Author’s note. I wish to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this article: Mariko Godziszewski, for translating research material; and Norman England, for sharing personal photos taken at the time of Rebirth of Mothra’s release, all of which are marked as such in captions.
In 1990, Tomoyuki Tanaka, the veteran producer of the Japanese motion picture company Toho, started brainstorming ideas for his next big-screen spectacular. Tanaka had been involved with cinema since 1940, and the intervening half-century witnessed him supervising a myriad of reputable titles—among them several films by Akira Kurosawa and Mikio Naruse as well as the science fiction movies that scored domestic (and, in time, international) profits beginning with Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla in 1954. The ¥183 million earned by Godzilla prompted a curt demand from company president Iwao Mori to “make another one,” and within five months, Motoyoshi Oda’s Godzilla Raids Again (1955) was playing in Japanese theaters. Tanaka went on to produce another thirteen Godzillas through the mid-’70s as well as solo ventures introducing new monsters such as Rodan (1956), Varan (1958), and Dogora (1964). He likewise presided over the genre’s long spell of diminishing returns, culminating when Honda’s swan song Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) failed to attract even a million ticket-buyers.
Tanaka remained all too appropriately at the forefront when Toho revived its flagship series in 1984. Released that December, Koji Hashimoto’s The Return of Godzilla grossed ¥1.7 billion on 3.2 million tickets: an impressive amount that nonetheless fell short of the picture’s ¥2 billion goal. Audience research led to a decision to reinvent the franchise in the vein of Hollywood entertainment and the hiring of ambitious filmmaker Kazuki Omori. Omori’s Godzilla sequel was planned for 1986 but wound up delayed as the studio assigned him to less costly dramas and comedies like Young Girls in Love (1986) and “Sayonara” die Fräulein (1987). And then, in May 1989, Godzilla vs. Biollante abruptly received the green light, and a film was cobbled together in time for December. Hopes of surpassing profits for the 1984 film were dashed when Omori’s picture played to just two million spectators.
Despite the varying degrees of fiscal disappointment in the last few decades, Tanaka remained confident in Toho’s monsters—so much so that he envisioned a return to the era when the market percolated with lavish spectaculars—including ones not featuring Godzilla. Following a recommendation from Omori, Tanaka decided to resurrect Mothra, the giant winged insect that debuted in the 1961 novella The Luminous Fairies and Mothra and migrated to cinema screens that same year in Ishiro Honda’s Mothra. Honda’s movie had been a sizable hit, and its star made three ensuing appearances through the ’60s. Believing Mothra to be “the only monster [besides Godzilla] capable of carrying a film as the protagonist,” Tanaka charged Omori with writing Mothra vs. Bagan, hoping to later spawn crossovers like Godzilla vs. Bagan and further Mothra adventures like Mothra vs. King Ghidorah.
Alas, Tanaka’s proposal never went before the cameras. Per the speculation of special effects director Koichi Kawakita, “Toho headquarters […] had doubts about how much Mothra or the new monster Bagan would appeal to audiences and draw them back to theaters.” Godzilla thus remained at the top of marquees, and a poll asking children to name their favorite classic Toho adversary led to the making of Omori’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Word of mouth after a Tokyo International Film Festival premiere was such that Toho ordered a sequel one month ahead of King Ghidorah’s general release. And with company president Isao Matsuoka’s blessing to at last bring back Mothra, Omori set about retooling his Mothra vs. Bagan script. He replaced the enemy monster with Godzilla and a new creature called Battra, and the movie, directed by series newcomer Takao Okawara, opened to sensational box office in December 1992.
