On  April 27, 2019, through the auspices and dedication of Chris Mirjahangir in setting things up with the parties involved and working with me to come up with questions and finding proper equipment for the endeavor, I had the enormous honor to visit Keizo Murase in his workshop and interview him face-to-face, with the assistance of Daisuke Sato, director of the amazing Howl Beyond the Fog. For those who are unaware, Keizo Murase is a suitmaker and modeler most famous for his work on many Showa Toho films, including Varan (1958), King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Gorath (1962), Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965),  Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), and others. He also worked on several of the Gamera films, the Daimajin films, several tokusatsu television shows, the South Korean film Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967), the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers film The Mighty Peking Man (1977), and returned to work with Toho on Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992). He is an absolute legend in the tokusatsu field, and it was an incredible dream come true for me to meet him and talk with him, and to see where a number of monster suits were made for his films.

However, I was uncertain how to translate the interview, as my own Japanese abilities I felt were not up to the task. Thankfully I could enlist the enormous talents of Mariko Godziszewski, who did an amazing job translating the following interview, and tokusatsu scholar Ed Godziszewski (founder of Japanese Giants magazine, and co-author of Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa with Steve Ryfle) was amazing and helped check over the work. If you would like translation work done, I highly recommend Mrs. Godziszewski for reasonable prices and excellent, timely work done. For those interested in having translation work done from Japanese into English, whether related to tokusatsu or not, please consider contacting the Godziszewskis at the following email address: edgodzi@gmail.com.

Please note that Keizo Murase and Daisuke Sato are currently running a Kickstarter to help fund Brush of the God, which is a new tokusatsu kaiju film directed by Keizo Murase. A trailer has been released, as well as many stills and pictures of the monsters and effects, and I personally think the movie looks great and I pledged to support the movie. If you are interested in supporting a new work by this kaiju legend, please consider supporting the film before the Kickstarter ends.

 

Interviewer: When you made Varan’s suit for the first time, did you come across any problems?

Keizo Murase: The director’s (Eiji Tsuburaya’s) order was about the spikes on the back…. We made Godzilla before and this came after Godzilla, and… he wanted those fins to be strong enough to not break during a fight, and flexible enough so they would bounce back into shape when they were pushed; also, he wanted to make them clear. So we had to look for that type of material… But back then, there weren’t enough materials available. Now there are so many things available and, like even for Dagarlha there, you can find anything so easily. But at that time, it was not like now. It was easy for the director to say to me, “Oh, you can do it!”, but it wasn’t! So I came up with an idea, to make the fins out of the clear hose (tube) that you use in a fish tank. Those things were clear, and came in rolled-up, so it naturally made the curve we needed. But they were hoses, so they had holes. To cover those holes, we used frosted glass…. actually, un-clear vinyl on the back, and they worked out perfect in filming. The director was very satisfied.

I used to be a farmer and I made various things for farming purposes. I liked making things. My first exposure to monsters was Godzilla. I watched the movie and I was very impressed. I came to Tokyo because of my health issue. To get treatment, it had to be in Tokyo. When I came to Tokyo, I got a part-time job to support my fiancée, and the place I started working happened to be the studio that created Godzilla. I was the youngest one there, so they told me to come up with new and different ideas. So making this monster… This one is supposed to fly and it has this thing under the arms… what do you call it? Like, you know, there is an animal called a flying-squirrel…. They said this thing has to fly like that. Of course, we can’t actually make it fly, so I told them by using piano wires, we can make it look like it’s flying. I originally wanted to make a half-scale sized model, but that was rejected because it would be too heavy to move for action scenes. For what we made, we used wires. The body had 2 wires, and we also put wires on other parts of the body so we could move each part separately. When it was land filming, there was a suit actor, Nakajima-san was inside of the suit, and he did all the movements without trouble. At the beginning, the monster shows up from the water of a dam. They wanted the monster to show up in the “dancing waters” so we sunk fire hoses under the water and opened all the valves at once to make a whirlpool. Nakajima-san was under the water, holding on to a weight. When he let the weight go, because of the water movement, he floated up to the surface with the movement of the water. That was the scene of the monster showing up for the first time and it came out really well. By this time, through the experience of making Godzilla, they had much better ideas for making the suit, and they could make the monster suit at almost a half of what Godzilla weighed. Godzilla was too heavy and like when it was coming out of water, he couldn’t do it wearing a full suit, so they made a “pants suit” and filmed only the bottom half, and when Godzilla was fully on the land, then he put on the full body suit. Then he did all those monster actions of Godzilla destroying the city and stuff. But Godzilla’s action did not have much variety… like, he doesn’t duck or fly or so on. But, Varan has to fly, roll around, fight, etc. They were worried about the back fins breaking during filming, but my ideas really could nail down all those potential problems, so I got to be the director’s favorite. In these books, there are a lot of my pictures too. “My big brother” (Note from Ed Godziszewski: I think he means Teizo Toshimitsu) designed, and I made them.

