Japan`s Favorite Mon-Star

JAPAN'S FAVORITE
MON-STAR
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STEVE RYFLE
ECW PRESS
Copyright © Steve Ryfle, 1998
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior
written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS.
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Ryfle, Steve
japan's favorite mon-star: the unauthorized biography of "The Big G"
ISBN 1-55022-348-8
i. Godzilla (Fictitious character). 2. Godzilla
films - History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.G63R93 1998 791.43'651 C98-93O251-2
Research associate and translator: Addie Kohzu.
Front-cover: Alex Wald
Back-cover photo: Koji Sasahara, AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
Imaging by ECW Type & Art, Oakville, Ontario.
Printed by Webcom, Toronto, Ontario.
Distributed in Canada by General Distribution Services,
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& v nt &nt$
INTRODUCTION: The Godzilla Era
PART 1: GROUND ZERO - The 1950$
1.
2.
Birth of a Legend
Godzilla a.k.a. Godzilla: King of the Monsters/
You Can't Keep a Bad Monster Down
Godzilla Raids Again
a.k.a. Gigantis: The Fire Monster
19
61
PART 2: GOLDEN AGE — The 1960$
3.
Clash of the Titans
King Kong vs. Godzilla
4. Madame Butterfly
Godzilla vs. The Thing
5. Enter the Dragon
Ghidrah: The Three-Headed Monster
6. Voyage into Space
Monster Zero
7. It Came from Beneath the Sea
Godzilla versus The Sea Monster
8. All in the Family
Son of Godzilla
9. War of the Worlds
Destroy All Monsters
10. Unknown Island
Godzilla's Revenge
79
103
113
121
133
139
145
155
PART 3: DARK DAYS — The 1970$
11. Toxic Avenger
Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster
12. Twilight of the Cockroaches
Godzilla on Monster Island
13. Lost Continent
Godzilla vs. Megaton
14. Robot Monster
Godzilla vs. The Gosmic Monster
15. Bride of the Monster
Terror of MechaGodzilla
a.k.a. The Terror of Godzilla
161
173
181
195
199
PART 4: RESURRECTION - The 1980$
16. The Legend is Reborn
Godzilla (1984) a.k.a. Godzilla 1985
215
PARTS: SECOND COMING — The 1990$
17. The Name of the Rose
Godzilla vs. Biollante
18. The Time Travelers
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
19. Earth's Final Fury
Godzilla vs. Mothra
20. Cyborg
Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla
21. Enemies: A Love Story
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla
22. Requiem for a Heavyweight
Godzilla vs. Destroyer
251
265
279
287
295
305
PART 6. GODZILLA VS. HOLLYWOOD — The Future
23. Remade in America
Godzilla (1998)
321
PART 7: APPENDICES
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
Cast and Credits
Godzilla on Video
Cyberspace Godzilla
Endnotes
Bibliography
351
367
370
371
373
PERSONNEL FILES AND INTERVIEWS
The Cod(zilla) Fathers: Tanaka, Honda, Tsuburaya, and Ifukube
The Heavy: Raymond Burr
City-Smashing to the Beat: Masaru Sato
Monster Scribes: Shinchi Sekizawa, Takeshi Kimura
The King's Court: Actors and Actresses
The Controller Speaks: Yoshio Tsuchiya
The Rebel: Nick Adams
Successor to the Throne: Teruyoshi Nakano
Godzilla in the Flesh: Haruo Nakajima
White Guy in Monsterland: Robert Dunham
Modern-Day Monster: Kenpachiro Satsuma
Swan Song: Akira Ifukube
New Wave Godzilla: Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott
39
59
75
92
94
127
129
167
178
185
261
315
330
SIDEBARS AND SPECIAL SECTIONS
Godzilla's Birthplace: A brief history of Toho and the
Japanese movie industry
Godzilla Talk: English dubbing in Japanese monster movies
Godzilla, American Style: Hanna-Barbera's cartoon series
Pop Monster: Godzilla references in books, music, etc
Godzilla Invades LA
24
149
209
243
317
THE G-ARCHIVES: UNMADE AND OBSCURE GODZILLA PROJECTS
Hot Lava: Synopsis of The Volcano Monsters
Moth Holes: The evolution of the Godzilla vs. The Thing screenplay,
by Jay Ghee
Godzilla Conquers the World: Frankenstein vs. Godzilla,
by Jay Ghee
Evil Brain from Outer Space: Godzilla vs. The Space Monsters,
by Jay Ghee
Monster for Hire: Godzilla vs. Redmoon, by Jay Ghee
Ultra-Goji: Godzilla and Japanese TV super-heroes
The Electric Kool-Aid Kaiju Test: Cozzi's colorized Godzilla
Godzilla versus. .. Cleveland!
