as well as filming staff, and the so-called big pool in which the film was shot, and a background painting of the sky by the same special effects legend who painted the similar background for the Sasebo Yasuyuki Inoue exhibit I saw in August of 2021. The sea battle can be shot with your camera so it looks a little bit like scenes from a movie, no wires, the special effects technicians literally off-camera.
The effect is impressive and cool… But even as I write that, I have to question why they chose the movie they did.
You see, the ocean battle recreation set in the Eiji Tsuburaya Museum isn’t just a recreation of any old war film… it’s a recreation of a sequence from The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (1942)… a propaganda movie filmed during WWII to support Japan’s war effort, and celebrating Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and their military victories and aggressions elsewhere. It’s possible that I missed it, but I didn’t see anything that I can recall that could serve as a disclaimer or say, “by the way, the war was wrong and we were the aggressors.” It feels wrong in a contemporary museum to celebrate a movie which supported a horrendous and devastating war, including such war crimes as the attack on Pearl Harbor. I realize Tsuburaya’s miniature work on the film was impressive (a popular story that has oft been repeated cites the work as being so good as to fool the American military into believing it was filmed at the attack—though it appears this story is spurious). However, it seems inflammatory and insulting to fans from overseas who may celebrate Tsuburaya’s accomplishments in film but rightfully feel disgusted at Japan’s wartime past.
I am not advocating that propaganda films should be forgotten, but seemingly celebrating them feels wrong.
Parting Thoughts
One other curiosity about the museum—it focuses almost exclusively on Tsuburaya’s work for Toho. While Ultraman and other Tsuburaya Productions are mentioned briefly in the exhibits covering Tsuburaya’s life, the rest of the museum is entirely built around Toho monsters and special effects work. This confusing aspect of the museum is made even starker for having just walked through the streets of Sukagawa and gamboled with the profusion of Ultra-monster statues as well as having visited the M-78 Ultraman store. My suspicion is that the museum was funded by Toho, and that funding came with a clause prohibiting much attention from being given to Tsuburaya’s OWN COMPANY, which just feels bizarre. I can say I had the same feeling when I visited Sasebo and the Yasuyuki Inoue exhibit. Inoue also did work for other studios, which were barely represented at the exhibit. But with Tsuburaya, the singular Toho focus feels absurd. Before his death, Tsuburaya Productions had created Ultra Q, Ultraman, Kaiju Booska, Ultraseven, and Fight! Mighty Jack, and arguably Ultraman is Tsuburaya’s most iconic creation in Japan—even moreso than Godzilla in his homeland. The deliberate oversight feels downright wrong. Which is not to say that the museum should be skipped over by tokusatsu fans. The Eiji Tsuburaya Museum, for me, felt like a glorious pilgrimage site.
The exhibits, while not overwhelmingly expensive, feel homegrown and truly charming—which reflects something of the real delight of the art of classic tokusatsu. Special effects creation is often a conglomeration of bits and bobs with ingenuity and sweat to create stitched together magic, and the Eiji Tsuburaya Museum presents that magic with true care. Plus—tons of tokusatsu books you can read for free. Gosh, did I mention I wish I lived in Sukagawa?
What a magical place.