So as for Mothra. I got in when I was 23, but by that time, all the mentors were already close to 60. They were not into exploring to find new stuff. Now, there is something like Styrofoam and you can make the core of the monsters with it, but back then, there was nothing like that. Those people… Yagi, they used to make Kiku-ningyos (mum-flower figures) for the Fall festivals. They make the bases (core) of the figures with wire and attached mums on the surface to make them look like they are wearing kimonos. Tsuburaya-san saw it, and talked to them, “if you can do something like that, then can you make the base of Godzilla just like that?” Then they just did for Godzilla as they did for the Kiku-ningyos.

After the wire core was done by them, then we started to put on the exteriors. To make a suit, the wire core had to be removed, so we started with glue on washi-paper (Japanese paper) first. Next, we put latex onto those washi. At that point we also add some ‘meat’ volumes too (foam or other stuffing materials). Then for the skin we put on the texture and scales which were molded. Finally, we dip the whole thing in water, cut the stomach side open, and take the wire core out. Washi was glued onto the wire core, so the cores were easy to take out, but there still is some washi hardened by glue left inside. We scraped them all out by hand and made the whole thing soft so that a human can get inside. Godzilla was made in the same way.

Time after time, what we really tried to do was find ways we could make the suits lighter and lighter. Larva Mothra had about 6 people inside. But for the small one, we used wired toy tanks inside. We took off the outside parts of those toy tanks and left the engine and wheels, connected those and put Mothra’s skin over the top. Each block of those tanks had rotors and they go in and out as the wheels move. When you put Mothra’s skin on top, they move up and down and Mothra looked like it was crawling.

But when it’s the big one (adult) that we had to make fly, the size was about 4 meters. It was way too big to make it actually fly, so it all had to be done by wire works. We made a Mothra-shaped wooden frame and attached piano wires to it from each part of Mothra and placed the frame up above. We attached about 10 wires to Mothra and it took 10 people to control Mothra’s movement when filming. The body was made in the same way as the other monsters, with a wired core. The ‘skeleton’ of the wings was made with bamboo because bamboo trunks have flexibility. We scorched bamboo to make some curves for the wings. The connecting part (from the body) was attached with hinges. These were all attached to wires and moved by human hands.

For moving forward (flying), we set up a rail above, and for rotations we used a crane. This is the eye of Mothra, same one that we made back then. It was the first time that clear material was available. It’s called transparent resin. When we made Varan, like for the claws, resin was used, but at that time there was no clear material available. We looked all over for a clear material and we finally found this ‘transparent resin’… We went all the way to Tokyo to learn about it just to make Mothra’s eyes. Now we are trying to replicate exactly the same thing that we made back then, and we are making a 4-meter version of it. That is for an exhibition, so we got permission from Toho. Later, a drilling machine was used to create these dents inside, but in my time, there was nothing like that available. As you can see, these holes are not evenly made because they were all done by hand. First, I made this round piece, then made a mold with plaster, and placed 5 mm of clay inside, and pressed balls there. That’s how I made it. It was very time consuming. Then I made a mold with plaster, and filled it with the liquid transparent resin. That was how I did it. Now, you can use silicone to make a mold so it’s much easier. Back then we could not use it. We made the plaster mold and used wax to make it easier to remove. I also polished it after that, and that’s how I made the eyes. It was also because of the director’s request that he wanted the eyes to look almost like teary…. Because of the character of Mothra…. There were two girls, played by the Peanuts, and Mothra was supposed to go save them, so he said the eyes should not look too mechanical… like, watery looking without actual water… so I did by my hand on purpose. I used something like marbles. So back then, no materials were available like now. We had to be creative, and had to come up with different things. Therefore it took a long time to make them too. The whole process was on yourself. You come up with ideas, you get the materials by yourself, you have to test if it works by yourself, and you create.

 

Interviewer: I was at the exhibition of THE DNA OF SFX recently, and I saw the dolls of The Peanuts. Can you tell me how you made them?

Murase: Oh, the ones in the box! Well, when we made it for the filming back then, it wasn’t so good and cute. Those (at the exhibition) were made later. When we did this, Toshimitsu-san was my master, and he made them so many times, but no matter how many times he made them, the director didn’t like them. He complained that what Toshimitsu made was all ugly and not cute.  They didn’t look sad or they didn’t even look like they had any emotions. After all, he could not satisfy the director, so we asked for a Hina-ningyo (Japanese girl’s festival decorative doll) maker in town to help us. So they were the ones who made the Peanuts dolls in the cage. That was what we used for filming. The one you saw at THE DNA OF SFX was made much later, so it is not even a recreation of how they did it back then, not even the materials, but they really look like the Peanuts. For Mothra (the prop for the exhibition), they wanted to recreate the original exactly the same way, while I’m still alive (laughs). But time by time, things change. New people don’t make things the same way as old people. So those monsters, like King Ghidorah, it was not made in the same way as back then. For exhibition purposes… for the audience to see, they were all made in a more modern way. First of all, not too many original people are still around any more…. So what I’m trying to make right now is more close to the original one.

 

Interviewer: Varan was a black & white movie, correct? How did you make things for a black & white movie?