Begin the Bagan: The Return of Godzilla, by Jay Ghee
Synopsis of Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3-D, by Fred Dekker
The Giant Rat and the Killer Plant: the original story of Godzilla vs.
Gigamoth, by Jay Ghee
S.O.L on the Satellite of Love: Godzilla vs. MST3K
Development Hell, Toho-Style: Mothra vs. Bagan and Godzilla vs.
Biollante, by jay Ghee
70
m
119
176
177
188
207
224
226
227
259
276
284
One
BIRTH OF A LEGEND
"(yevrae, here- in Tokyo time /ww been turne((1wck.
trio million yefan, T/u5 is my revert fa$ it kfryvent."
— Steve Martin, United World News reporter
qoDZULA: KW of THE ^otfSTTRS!
RATING (OUT
OF FIVE STARS):
*****
JAPANESE VERSION: GOJIRA (GODZILLA). Released on November 3, 1954, by the Toho Motion
Picture Company. Academy ratio, black-and-white. Running Time: 98 minutes.
U.S. VERSION: Released on April 4,1956, by Trans World Releasing Corp. and the Godzilla Releasing
Company. Running Time: 80 minutes.
STORY: Hydrogen bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean reawakens a long-dormant prehistoric
monster, which rises from Tokyo Bay, terrorizes the superstitious natives of Odo Island and finally
burns Tokyo to the ground with its white-hot radiation breath. Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, a reclusive
scientist researching the properties of oxygen, inadvertently invents a doomsday weapon, the
Oxygen Destroyer; reluctantly, Serizawa deploys the device on the ocean floor and Godzilla is
killed, but the scientist does not return to the surface — guilt-ridden, he cuts his air hose and dies
with the monster, ensuring that his invention will never be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
for postwar independence, was to be one of Toho's
major releases later that year, and now Tanaka was
under pressure to come up with a replacement for
it— fast. Nervous and sweating, he spent the entire
flight brainstorming.
Suddenly, he had a stroke of genius.
Taking a cuef rom the successful American science
fiction film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), in
which a dinosaur is resurrected by atomic tests
in the Arctic and swims south to terrorize New
York, Tanaka decided to make Japan's first giant
celluloid monster, a creature that would not only
ORIGINS
According to legend, Godzilla was born aboard an
airplane.
It was spring 1954. As the story goes, Tomoyuki
Tanaka, a producer with the Toho Motion Picture
Co., was flying home to Tokyo from Jakarta, where
plans for a Japanese-Indonesian coproduction
titled In the Shadow of Honor had just fallen apart.
The movie, the story of a Japanese soldier who
fights alongside the Indonesians in their struggle
19
be reanimated by nuclear weapons but serve as a
metaphor for the Bomb itself, evoking the horror of
the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocausts still vivid
in Japan's consciousness. "The theme of the film,
from the beginning, was the terror of the Bomb,"
Tanaka recalled decades later. "Mankind had created the Bomb, and now nature was going to take
revenge on mankind."1
Nine years earlier, at the end of World War n,
Japan had suffered a defeat unlike any other nation
in history. In August 1945, America's twin atomic
bombs had killed nearly 300,000 civilians, and an
estimated 100,000 more lives had been lost the
previous March when 6-29 planes firebombed Tokyo
for three consecutive days. Cities across Japan were
leveled, leaving millions dead, wounded, or homeless. Factories that had been converted to military
production were now either destroyed or rendered
useless, crippling Japanese industry and bankrupting the economy. The country's massive empire in
the Pacific region was lost, and six million repatriated soldiers and civilians returned to a Japan
whose mighty spirit was crushed. Then came the
seven-year-long Occupation (1945-1952), in which
a nation that had remained unconquered for thousands of years suffered the shame of being governed
by foreign soldiers and forced to adopt a Westernstyle constitution that reduced the Emperor to a
mere symbolic figure, abolished State Shintoism,
and threatened other long-held traditions and beliefs.
The late 19405 and early 19505 were a time of political, economic, and cultural uncertainty in Japan.