Godzilla vs. Mothra shattered the New Year’s holiday record in Japan and by the end of its theatrical run had grossed ¥2.22 billion—beating Toho’s revenue goal for The Return of Godzilla and becoming the top Japanese hit of the 1993 movie year. Much of the picture’s success was attributed to Mothra’s appeal to the female demographic, who at the time comprised approximately seventy percent of moviegoers. “It became a kaiju film that women could enjoy as well,” producer Shogo Tomiyama explained. “Mothers and daughters came together to the theaters. In that sense, it was more of a Mothra movie than a Godzilla movie. […] From that perspective, Mothra is truly strong; she can be a main character alongside Godzilla.”
Toho made three more Godzillas through the early and mid-’90s, pitting the King of the Monsters against a variety of opponents, including two doppelgängers of himself. (This decade also saw the aging Tomoyuki Tanaka take on a less active role, with Tomiyama ascending to the job of main producer.) Okawara’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) and Kensho Yamashita’s Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) scored impressive returns, ranking second on their respective years’ domestic charts. But at the same time, their box office reflected a wane in attendance: from 3.8 million ticket-buyers and ¥1.87 billion to 3.4 million and ¥1.65 billion. What’s more, Toho in 1995 reduced Kawakita’s effects budget due to a lack of recent success in selling the films to the United States, and a Hollywood remake from TriStar Pictures was anticipated in the next few years. For all these reasons, the franchise entered hiatus following Okawara’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995).
That said, Toho wasn’t finished with its recrudescent genre movies. And since Godzilla would be absent for the next few years, the company turned to the star who’d scored them a groundbreaking hit in 1992. “I felt strongly,” Tomiyama explained, “that if there was something needed to replace Godzilla’s destructive nature and character, it was the peaceful and gentle image that Mothra possesses.”
In a 1996 interview, Koichi Kawakita recalled that the “Mothra is next” concept was already established when Godzilla vs. Destoroyah was in production. “The project was moving forward, and I think there were three or four different plots floating around. Since the general outline was set, I actually made the teaser trailer while finishing up Destoroyah.” The proposed movie had a fair amount in common with Godzilla vs. Mothra: the eponymous star would begin life as a larva and metamorphose into imago form; the action partly revolved around the creature’s bond with a race of supernatural fairies (here called the Elias); and the picture would resurrect Omori’s forceful ecology message. “Based on the premise that [Mothra] protects life on Earth rather than just humans,” said Tomiyama, “I decided to specifically make it a story about protecting nature.”
At the same time, the movie would contain some notable genre departures. For starters, Tomiyama requested that the fairies, once united in servitude to Mothra, now experience conflict amongst themselves. He also specified that familiar images of city destruction and military battles be eschewed to maintain focus on the natural world. (“I wanted the story to be about the struggle over greenery. If you bring in a city, nature ends up looking like a mere accessory.”) The resultant picture shared little in common with Ishiro Honda’s 1961 original; and yet, it recycled his movie’s title, released in Japan simply as Mothra. Internationally, it’d be renamed Rebirth of Mothra.
In creating this reboot, Tomiyama elected for a change in the creative guard. Although Kawakita remained in charge of the special effects, Rebirth of Mothra brought back none of the writers and directors of the ’90s Godzillas, in their place inducting fresh talent, beginning with the man behind the story. Masumi Suetani was a relative newcomer to cinema, having made his screenwriting debut in 1993 when he adapted his novel Samurai Kids into the Nobuhiko Obayashi movie of the same name. He subsequently penned the two fantasy films directed by song artist Tatsuya Ishii: Kappa in 1994 and Acri, based on a Shunji Iwai story about men trying to prove the existence of mermaids, in 1996. And while he professed to not consciously think about thematic throughlines, his scripts consistently reflected environmental interests and contained similar character beats. Samurai Kids riffed on the Issun-boshi narrative via a boy befriending a tiny person who has a mystical connection to the natural world. Kappa revolved around a person’s relationship with extraordinary beings (the legendary yokai are revealed to be aliens) and depicted the consequences of a community’s disregard for nature. And the characters of Acri bantered about ecology as they searched for mermaids with whom one of them has a history. This recurring touch—the use of fantasy to point up environmental issues, characters bonding with something extraordinary, etc.—might’ve factored into Tomiyama’s decision to approach Suetani for Rebirth of Mothra. On the surface, at least, he probably seemed like the ideal writer for Mothra’s world.