Murase: It was just because we had no budget. Of course, everything had colors, but we had no money for color film. Especially these movies were filmed in 3x speed, so we had to use more film than the other movies that were filmed in normal speed. We had to go cheap, and black & white was the solution. But I personally think, in the case of Varan, it came out better in black & white. The first Godzilla was also in black & white, and I think it was effective to give more heaviness or volume to the atmosphere. Also, because it had no color, we thought it gave the audience a chance to use their own imaginations. But after a few movies, Toho’s monster movies started being successful, then from Mothra (Note from Ed Godziszewski: actually from Rodan), they decided to go with color. When film got to be color, it was more work because now we had to make everything in colors… like, when we painted the background of the horizon, it all had to be in color. In black & white, we didn’t have to worry about all those things, but in color, it was more work. So rather than a technical matter, it was more about budget.

 

Interviewer: King Kong vs Godzilla was….

Murase: It was in color

 

Interviewer: It was very popular. The suit of King Kong was … goat…?

Murase: Yes, it was goat.

 

Interviewer: Why goat?

Murase: There was nothing else. We looked for artificial fur too, but we could not find anything suitable. I didn’t know what to do…. I wondered what the American people who made the American King Kong used for it, and I finally met with the guy…. What was his name?…  Mr. Rick Baker. We met up and had some conversations. He asked me what I used to make the Peking Man, and I asked, and he asked me about King Kong’s fur. He told me they used the bear fur.  He asked me about Peking Man, so I told him that I used human hair. I used Chinese girls’ hair and we placed them into the surface one by one, and he was very surprised. When we burned it, it was stinky. First when I made it here and brought it there, I used goat fur, because I made King Kong in the same way. I made three of them, including the one I brought over there. I wanted to make King Kong in Hong Kong, making Kong climb up on a Hong Kong building, but we couldn’t get permission. We already had 6 people preparing… making things and getting materials for it in Japan, but we couldn’t get permission after all because of the various problems. So we decided to give up. We decided to do with Peking Man instead and I made a Peking Man. Here is the picture. This is the face of Peking Man, and finally they said ‘okay’ because it didn’t look like the American King Kong. It’s all human hair. In China, girls are growing their hair so they can sell it. There are people who buy hair from those girls. We talked to one of those hair-buyers so we could get enough hair to make Peking Man. Then I used the base for wigs, that fabric to place hairs into, and we got someone to do it… putting those hairs into the fabric. We made about 20 of those hair sheets, and we put those hair-sheets on the Peking Man’s skin.

 

Interviewer: Did you actually go to Hong Kong for the Peking Man movie?

Murase: Yeah, I was there from the first discussions, and in the last scene, I wore the suit. The last scene was where the Peking Man got up on the building, was attacked by helicopters and got burned, then fell and died. The height of the building was about six meters, and I had to fall three times while being set on fire. The stunt guy was supposed to do it, but he rejected doing it without insurance. That incident caused a week of delay. We were running out of time because of the visa situation of the Japanese staff, so I just said I would do it. Since I was the one who made the suit, I knew it best, like what was the limit of danger, or how not to get burned, etc. so I decided to do the last scene. So it was me in the last scene. It was scary. (laughs) The surface was covered with gunpowder, and they glued fuses on the back and ignited them. I acted like I was suffering and was supposed to fall down.

 

Interviewer: I have not seen the movie. I would like to see it once. Recently I had a chance to go to Hong Kong. How do you describe the difference between making movies in Japan and Hong Kong?

Murase: When I went there to make Peking Man, what I was surprised the most by was the size of their set, and the details of what they made. Even all those things that would be destroyed or something that you can’t even see anyway, like hanging laundry on bamboo sticks, flags, even a design on a T-shirt…everything, was hand-made and hand drawn. The part where the guy kidnaps the girl and the Peking Man finds them…. and Peking Man grabs him thru the window and tosses him…. For that scene, they made two sets. For the Peking Man sticking its hand through, it was a smaller set, but where they go in, it was the life size set. So instead of filming everything with miniatures, they use both miniature and life size, and the miniature was an exact replica of the life size set, like, dressers, tableware, everything was all made. That’s where the hand comes in and saves the girl. In Japanese films, miniature scenes would be only done with miniatures, and set scenes would be only done with sets. They don’t combine miniature and set for filming the same scene. (…) They won’t mind spending money on those kind of things. And, they make everything, even very small minor things very precisely, like, how they used to make the buildings with Bamboo in old times, I guess they don’t do it nowadays, or the hanging laundry on bamboo sticks from inside to outside, that type of scene, Hong Kong people were recreating everything so precisely. Japanese don’t do that much. Maybe they make the power lines, the light posts, and signs, but that’s as far as they go. (Hong Kong would) make the air conditioners and everything. They are so detailed. No cheating. What you see is exactly what they have. It cost a lot. That movie back then, it cost ¥800,000,000. It cost a lot, but it made ¥1,300,000,000, so we made a profit. We were ready to do more, then the company went out of business. (…)

When I talk at events, they ask me what I think about CG, I say I’m in a different dimension, so it’s hard to compare. What we learned and what we made back then, and what nowadays young people think in their heads and create on computers, and a mixture of both ways, they are all different. What we did was the recreation of the actual things. What people do now is to imagine in their heads and do everything on computers, so I feel like there is no depth. I wish if it could be better. When we did something, what looked far away was actually something in the distance. There was a perspective. Now, if there is an explosion in the front, it’s only on that spot and nothing in the back. Imagination in my time and now are different. Now they made Shin Godzilla all done by CG, it’s not real. Godzilla moves very smooth and well done, I think it’s okay, but the heaviness or perspective, those things that you feel and those that you see with your eyes are different. That’s how I feel. So I don’t think that’s even a matter of comparison. People in my time only can tell the old way, and new age people only know about those CG things because they don’t have any experiences like what we did. Therefore, if there is some director who can work with both ways combined, I think he can make the best kind of film. Someone who’s not heavily reliant on one side or the other.