During the war, the Japanese film industry was
booming, due in large part to the government's
use of the movie studios to disseminate heavily
regulated nationalist propaganda. Then, after the
defeat of Japan's militarist regime, the Allied powers likewise censored the movies and other media
in their efforts to democratize Japan, forbidding
discussions of the war, the Bomb and America's
role in the tragedy. After the Occupation a handful
of Bomb-themed films began to appear, notably
Kaneto Shindo's Children of the Atom Bomb (1952),
a semidocumentary about a schoolteacher who
returns to Hiroshima looking for former pupils
who were victims at ground zero. Hideo Sekigawa's
Hiroshima (also 1952) was an angrier film that portrayed the atomic bombings as a racist act in which
the Japanese people were guinea pigs in a U.S.
nuclear experiment. But in the 4o-plus years since
the American forces left and censorship was lifted,
surprisingly few movies have directly addressed
Japan's status as the only nation to be attacked with
nuclear weapons. Film scholars cite prevailing feelings of shame, repression, and guilt but are unable
to fully explain the Japanese cinema's ambivalence
toward the Bomb, a subject that would seem to be
important and compelling movie material.
During the 19505 and '6os, several Japanese movies made references to the atomic bombs and to
radiation sickness, but only two major films tackled
the Bomb as subject matter. The most critically
lauded of the two was Akira Kurosawa's / Live in
Fear (a.k.a. Record of a Living Being, 1955), wherein
Toshiro Mifune plays a man nearly frightened to
death by the specter of another nuclear attack on
Japan; the most commercially successful was Tanaka's barely disguised allegory of the Bomb, manifested in a gigantic monster.2
By 1954, Japan was peaceful and relatively prosperous again, but fears of renewed annihilation
were brimming below the surface, fueled by new
nuclear threats. Cold War tensions were increasing
and Japan was now caught — literally — between
the two superpowers' nuclear-testing programs:
the Soviet Union's on one side, and the Pacific
Proving Ground established by the U.S. at the Marshall Islands on the other. The Korean War was
escalating, raising fears that a hydrogen bomb might
be dropped on neighboring North Korea or China
and rain fallout over the region. It may have been a
divine act or it may have been pure happenstance,
but around the same time that Tanaka was forced
to quickly invent a major new film, a historic, horrifying event was unfolding in the equatorial Pacific,
an event that would forever change monster-movie
history.
Early in the morning on March i, the U.S. detonated a i5-megaton H-bomb — with 750 times
more explosive power than the atomic bombs that
destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki — near the
Bikini Atoll, 2,500 miles southwest of Honolulu.
The explosion, code-named Operation Bravo, was
labeled a "routine atomic test" by the Atomic
Energy Commission but it proved far more powerful than expected, vaporizing a large portion of
Bikini and sending a plume of highly radioactive
debris floating eastward over a 7,ooo-square-mile
area of the Pacific Ocean. Into this nuclear nightmare zone errantly wandered a 140-ton wooden
Japanese trawler, the Dai-go Fukuryu Maru (SS Lucky
Dragon #5), which was on a tuna-fishing trip about
100 miles east of Bikini. The boat's 23 crewmen
were showered with a sticky, white radioactive ash;
within a few hours several men became sick with
headaches, nausea, and eye irritation, and a few
20
over the fallout-poisoned fishermen, Tanaka used
newspaper clippings about the Lucky Dragon incident to show Mori that the time was right for a
gigantic monster, stirred from an eons-long sleep
by rampant atomic testing, to come ashore and
trample Tokyo.
Tanaka's idea was outlandish — no Japanese
movie studio had ever attempted anything like it.
The moviegoing public was accustomed to war
films, family melodramas, and samurai sagas. RKO'S
King Kong (1933), which was re-released internationally with great success in 1952, was the only
comparable film that Japanese audiences had
seen. But Mori was interested in this odd proposal.
A decade earlier, he had orchestrated Toho's successful string of special-effects-laden war movies,
and now he was looking for a new way to parlay
the talents of Toho's chief special-effects man,
Eiji Tsuburaya, into big box-office yen. Stopping
short of green-lighting the project, Mori told Tanaka to meet with Tsuburaya and determine if it was
technically feasible.
Tsuburaya was heavily influenced by King Kong,
and he had long wanted to make his own monster
movie utilizing the type of stop-motion animation
trickery Willis O'Brien employed in thatfilm. He was
also a man who seldom refused a challenge to
create something new, so he quickly latched onto
Tanaka's wild idea. Tsuburaya and his craftsmen
were well experienced in filming re-creations of
military battles and other illusions rooted in reality,
but now Tanaka was asking them to create a largerthan-life, fictional creature, something no Japanese
filmmaker had ever done.