Besides obliging Tomiyama’s wish to avoid destruction and military scenes, Suetani seemingly took a page from Godzilla vs. Mothra by centering the drama around a quarrelsome family. A father employed at a logging company spends long periods away from home, straining his relationship with his wife; their two kids constantly bicker and fight. Unbeknownst to the dad, the prehistoric beast Desghidorah resides beneath the Hokkaido woods he’s helping tear apart—and the amulet he unearths on the job is the magic seal that keeps the monster imprisoned. As in past Mothra adventures, the humans forge an alliance with the fairies. And just as the chaos in Godzilla vs. Mothra ended up reuniting a divorced family, the protagonists in the 1996 film come to rekindle their love for one another. Meantime, other characters come and go without consequence. “Ideally, I wanted it so that only the family knew the story,” Suetani said. “But to do that, you’d have to set it on a remote island or something, which is difficult.”
Suetani submitted his first draft on December 5, 1995—four days before Godzilla vs. Destoroyah entered theaters—and presented a revised version later that month. Between these two points, Tomiyama and Production Manager Kishu Morichi* continued amassing new talent by approaching a prospective first-time director. Okihiro Yoneda joined Toho in 1976 and from early on became associated, either directly or indirectly, with the company’s science fiction pictures. One of his inaugural assignments as an assistant director was the Star Wars cash-in The War in Space, helmed by genre veteran Jun Fukuda. A few years later, he found himself on the set of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic Kagemusha (1980) and in the company of Ishiro Honda (by then having come out of retirement to work alongside his longtime friend). Yoneda returned for subsequent Kurosawa-Honda collaborations—Ran (1985), Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991), and Madadayo (1993)—and concurrently joined the team behind Toho’s second cycle of Godzilla movies: working on Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, and Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. He also aided Takao Okawara on the 1994 science fiction-period drama Yamato Takeru.
Yoneda had a productive edge that caught Tomiyama’s attention. While having never directed a movie himself, he’d authored several unmade family and youth dramas and possessed what the producer labeled “a very lyrical quality.” “From the planning stages, I wanted someone new who was interested in the project and could depict Mothra’s gentleness. […] Furthermore, he had a relationship with Director Ishiro Honda and seemed to have a good grasp of how to approach entertainment films.” Tomiyama and Morichi presented their offer in mid-December, after the script’s first draft was complete. “Since it’s a major special effects project,” Yoneda recalled, “I couldn’t give an answer immediately, so I started by reading the script. […] Upon reading it once, I understood the aim was to create something different from previous kaiju films. And, well, I really wanted to direct. So, I gave them my answer: ‘I’ll find a way to do it.’”
As Suetani’s scenario evolved into a preparatory draft on February 23rd and reached its final form in late April/early May, Yoneda incorporated adjustments and personal touches. Citing budgetary concerns, he collapsed the story’s timeline from one week into four days. He also added a sweet, unobtrusive homage to Ishiro Honda: placing a photo of the late director (taken on the set of Kagemusha) inside the family’s home. In an interview for the publication Toho SF Special Effects Movies, Vol 11, Yoneda spoke briefly but admiringly of Honda. “He took great care of me. As a sign of respect to the first Mothra film, I placed [his picture] on the shelf as if it were a photo of the [protagonist’s] father.”**
Masumi Suetani: “[Toho] asked to have the children ride on Mothra at the end and say, ‘Thank you, Mothra.’”