 

Interviewer: Going back to King Kong vs. Godzilla. You also have made a Godzilla suit, correct? It was very popular. What do you remember from it?

Murase: The first Godzilla suit was extremely heavy. For the later ones, the director wanted a much lighter suit, something that you can battle in. The skin was urethane rubber, (…) and I tore it up by hand and put each scale on one by one by hand. I made big ones, small ones, tall ones, short ones, all different, and did it one by one. So the suit was very tough and it had no problem getting tossed around, and it was very light too. It was not like balloons colliding with each other. Shocks are all absorbed. For that matter, Tsuburaya-san always had that kind of request, but I was wondering how far it could go that way. But time changes and we can’t get the same kind of materials anymore. Instead, you can get urethane, but it is not the same between making suits with urethane and making each scale by hand.

Interviewer: The scene that Godzilla comes out of ice….

Murase: Unfortunately, I could not be present at filming all the time, because we had more jobs to do while they were filming. Also, even when I could be there, basically “No photos allowed” was the rule, to keep all the SFX techniques secret. I still personally took pictures… at least they didn’t say anything to me. There were the art staff, two still-men, props, lighting, and no one had a camera. Oh, maybe two people in art had them. In the suit-making staff, I had a camera and I was recording all our work. Tsuburaya-san told me not to release those photos or any info to outside. Photos that the still-men took all went to storage, and no one saw them after that. It was the rule not to take photos. I happened to have a camera, so I did (even though I shouldn’t have). Now they don’t have such rules any longer, so if someone wants photos for publishing or something, they can get photos. They realized that they get more money that way. So everybody wants what we have from the old time… the ones I took, not the ones the still-men took. I took photos of some of my work, but we don’t have any photos of us working or anything. I wish that more people had taken photos to preserve their own work so we could pass it on to the people who followed. Lately Toho finally realized that, and now they are showing and telling more to everybody. Back then at one point, they were keeping everything secret. Toei was the same way. I worked on various projects for them, and they don’t have any photos. Releasing their inside information was all off-limits. Now, Toho allows the release of info and photos, so it’s good. Like Sato-kun making his own thing, it’s good because there are no copyrights and those things to worry about. He’s making a film now, and that too, he can do anything he wants because that’s all his own thing. I wish there would be more people like that. I think it’s important to preserve and inherit those things for later. No matter how much you show the thing you made, (pointing at Varan) that thing is only material. If this thing in this size could move around, everybody would want it. But if you want to make a suit that a guy can go inside, all by yourself, can you make it? No, you can’t. It costs too much, and takes too much time. If it would be a part of a school project or something, and some students tried to do it, maybe it could happen. But doing everything by yourself is impossible. It’ll be too much to pay out of your own pocket.

 

Interviewer: Now Mothra vs. Godzilla… it may be a strange question, but what was the moving turtle skeleton?

Murase: What?? Well…. We didn’t make it… so… I don’t know… Yeah I’ve watched the movie, but I don’t even remember that. That’s probably done by the drama team people, not the SFX team. It could be done by (inaudible)Sato-san maybe? There were sometimes such times…. something we didn’t know about until someone mentions it to us… Oooh, I see, it’s funny. Yeah, that’s the drama group. The set is too. This scene, they shot somewhere like the seashore or a river bank…

Daisuke Sato: It was Honda-san’s team.

Murase: Yeah, the drama and SFX were separate groups.

 

Interviewer: The first (Godzilla) movie I watched was “KING KONG VS GODZILLA”, and there was an animation scene. That was a battle scene of Godzilla and King Kong.

Murase: Animation…? No, we didn’t work on it. What we did was, with pipes, tried to make it like that, and they didn’t use it, after all, either we move it or screw it, but it went back because of the weight, so it didn’t work. Our group didn’t work on that scene. The way we worked… each group worked separately and we’re all working to the max. Everything finally came together at filming. So we didn’t know about any other department’s work at all. Even for filming… if there is something like the big Mothra, such as where repair or maintenance may possibly be required, that was the only time we were at the filming. Otherwise we didn’t even go to filming.

 

Interviewer: Mothra vs. Godzilla—Mothra’s puppet, how was it different from the previous doll?

Murase: Are you talking about larva Mothra? The small one was like, this length (with hands gesture). All the other ones are big. When it laid an egg at Tokyo Tower (the original Mothra, not MvsG), we made a middle size one for that. It was a puppet, moved by someone’s arm. A person was hiding in the hill and stuck his arm into it.

 

Interviewer: The next one, Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster probably was my top favorite movie. How did you make King Ghidorah?