In mid-April 1954, with Tsuburaya on board, Iwao
Mori approved both the production and Tanaka's
choice for its director. Senkichi Taniguchi, who had
been slated to make the aborted In the Shadow
of Honor, had already been reassigned to film an
adaptation of The Sound of Waves, a popular Yukio
Mishima novel. In his place, Tanaka chose Ishiro
Honda, who had worked twice with Eiji Tsuburaya
on war dramas featuring heavy use of special effects,
Eagle of the Pacific and Farewell, Rabaul. Mori also
shortened The Giant Monster from 20,000 Miles
Beneath the Sea to simply Project G (G-Sakuhin, the
"G" an abbreviation for "Giant"), and ordered
that the production be given classified status, with
details kept top-secret among the participants. "It
was even said that Mr. Mori highly recommended
that if you even told your children about it, that
they'd wring your neck," Tanaka recalled. Believing
this could be a historic eventforToho and the entire
days later some of theirfaces turned strangely dark.
The ship's captain, not understanding what was
happening to his men, abandoned the fishing trip
and returned to the boat's home port at Yaizu in
Shizuoka Prefecture. Six months later, on September 23, Aikichi Kuboyama, the chief radio operator,
died of leukemia in a Tokyo hospital. His last words,
according to newspaper reports, were, "Please make
sure that I am the last victim of the nuclear bomb."
Five other crew members later died from cancers
and other diseases that were believed to be bombrelated.
The incident was first reported on the morning of
March 16 in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. At
first the U.S. government denied it was responsible
for the "death ash" that had poisoned the ship; the
Americans later admitted the ash was fallout from
a hydrogen bomb but accused the Lucky Dragon of
entering the restricted testing area on a spy mission.
The U.S. government sent the dead fisherman's
widow a check for 2.5 million yen as a "token of
sympathy" in an attempt to put the matter to rest.
Only years later would America admit that Operation Bravo was the most powerful nuclear bomb
ever detonated and that it caused the single worst
fallout incident in the H-bomb atmospheric-testing
program.
Throughout 1954 and '55, the Lucky Dragon tragedy released japan's pent-up anxieties about the
Bomb— an unprecedented public outcry followed
it, including a boycott of tuna and other radiationcontaminated fish, a national ban-the-bomb signature campaign (by August 1955, 32 million signatures
were collected), the formation of the Council Against
A- and H-bombs, and the rise of the Japanese peace
movement of the 19505.2
It also gave birth to the King of the Monsters.
THE MAKING
O F GJH^SLLLA
Before there was a screenplay, a story line, or even
a concrete idea of what his monster would look
like, Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka decided on a
working title: The Giant Monster from 20,000 Miles
Beneath the Sea. His first task was to present his
idea to Iwao Mori, a powerful executive producer
who had overseen much of Toho's moviemaking
operations since the studio's formation back in
1
937, and whose approval was needed to get the
project off the ground. Seizing upon the clamor
21
/4- Tfdl TfrU?
Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka often said Godzilla was the product of his clutch creativity in a
high-pressure moment. But was Godzilla really born while Tanaka was sweating nervously in a plane
flying over the Pacific? While Tanaka's story is certainly rooted in fact, the events leading to the
monster's creation actually transpired much less dramatically.
According to several Japanese-language books and articles, it went something like this:
FEBRUARY 16,1954: Tanaka and director Senkichi Taniguchi leave for Jakarta to finalize a contract
with the Indonesian government's film agency for production of In the Shadow of Honor. Things
proceed well.
FEBRUARY 25: Tanaka and Taniguchi leave Indonesia, fly to Hong Kong for a meeting with actress
Shigeko Yamaguchi, one of the film's stars, and then return to Tokyo on February 28. The movie is
to begin shooting within a few weeks.
EARLY MARCH: The Indonesians contact Toho to report that filming will be delayed until April,
due to rainy weather.
MARCH 20: Toho receives a letter from Indonesia saying that the script for In the Shadow of Honor
is unacceptable and the project is canceled. The underlying problem, however, is the tenuous
postwar relations between japan and Indonesia. Tanaka suggests going to Jakarta to try and save
the production, but executive producer Jwao Mori tells him instead to come up with an idea for
another movie. A few weeks later, the cancellation of In the Shadow of Honoris officially announced.
made. First, the monster was named "Cojira"
(roughly pronounced CO-jee-rah, later Anglicized
as "Godzilla" by Toho's foreign-sales department
when the film was offered to the English-speaking
world). Second, the monster was given a shape.