Environmental issues involving Japan—namely, the country’s role in deforestation—had become a point of contention in the 1980s-’90s. For much of the twentieth century, the island nation, itself seventy percent covered by woods, was predominantly agrarian and established its first national park in 1931. But with the postwar economic miracle of the ’60s came a mass transformation of Japan’s social fabric and industry; employment in agriculture and related fields shrank by forty percent within three decades; factories sprang up across the nation; and the infamous economic bubble of the 1980s unleashed an influx of corporate and individual wealth that amped up the already rampant industrialization. All of this yielded a decline in conservation and a flowering of organizations ready to sacrifice the national landscape on the altar of profit.
Most of the action in Rebirth of Mothra, including the logging operation that starts the plot, transpires in Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, an area containing twenty-three percent of the nation’s wooded areas. It is also home to Shiretoko National Park, which became the center of controversy in the ’80s. Historically, light deforestation had been permitted in Shiretoko to maintain local employment and generate funds for the Japan Forest Agency. But in 1981, the Agency announced logging plans within 11,000 hectares of woods. The plan was halted due to public outcry, only to be revived four years later. The response this time included: Hokkaido environmentalists threatening to withdraw donations to the Shiretoko National Trust; acclaimed novelist Masanori Hata weaponizing his Asahi Shinbun column to spark protest; and Ainu groups conducting religious ceremonies honoring not only the forest spirits but the protest groups. In April 1987, another contentious cutting plan reared its head: now the goal was to hew five hundred and thirty old-growth trees in Shiretoko. To which activists responded by tying themselves to the trunks. (According to the 2012 book Toho Special Effects Movie Complete Collection, this final incident was one of the events that influenced the environmental theme in Rebirth of Mothra.)
By the early 1990s, Japan came to question the ecological tradeoff for bubble-era wealth and became active in conservation programs. Besides passing ecology laws of its own, the country distributed environmental aid to foreign lands, and Yoichi Kurodo won the Goldman Environmental Prize for promoting the end of deforestation in East Asia. And yet, Japan remained entrenched in felling rainforests in the very part of the world that Kurodo sought to protect. In point of fact, it became the world’s top importer of lumber in the ’90s and sourced nearly all its timber from Malaysia. (One journalist reported on the use of floodlights to ensure cutting ran on a twenty-four-hour basis. And interesting to note: in an early-movie scene, the lumber company in Rebirth of Mothra, which is said to have multiple Southeast Asia interests, discovers that logging has been suspended in Malaysia.) Japanese corporations were likewise skewered in the international press for wastefulness, as a large portion of imported lumber went into scaffolding that’d be thrown out once its purpose was used up.
Rebirth of Mothra was made in the aftermath and midst of all this. (In February 1996, when the picture was in the scripting phase, the Japan Paper Association reported an all-time production high of 29.67 billion tons the previous year, with demand predicted to rise at least 2.6%.) And yet, despite a plethora of not-subtle jabs at environmental exploitation—montages of collapsing trees; a bulldozer flattening a bird’s nest; dialogue preaching the need to resuscitate and preserve the world for future generations—director Okihiro Yoneda insisted on having made a movie with an entertainment-first approach in mind. “At the risk of being misunderstood, I’ll say that things like ‘the message’ or ‘the director’s personal style’ aren’t necessary for watching a movie. If there is no joy or surprise in the viewing experience, I believe the film has no value. […] I believe that if we can provide imagery that stimulates the imagination and respects the audience’s sensitivity, both adults and children will enjoy it.”
In continuing the familial theme, Suetani devised a trio of fairy sisters—the supremely self-confident Moll, the younger, more emotional Lora, and the wicked Belvera. “Essentially, it’s like a household where the eldest daughter turned into a delinquent and ran away from home,” the screenwriter explained. As pre-production ambled along, Yoneda pieced together his cast and found three actresses for the fairies. Film and television actress Mai Hosho was to play Moll, burgeoning performer and singer Megumi Kobayashi got the role of Lora, and Aki Hano was hired to gnaw at the scenery as Belvera.