Murase: Nakajima-san was supposed to get inside, but it got too heavy. Those scales, they were made from a plaster mold, cut with scissors and placed on the surface one by one by hand, so it became so heavy. I think it was about 25-26 kilo. Nakajima-san who was inside could not move a thing. So after all we had to do everything with wire-work. For something like a walking scene, we still pulled with wires, but Nakajima-san got inside and walked, and they filmed the legs and feet. For the full body scenes, they filmed only with wires, no human was inside the suit. So they attached wires to the different parts of the body. (Godziszewski: Actually, Nakajima never performed King Ghidorah—that was Hirose. Also there was someone inside the suit for most scenes, especially those where KG takes a step or two, I am afraid he isn’t remembering correctly)

 

Interviewer: It sounds hard. For the battle scenes, it must be dangerous.

Murase: For the necks, we made short tubes with urethane, like Chikuwa (tube-shaped fish cakes), connected them together and put wire through the middle, and hung them up with piano wire from the top. Where it moves to the right and left, we connected wires to the sides. It took like 10 people to control King Ghidorah. There were 2 people for the body, that was hung at the shoulders. When the body is picked up, moving forward just happened by itself. While it’s moving forward, they gave each neck and head different movements, and that was how they filmed.  Because there were so many wires, when you look closely in the movie, you actually can see the wires sometimes.

 

Interviewer: For the meteor scene, how did you make the meteor?

Murase: (Godziszewski: I think he misunderstood the question and thought you were asking about Gorath rather than the meteor in Ghidorah) That meteor, it looked like a Kompeito (small star-shaped sugar candy), right? That was made of…. I don’t know if the same thing still exists, but back then, there was a thing called “organic glass’ which was a hard resin that looked something like Konnyaku (yam paste jelly). We cut that into pieces and made it into the shape. To light it up from inside, we made holes and put lights inside the holes. We used 2 wires to hang it, and we used those 2 wires as electrical cords, with + and -, and sent electricity through the wires. So when it moved, it was lit. (…) I wish that material was still available. There was a movie called “H-MAN”. There was this goo-looking thing in that movie. First, it (organic glass) was in solid form. If the material is still available, you can do a lot of interesting things. (back to Gorath) So we put 2 wires into the thing… it’s clear, and that made it flash. But it attracts all sorts of things on the ground, like sand, but when you wash with water, you can clean it up. In a while it goes back into its original shape. That was how we made this rock fly. It was not a hard thing. It was soft, like Konnyaku. When we used it for H-Man, we cut it into small pieces and put them in a can before we went home at night, and added water to it. By the morning when we came in, it had all melted and expanded, and it’s all goo… thicker than liquid candy. Using it for H-Man, we pasted it onto a human-shaped frame, and tilted the frame to make it look like the goo is climbing up. For the scene that the goo climbs up the wall, we made a set of the wall and tilted the wall and camera all together, and in the film, it looked like the goo is moving on the wall. They moved the set and camera together and filmed. We went through that a lot, so we always prepared a night before for the next day’s filming. SFX is all about “application”. If you can’t use materials wisely, you can’t make a good film, because it’s not like you can make the actual thing. It’s about how you can apply your materials to make them look like the real things that you want to make. So it’s not all about suits or movements by human hands either. Sometimes you depend on devices, materials, sometimes a human gets inside of suit. That’s how these films were made.

 

Interviewer: I know the story of Matango was based on the short novel of William Hodgson. I read the book. I’m wondering if the design of Matango, the mushroom-shaped humanoid monster, was influenced by the original story.

Murase: I made it, so I know how they were made. The base for the suits was all netted wire (chicken wire?). Like we did before, we pasted fabric on the wire, then we put moss on the surface. But as for some scenes, the ones that humans aren’t inside, they were made with urethane foam. We injected urethane foam into a tube and placed a cover on the top, then the urethane expanded and overflowed out of the tube and the top would spread….it naturally formed perfect mushroom shapes. When the urethane hardened, we took off the tubes. The folds under the mushroom caps were made with paper, folded like a fan, and we pasted them on under the cap. When you cover the whole thing with latex, they don’t look like separate pieces. The stem was already built in the tube, so nothing else had to be done. For even smaller ones — we were just about making those now for an exhibition— you poke holes in plaster with your fingers and pour urethane foam into those holes, and as the urethane expands, they form into the small mushroom shapes. We’re using plaster for the mold so that the urethane wouldn’t stick to it. They come off so easy. All you have to do is to paint, and that’s it. For the suits, all the bases were made with wires and we took those wires out later so people could get inside. Hands (arms) are the same thing, making the base with wires, putting fabric on top, dipping into water and taking out later, and then painting.

 

Interviewer: How about the human-shaped Matangos at the beginning? How did you make those?

Murase: Same thing, with wire and fabrics, dipped into water and then pull the wires out, and scrape the paper out by hand, then a human can go inside.

 

Interviewer: The last one too? The guy started to change into a mushroom.

Murase: Yes, same thing, with wires. We made lots and lots of mushrooms by pouring urethane. We put them all over. Only the one with a human inside had wires. We put a zipper on the back.

 

Interviewer: How many suits did you make?

Murase: I think we only made 2 of them. Other ones, they all moved, but they all moved slowly, so…

 

Interviewer: The monster from Gorath …Maguma?