And then, about one week before shooting, Mai Hosho stepped down due to illness, leaving the project without a main heroine. Rather than scramble for a new leading lady, the filmmakers graduated Megumi Kobayashi to the part. “I was planning to lean on Mai-chan,” the starlet said, “but then I became the one who is relied upon and leaned on.” Kobayashi recalled trepidation after learning she’d suddenly have to play the stoic older sister. “But I figured if that’s how it was going to be, I had no choice, so I started building the character[.] […] When I thought about it calmly, I realized I actually have a younger sister in real life, so I thought, ‘Wait, I am an older sister,’ and wondered if I could just be myself.”
With Kobayashi re-established, the role of Lora went to the chipper Sayaka Yamaguchi, who embraced the project. “[M]y younger brother is a huge Mothra fan, and we’ve watched the videos since we were little. I had a sort of admiration for Mothra myself, so that made me want to do it.” Like her co-star, Yamaguchi drew upon familial hierarchy when developing her character. “Kobayashi-san is a very steady, reliable, ‘big sister’ type of person, and in real life, I have both an older and a younger brother. So, I didn’t do any special character prep; I just played it as my natural self, drawing from my own life experiences.”
In contrast to Kobayashi and Yamaguchi, Aki Hano had never watched a Japanese monster movie and deliberately avoided all Mothra films after getting the job. “I knew the name [Mothra, but my image of it was] [n]ot much different from Godzilla.” Hano involved herself with the costume and styling departments, helping fine-tune Belvera’s hairstyle and wardrobe. However, the actress admitted to not fully grasping her character. “[W]hen it came time to actually do it, I realized I didn’t understand why this person does what she does—she’s a total enigma. […] [E]ven though I talked it over with the director, […] I finished the role still carrying that feeling—not quite knowing who she really was.”
Composite technology allowed all three women to be tricked into live-action shots, with only a handful of large-scale props being fashioned to make the trio appear tiny. The script called for them to spend the majority of their scenes atop aerial steeds, fluttering about the action or engaging in dogfights with one another. Kobayashi and Yamaguchi rode on the back of Fairy, a tiny Mothra that, while contextually able to fit into a human palm, was realized via a prop several times larger than the marionettes used to represent the giant Mothras in the movie. Meantime, Hano rode the catlike robot-in-disguise Garugaru.*** Shooting required the players to remain astraddle for multi-hour periods, and due to the sensitive conditions of ’90s composite technology, the green screens behind and beneath them needed to remain pristine. For all these reasons, Kobayashi, Yamaguchi, and Hano had their makeup done prior and kept compacts hidden on their costumes so they could apply their own touch-ups throughout the day.
Koichi Kawakita: “Previously, we were scattering [Mothra’s] gold powder from the outside, but this time, we placed it directly on the wings and had them flap vigorously before starting, so that it would stream backward.”
Working on this film allowed Koichi Kawakita’s team a shot at eclipsing their efforts from Godzilla vs. Mothra. The larva in the 1992 film had been notoriously inflexible, “sliding” across the ground rather than undulating like in the past. Recognizing this, Kawakita instructed his team to review footage of the ’60s larva puppets and to give their latest iteration a wave-like crawl. A contracted third party then developed a mechanism that used a motor in the tail to motion gears throughout the segmented body, and skin-like material between pieces of exoskeleton lent an organic touch. The larva’s head likewise featured balloons beneath the skin that could be inflated and deflated to yield shifts in facial tissue. The result was an outstanding piece of effects work that not only outshone its predecessor but arguably remains the most lifelike depiction of the character to date.****
As for the parent Mothra, Tomoki Kobayashi of Toho Eizo’s Art Department testified that the staff considered recycling the marionette from Godzilla vs. Mothra for a mid-movie scene where the creature drowns after rescuing its offspring. The idea was ultimately overruled due to the prop’s poor condition, and so two parent Mothras were produced: one for the character’s death, the other for combat (though both were used interchangeably in flight scenes). And the results marked another round of improvements. The 1992 Mothra had been manufactured with indestructibility in mind: using steel parts where past iterations used wood, and boasting skin and fur designed to be as flame-resistant as possible. And while the staff achieved their goals, the resultant prop had been glaringly stiff. Likewise, the monster’s six legs, once actively thrashing in battle, now simply hung from the body, not making use of the internal mechanism that allowed them to move.
Much of this was rectified for the 1996 film. Mothra this time was capable of more persuasive motions, including in a great shot where the creature gets struck by a projectile attack and visibly jerks in pain. The staff also made a conscious effort to give the legs a sense of independent mobility. To do this, Tomoki Kobayashi set a specific radio channel to remote-control the front two legs and another for the remaining four. Another ten or so channels were needed to operate everything from the mouth to the antennae to the neck. Mothra proved less resilient compared to its ‘92 counterpart, frequently catching fire during the shoot, but the increased liveliness was a worthy tradeoff. Kawakita’s team similarly devised an effective puppet for when the younger Mothra reaches adulthood, which was designed, redesigned, painted, and repainted until reaching its final stage two days before filming.
When it came to the antagonist monster, producer Hiroaki Kitayama suggested having Mothra fight a single-headed quadruped modeled after a European dragon. “Then,” said Kawakita, “we had versions with three heads and two legs, or one head and two legs. […] Halfway through, I decided that, regardless of the heads, we had to make it a quadruped. If it were a biped, it would be the same as Destoroyah from the previous film.” Somewhere amid this decision-making, Tomiyama opted to make it a variation of Ghidorah, and Suetani wrote his script picturing a visual inverse of Mothra’s “soft, fluffy feel […] something hard and sharp, like a jagged rock.”
Although Toho in the past had built four-legged monsters like Anguirus and Baragon, their quadrupeds were typically realized via costumed stuntmen crawling on their hands and knees. Kawakita wished to avoid this (“If a monster walks on its knees and the hands are the front feet, it’s immediately obvious that there’s a human inside”), and so the staff fashioned a colossal suit that stuntman Mizuho Yoshida could wear in a half-squat position. Yoshida’s legs fit into the costume’s back legs, and the actor would bend his body forward to reach grips that controlled the front legs. Desghidorah’s size necessitated a constant presence of overhead wires to help support its weight. “Also, the amount of gunpowder used was massive,” said model maker Shigeaki Ito. “Partially because of the setting, but also because it’s a Mothra film, they were aiming for extra flashiness. Everyone was more nervous than usual about fire safety, so we were busy spraying fire-retardant paint and taking precautions.”
Ito recalled Yoshida improvising a performative touch that Kawakita capitalized on during the shoot. “Before [the suit] was even finished, we had Yoshida-san come in for a movement test. At one point, he stood up on his hind legs, and [Kawakita] saw it and thought it looked interesting. That’s why there are several cuts in the movie where Desghidorah rears up.”
Akira Ifukube was the composer most associated with Mothra, responsible for the scores for Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), Destroy All Monsters (1968), and Godzilla vs. Mothra, the latter of which earned him a Japanese Academy Prize nomination. By 1996, however, he’d recently retired from film work, and—in what enriched Tomiyama’s pattern of hiring newcomers—the baton was entrusted to a younger composer named Toshiyuki Watanabe. Born in 1955, Watanabe decided on becoming a film composer in his early twenties. At the time, he was employed as an arranger by the singer-songwriter Masashi Sada and had accompanied his boss on what ended up being a fateful trip to the United States. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars were being released. […] I personally like UFOs and that sort of thing, so I went to see [Close Encounters] immediately. […] That score is an exceptionally brilliant piece even among John Williams’s works, and I was intensely drawn to it. […] I asked myself if I continued working as an arranger, would I ever be able to write music like John Williams in the future? […] I realized then that I needed to seriously study orchestration at a professional level, including contemporary music.”