Murase: or those fangs, we used FRP (fiberglass resin plastic) for the first time. Before that, our suit making group had never used FRP. I made those fangs and showed it to them. Then “Oyaji-san” goes, “Hell, they must’ve cost a fortune! Are we gonna be in trouble!? They’re ivory, right?”… So I was like, “Oh, no, no, they didn’t cost that much. Now there is a new material available and it’s called Synthetic Resin. I used that, and when you polish it, it comes out like this.” He was really impressed. Then he said, “ I wonder if you can make the claws of Godzilla with this material…? The way you’ve been doing things, you always have to do repairs because they always break in the process of filming.” And ever since then, we started making all those Godzilla’s teeth and claws with it. So that was the first time. Before that, we were making everything with wires, so they were always broken and deformed. They needed to be repaired constantly. We made a pointy stick, and we had to re-shape the claws from inside so frequently. Because they were broken so much, we left the wire on the fingertips once. Nakajima-san came out of the suit, and said, “It hurt so much!” And when he pulled his hands out of the suit, his hands were bloody! It was a bad idea. But this Synthetic Resin took care of that problem too. But when we made those claws, they were like this size and shaped like this (with gesture), but by the end of filming, the bottoms of the claws on the feet got all flat. It meant he was walking that much during filming.

 

Interviewer: Now I would like to ask about a Korean movie, Yongary. How did you start working on that film?

Murase: By that time, urethane was readily available. We made the human shape first, then pasted urethane onto it to shape the outside form. For the scales, we cut 5 mm foam rubber strips with scissors, placed them on the surface, and smashed the corners of them. And made that into the face. It was all hand-made, so we only could make one.

 

Interviewer: You did not go to Korea, correct?

Murase: I didn’t go there to attend at the filming, but my student did.

 

Interviewer: YONGARY was the only Korean movie you worked on, correct?

Murase: Yes, that was the only one. They used tanks for that movie, and I made those in Japan and they took them there. They were remote-controlled tanks, and they could shoot their gunpowder cannons too.

 

Interviewer: How did you do the shooting fire trick for Yongary?

Murase: There was no person inside, so we inserted bronze pipes, connected them to a tank, made a nozzle in the mouth, set the lighter here (pointing to the side of his mouth), and then lit it. After you start that way, as the plug opens more, the fuel comes through the mouth, and “hoooof!” I worked on Daiei’s Gamera before Yongary. When I worked on Gamera, we used both, starting the fire with gunpowder and then shot gasoline out of the mouth. Gamera’s fire reached for about 3 and a half meters. Once when we were filming the fire scene, Gamera made the set catch fire. The set was a pine tree mountain, so it contained grease… it started burning so easily. The fire went around the back of the set, and burnt big time. No one was hurt, and we extinguished the fire right away. Godzilla shoots a blue fire, but it was artificial. Daiei wanted to use a real fire because it looks more exciting. We set up a device so that a gas and gasoline mix would come out of the mouth. But when we wanted to stop the fire, it wouldn’t stop right away. A small amount of fire was left around the mouth. Then the mouth got burned. So by the time we did YONGARY, we changed the method and only used gasoline, so when we closed the plug off, the fire stopped right away.

 

Interviewer: For the flying Gamera, did you make the model?

Murase: We made a ½ scale model. If you make the big one fly, the gunpowder coming from the feet is about like this (with hand gesture) thick–there are 4 of them, and we light them up. But just like Senkou-hanabi (small sparklers), in here (points to his shoulder area), when you stop the fire, they go like “bjbjbjbjbjbj…” (Godziszewski: I think he means it doesn’t get extinguished right away), so they all get burned up. It was not easy. When we make Gamera fly, the problem was that Gamera spins when he flies, right, there is a bicycle wheel above, and Gamera was hung by piano wires from the bicycle wheel. But when Gamera spins, the fire doesn’t spin along with Gamera, so it melted the piano wires and cut them, making Gamera fall. We can’t use thicker piano wires because they will be more visible, so we had to use the thin ones, and they melted from the fire. We came across lots of problems during filming Gamera, but the hardest of all was the flying part, flying while shooting fire out of the leg sections.

 

Interviewer: How about the other monsters… like, Viras? Was it hard to make?

Murase: Viras, first it was made by a guy named Takayama-san. When you submerged it in water, it sucked up all water and it got too heavy, it couldn’t come out, or it couldn’t run on the land, and the tongue from the throat was….

Sato: That was Barugon… Viras was the one like a squid.

Murase: Ooooh, the one that has like a 3-pointed head! Aaagh, I got it! Yeah, I made them, but I still get confused. Viras was made all by shaving urethane, so it didn’t have any base form. It had a human shape, and we pasted fabric onto it, that’s how we made it. The director wanted complete flexibility for it, like bending and stuff, but we didn’t get as much as he wanted. It was hard. Viras had big pieces, so they didn’t bend easily. At first, to make it flexible, we thought about putting bamboo into the core, but it didn’t work out as we wanted, so we decided to put wires inside. Putting the wires inside, and attaching piano wires to the core wires, we could make it move around. Only for the head. There was a person inside and he was moving the body, but the head was separately made to move that way.

 

Interviewer: The scene Viras was attached to Gamera, how did you make it?

Murase: It was all done by wire works. We didn’t make any special device for it.

 

Interviewer: What about Booska?