With Sada’s blessing, Watanabe returned to America a year later to attend Berkeley College of Music. Up to that point, he was self-taught but after graduation began his film career, with Kon Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters (1983) being an early effort. While he hadn’t composed for any monster movies, he’d grown up a fan of the genre, claiming to have seen the Toho classics a minimum of three times each. Hence his joy when a Toho Music representative approached him with the offer to score the film under discussion. “The first Mothra was released in 1961, so I think I was in the first grade of elementary school. I saw it during summer vacation, and I remember drawing a giant picture of Mothra that filled a whole sheet of paper for a school project and being praised for it. Now, that same Mothra was becoming a standalone film again. I accepted the job with a strong feeling that I absolutely had to do it.”
Watanabe’s elation increased upon learning Okihiro Yoneda shared his affinity for Hollywood music. “I was curious to see what type of director he was, and during our first meeting, we ended up talking about John Williams’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Alan Silvestri’s Forrest Gump.” Both men agreed their film needed a lush, orchestral score reminiscent of American entertainment; Yoneda even instructed his composer to “forget everything about the previous images of Mothra.”
The schedule threatened to impede Watanabe’s goal of providing music that aligned “perfectly with the movements on screen,” as he was informed the movie’s final cut wouldn’t be finished until a week before recording. “I asked if there was any way around this, and while the final cut date didn’t change, they allowed me to see the ‘semi-all-rush’ and even earlier rough cuts.” Writing began after viewing a rough assembly, and he adjusted his score appropriately as scenes received trims. Watanabe kept John Williams in mind when writing the younger Mothra’s themes (in particular thinking about Superman: The Movie and Star Wars), and his chat with Yoneda about Alan Silvestri circled back when scoring the end credits. During post-production, Yoneda borrowed a piano-heavy cue from Forrest Gump to use as a temp track that Watanabe agreed suited the imagery. “I thought, ‘Ah, if this style of music plays, the audience will leave with a very refreshed feeling.’ I told the director his choice was exactly right. So, we settled on the style of piano and quiet strings.”
Despite being asked to disassociate from previous kaiju composers, Watanabe aesthetically referenced Ifukube for Desghidorah’s theme. “I was very conscious of the methods Maestro Ifukube used for Godzilla. […] First, there is no harmony. It starts with just melody—linear music. Because it’s linear, you can layer many instruments on a single melody line. The charm lies in the interplay between the low-end movement and the upper melody. It creates a subtle sense of anxiety and dissonance. It’s a brilliant way to express a monster’s terror and strength. You don’t find this in American film music; it’s something only Ifukube-sensei can write. […] I wanted to write a new piece of music that would satisfy the fans by honoring the tradition he built.”
Recording was conducted over a period of two days, and the score marked Watanabe’s first time writing for a full orchestra. “I put a tremendous amount of emotion into it and gave it my absolute all. It’s also Director Yoneda’s debut film. When I’m working on a director’s debut, I get really fired up. Imagining the passion he must have for this movie made me feel like I had to give it everything I had.” Rebirth of Mothra likewise brought him together with an old high school classmate. As a student at Aoyama Gakuin, Watanabe had played in a band with Akiko Yano, who eventually dropped out to pursue a career as a jazz pianist. In the ensuing years, Yano had become an accomplished songwriter, singer, and composer, and for this film was hired to write music for songs performed by the Elias. As Watanabe recalled, “Since high school, we only met once at a music event and hadn’t seen each other since. I never dreamed we would reunite like this.” The composer was particularly taken with Yano’s underlying music for a song accompanying the larva’s birth and chose to repurpose it when the creature lands on Yakushima Island to spin its cocoon. “It’s a beautiful melody, so I wanted to use it in the film.”
Rebirth of Mothra and Independence Day marquees outside the Toho Umeda Scala-za in Osaka in 1996. Photo courtesy of Norman England.
Rebirth of Mothra premiered in Japan on December 14, 1996 and became a modest success. At ¥1.15 billion, its revenue placed it fifth among the 1997 movie year’s domestic grossers***** but just barely surpassed the halfway mark for Godzilla vs. Mothra four years earlier. The bigger hits consisted of Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki’s The End of Evangelion (¥1.45 billion), the latest Doraemon offering (¥2 billion), Yoshimitsu Morita’s adaptation of the Junichi Watanabe novel A Paradise Lost (¥2.3 billion), and Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, whose whopping ¥11.76 billion crushed not only its Japanese brethren but all competition from Hollywood. (Even Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day and Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park—at ¥6.65 billion and ¥5.8 billion, respectively—failed to come close.)
And so, while Mothra managed to turn a decent profit, it was already clear Japanese audiences were seeking entertainment elsewhere. Film critic Mark Schilling seemed to think as much before the receipts were in. In his unenthusiastic Japan Times review, Schilling panned the story’s “recycled feel,” the “numbingly pedestrian” acting, and the filmmakers’ decision to use Desghidorah when Japanese audiences had recently seen hydra-like beasts in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah and Yamato Takeru. The critic concluded: “If [this] is the best Toho can put up against the behemoths of Hollywood, the Japanese monster-movie genre may be flapping its way toward the box-office flame.”
Rebirth of Mothra promotional event in Osaka in 1996. Photo courtesy of Norman England.
Despite this, a Rebirth of Mothra sequel remained in the proverbial cards, and contemporaneous interviews indicated a hopeful staff. Composer Watanabe was especially enthusiastic. “I truly hope there is [a follow-up]. I want as many people as possible to see this one. If a sequel happens, I would absolutely love to handle the music again.” Director Yoneda vaguely admitted to having left “many things […] unfinished, so I’d like to take on the challenge [of making a sequel].” Koichi Kawakita remarked, “It would be fun if monsters like Garugaru were flying around in swarms like locusts. In that sense, I think even more grand dreams for the future will continue to emerge from here.” Of everyone involved, screenwriter Masumi Suetani was the most detailed in hinting at what’d happen in a Part Two. “Whether or not I write the sequel is another matter, and I don’t want to say too much at this stage, but I was very conscious of Star Wars. For example, Belvera is essentially the Darth Vader figure. The fact that the Elias and Belvera are sisters is also similar to Star Wars. If the series continues, I think that will gradually become clearer.”
These hopes ended up being fruitful, as nearly all the key players would reunite in 1997 for Kunio Miyoshi’s Rebirth of Mothra II.
Footnotes:
* There seems to be some disagreement among English resources as to whether the kanji characters for Morichi’s personal name read as “Takahide” or “Kishu.” A few years back, I consulted with my friend Norman England, who spent some time with Morichi while covering Masaaki Tezuka’s Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000) for Fangoria magazine. Norman showed me a business card that Morichi had given him. Said card featured the late production manager’s name in English, and the English printing reads: “Kishu Morichi.”
** A different photo of Honda was treated as set decor in another film written by Masumi Suetani. His likeness appears in a photo of a deceased family member in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Samurai Kids.
*** Kawakita admitted the basis for Garugaru “was a cat. I wanted to capture that sense of mischief—cats are so moody and fickle. It has large, round, cute eyes, but it doesn’t listen to a word you say.” Even the creature’s sound effects used feline noises as a base, with director Yoneda sampling his own cat’s voice.
**** Interestingly, Masumi Suetani’s script specified a design touch that Kawakita had proposed and ultimately discarded when making the ‘92 film. Originally, the effects director had envisioned the larva starting with a white exoskeleton but gradually turning brown throughout the story. And even though Suetani called for this in his screenplay, Kawakita himself rejected it, feeling a white monster wouldn’t appear massive on screen.
***** Tying the picture for fifth place was Shusuke Kaneko’s Haunted School 3 (1997).
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