Murase: It was first made by Takayama-san…. no, before Takayama-san, someone else… who was it Sato-san?

Sato: No, it was done by Takayama-san first.

Murase: Oh, okay. Yeah, the one Takayama-san made, when it moved, the crown broke off right away. It was made by resin, but it was too thin. As soon as it started moving, a minor bump made the crown break. So after that, the work came to me. First, someone named Sato-san (…)? Yeah, right, it was Sato-san. After that, Takayama-san tried, but it didn’t work for filming. Then we (at X-Pro) made it, including the small one, and the one that flies too. The crown was really hell, as well as around the lips. We wanted to make it smooth, but we couldn’t. I wonder whether we didn’t have the technique back then. I was not sold on our own job for it, but it was good enough for filming. The character was cute and funny, so I guess it made the drama good.

 

Interviewer: It was very cute. How do you make a cute thing?

Murase: A cute suit… well it’s all up to the design. It’s not about if we want to make it cute. We had to create it faithfully to the design to make them satisfied.

 

Interviewer: What kind of monster do you like the best to make?

Murase: What kind of monster… well… I wonder what… like, it has a tail, … long, like this one (with a hand gesture), flexible, easy to move, …. kaiju or whatever, something like the ones in Jurassic Park. Right now we are… actually, I’m not supposed to say it, but we’re making something like that … overall, it’s really hard. It’s not so bad to make something that possibly existed in the past, but it’s much harder to create something that never existed, something completely only in one’s imagination. I can’t say what’s good or bad. If possible, I want to make dinosaurs that can give people dreams. But if they’re loud and violent, it won’t be a dream. But if they are too quiet, it’ll be boring. So if there is a dinosaur…. or a kaiju that sort of has feelings towards humans, I think it will be appealing to people.

 

Interviewer: In Terror of Mechagodzilla, you made Titanosaurus. Was it hard to make the suit?

Murase: It was the first time to make a monster so colorful, and we were asked to make the surface soft and shiny. That was a challenge. That was a hard thing to do. The colors were very flashy, and the designer was someone I knew, so I talked a lot with him; he said it was hard to draw, but drawing is still much easier than making. I had a hard time making it, but I found out that surprisingly it had many fans. I was surprised. Even in America, there were so many people who like it, maybe as many as Godzilla fans. I wonder if the color was the reason everybody liked it. It was also soft but it comes with elasticity. That [character], I made it all by myself, with no help from anyone. We didn’t have time. I had no time to listen to the other people’s opinions, I just had to apply what I thought in my head would work. The designer complimented me that I recreated it exactly how he drew it. It was the first time for me to make a monster so flashy with colors, I had fun making it. I didn’t have to listen to anyone, it was completely left up to me, and I’m proud that I made it so easily. That Titanosaurus, only the head is preserved now. Some people ask me if I can make it again, but I was young back then. At my age now…. doing it again would be too hard.

Interviewer: The tail opens… like this. How did you make it?

Murase: That… there are these things… what do you call them?… walking around here and there on the ground…. Do you call them ‘Hasamimushi”? (earwigs)…. in dark brown-ish color and walking around. They have those scissors-looking tails and they open and close those things and when they find their prey, they catch them with those scissors and eat. The designer said it’s vertical, it would be no good if it’s weak and goes like this (with hand gesture). It made me think. That hinge part, I made it with metal so it can move. And for the upper piece and the lower piece, I put a vinyl sheet in between, and when the vinyl sheet opens up, it got to be like an opening fan. Just one piano wire was attached to open that thing.

 

Interviewer: I’ve heard that there were two Titanosaurus in the original idea of Terror of Mechagodzilla. Did you make the models or anything for it?

Murase: I didn’t do anything for Mechagodzilla, so I don’t even know the sizes for them.

 

Interviewer: How can the person in Titanosaurus see?

Murase: …He couldn’t see much in front. I think he was just guessing for the action.

Sato: There was a little peek-hole.

Murase: Oh, yeah, on the neck! He could see through the neck. Because it’s got a long neck, above the neck, the part that moves with a spring, I stuck a stainless one-meter ruler in, but by the end of filming, it was wearing out, and it was folded down. At the beginning when the stainless ruler was new, it worked fine, but by the end it was collapsing. So I think they must have attached one wire [to the head] at least.

 

Interviewer: Did you decide the colors of Titanosaurus?

Murase: It was decided by the designer.

 

Interviewer: Was Titanosaurus the only one you made? How about Godzilla or Mechagodzilla?

Murase: Titanosaurus was the only one I did. I did not do Godzilla or Mechagodzilla. First of all we had no time, and they never had any experience in making a monster so unusual, so they thought I had enough experience to deal with it. They brought three designs, done by a guy named Iguchi-san and I picked one out of those three, after considering how it can move, how they were physically possible to build, etc. I picked the one that looked like a person could be inside and also act.

 

Interviewer: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah … How did you make differences between the previous one and 1990’s King Ghidorah?

Murase: That’s the one that the middle head that was “mecha”, right? I made it at this place. The first floor here.  The first task was, (figuring out) how I can make it as light as possible. Second of all, the problem was how to make it last throughout filming without being worn out or destroyed. Making sure the masks (Godziszewski: I think he meant heads) won’t get chipped or smashed by colliding with each other. I was really careful about those points, especially with those many thorns (horns?). Do you think it’s okay to show the heads of King Ghidorah?

Sato: Did we bring it? If it’s not here, it’s not easy to carry, so…

Murase: Do we have it here? (woman’s voice: Oh, I forgot about it! Sorry..! I’m sorry…!!)

Interviewer: How much did that King Ghidorah weigh?

Murase: That one? Well, the first one weighed about 120-130 kilos (kilogram), but the later one…. The heads were heavy, so… maybe… I don’t think it wasn’t over 100 kilos….? I think it was less than 100, but it was definitely at least 90. I tried to make it as light as possible, but after all, the middle head was ‘mecha’ and I used FRP and stuff, that kind of part easily adds 4-5 kilos. I think at least it was much easier than before for the person inside to move wearing it.

 

Interviewer: Did it get heavy after the ‘mecha’ part was added on?

Murase: Oh, that ‘guard’ part! Yeah, that part was all made with FRP, and when the mecha part was put on, it was not able to move with a person inside anymore, it got too heavy. With all the parts on both legs, body, and all, I think the final weight got to be about 120-130 kilos. So I think they didn’t have a person inside for it. It would be too risky to have someone inside.

 

Interviewer: In the 60s, you have a movie about Yokai. I would like to ask about the movie because I like it. How did you make the things such as Karakasa?

Murase: That was actually the same as a real Karakasa, only I made it bigger. The material was bamboo. There was a Namakubi, a lady with the long neck, it was made with foam rubber. The core was urethane, and I put foam rubber on the outside, then it was filmed like this (with hand gesture).

 

Interviewer: How about Kappa?

Murase: Kappa….? (He doesn’t remember) Well, I made lots of things for it… but I think I only made like five of them. It was filmed in Kyoto, at Kyoto Daiei. But I don’t have any memory of hard work. And things such as Karakasa, some of them didn’t have any people inside, it was all done just by wire works. Toei has a film called “KAIJU DAISENSO”, the one that has the battle of a giant toad and a dragon; for those films it was all a divergence from the work I’ve done for Toho in the past.

 

Interviewer: I thought it must be a lot of work, because there were really so many Yokais in Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare.

Murase: But it wasn’t much for me…. Like, Nurarihyon… that wasn’t me, right?

Sato: I don’t know much about the movie… I just saw it once when I was little…

 

Interviewer: I forgot the Japanese title… that you made a movie about Nabula… Can you tell me about it?

Murase: He’s the one made it! (points to Sato)

Sato: I did the designing, but the suit maker was Murase-san.

Murase: I gave him some suggestions like, “it’s better this way” or “something like this way would be easier for the suit actors to move and act”, etc., but that’s about it.

Sato: Of course, the techniques that he worked on for what he did in the past were used a lot. I regret that I didn’t think about bringing any samples.

 

Interviewer: Isn’t that the head of Nebula?

Sato: Yes, I mean, it’s called a ‘Guignol’ (puppet), you stick your hand (and arm) inside and move it.

 

Interviewer: Was it hard to make the suit for this? The newer materials, different?

Murase: The purpose was to recreate how we did things in the past. So we discussed about using both the old way and new way. We wanted to retain the good things about the past in the new way.

 

Interviewer: The eyes are very impressive, I think it’s a little scary. How did you make them?

Sato: I used a special technique… First I drew (painted?) the picture of the eyes and printed it out, and then placed them on the back of a clear material.

 

Interviewer: There are some plants left…. Is it a plant monster?

Sato: Basically it’s more science fiction than fantasy, so it’s supposed to be a surviving dinosaur. The reason for this big size is that reptiles keep growing till they die, but if one of them turns out to be immortal for some reason, like from mutation, then that one keeps growing and growing, and the bigger it gets, the movement gets slower and slower. The longer it lives, for thousands of years, then things start growing on the head. That’s why it has the plants growing on its head. The reason for the trees was that, instead of giving this thing horns or something, I wanted to create some fictional ‘monster’ look by using something from nature, so these trees kind of represent something like horns. That’s the concept behind it. I’m leading it towards the stereotypical thoughts of a human, such as if there is a horn-looking tree there, people imagine it as a horn. That’s how I thought of creating a feeling of ‘fantasy’ or ‘fiction’ into science.

 

Interviewer: What is the Japanese title of the movie?

Sato: It’s called “SAGIRI NO KUNI”.

 

Interviewer: English title is…

Sato: “HOWL FROM BEYOND THE FOG”

 

Interviewer: When is it supposed to be released?

Sato: For now, we are planning to show it at this year’s G-Fest…. Well, we’re aiming for it at least.

 

Interviewer: If I’ll be in Japan at that time, how can I see it?

Sato: We will have a sneak preview when it’s done. If you’re interested, please join us.

 

Interviewer: Thank you! It’s been 2 hours now. How is your time?

Sato: We are expecting a guest at 5.

 

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Sato: Thank you.

 

Interviewer: Thank you very much. I this enjoyed very much.

Murase: That is quite fine. I was wondering what kind of questions you would bring up…. I was thinking…I can answer to what I did in the past, but if there were something like “what do you think about xx?” or “what’s your plan from now?”, those kind of things, I won’t be able to answer…