Contrary to popular belief, it appears Tanaka did
not decide from the outset that the monster would
be of the prehistoric-reptile variety. In fact, it is
possible that he originally imagined a gigantic
gorilla-whale, as its name suggested (see sidebar,
"Gorilla-whale vs. Godzilla"). In memoirs published in Japan, Shigeru Kayama recalled that when he
was first hired, he was told Godzilla was a sea
monster that was "a cross between a whale and
gorilla." The first conceptual drawings of Godzilla
by Kazuyoshi Abe (a cartoonist who had illustrated
some of Shigeru Kayama's novels) show a monster
definitely more gorilla-like than reptilian. Evidence
suggests that, at least until the early stages of
Kayama's story-writing, ideas about the monster's
physical form were still being discussed. At one
point, Eiji Tsuburaya suggested a story he had written
years before, inspired by his love of King Kong, about
a gigantic octopus running amok and attacking
Japanese movie business, Mori ordered Tanaka to
minimize his work on the other films he was producing at that time and focus on Project G.
Just as the American science-fiction movies It Came
from Outer Space and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
were based on stories by acclaimed genre author
Ray Bradbury, Tanaka sought to give Project G credibility and commercial appeal by hiring sciencefiction and horror novelist Shigeru Kayama to write
an original story. Although his works have faded
into obscurity today, Kayama (1906-1975) was then
riding a crest of popularity that began in 1947 when
one of his early stories, "Orang-Pendek's Revenge"
(based on a legendary, Bigfoot-like creature in the
Sumatran rainforests), won a literary prize from The
jewel magazine; another work, "The Curious Stories from the House of Eel," won first prize from
the Detective Story Writers Club of Japan in 1948.
Kayama was one of the most prominent mystery
writers in postwar Japan, and because his stories
sometimes involved mutant reptiles and fish and
other monsters, Tanaka felt he was the ideal choice.
On May 12,1954, Kayama accepted the assignment.
Around the same time, two key decisions were
22
Japanese fishing boats in the Indian Ocean. Screenwriter Takeo Murata has also recounted how
he and Tsuburaya devised a scenario in which a
gigantic, whale-like creature came ashore in Tokyo
and caused havoc.4 Ultimately, Tanaka followed the
wildly successful example set by The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms and elected to make Godzilla a
dinosaur-like creature capable of posing a major
threat to Japan. Tanaka said he felt a giant reptile
"was more suited to the time period."
Kayama worked fast (according to his diaries, he
had written 50 pages after just 11 days' work) and
turned in his completed story before the end of
May. While he was writing, Kayama received input
from several Toho officials, including Tanaka and
representatives from Toho's literary department, a
group of people charged with cultivating story
ideas. But perhaps the most key contributions to
the development of Godzilla's story came from the
aforementioned Murata, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Ishiro Honda. Murata (b. 1910),
had directed Japan's first 3-D movie, The Sunday
that Popped Out (1953), and was one of Toho's
senior assistant directors. Although Shigeru Kayama
established the framework of the story including
the four pivotal roles (Dr. Yamane, Emiko, Ogata,
Dr. Serizawa), it was Murata who fleshed out the
dramatic structure and refined the characters. Dr.
Yamane, for example, was originally written as a
wildly eccentric character reminiscent of the works
of Edogawa Rampo (a Japanese horror novelist
popular in the 19305 and '405, whose name is a
Japanization of "Edgar Allan Poe").
"He (Yamane) was wearing dark shades and a
black cape, and he had a very strange feel in the
original story," Murata recalled in an interview
published in Toho SF Special Effects Movie Series
Vol. 3. "He was the type of man who lived in an
old, European-style house, and he only came out
at night. No one knew what he did for a living.
Godzilla himself was weird, so we didn't want to
make the main character weird also. That would be
overkill. So, I suggested that the doctor should
be an ordinary person who had lost his wife, and
he lived with his daughter. . . . They should be living a very ordinary life."
"fyvrillfr-'Wfable" ^ tyojzillfb
Godzilla owes his name to a bad joke aimed at a Toho employee whose co-workers found him
very ugly. They combined gorira (gorilla) and kujira (whale) to form "Godzilla" in Japanese and
slapped the impolite nickname on him."
— From an Agence France Presse story, July 29,1994
According to Toho folklore, the monster Gojira was named after a big, burly stagehand who worked
on the Toho Studios lot. This man had earned his nickname, a compound of "gorilla" and kujira
(Japanese for "whale"), due to his huge physique.
Over the years, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka often recounted how he thought the man's moniker
perfectly suited the monster. Even director Ishiro Honda, shortly before his death, reaffirmed the
story. "There was a big — I mean huge — fellow working in Toho's publicity department and other
employees would say, 'That guy's as big as a gorilla.' 'No, he's almost as big as a kujira.' Over time,
the two mixed and he was nicknamed 'Gojira.'" Honda's version of events seems somewhat
revised; it makes less sense that someone working in the publicity department would be known
for his girth than would a laborer. Regardless, the real name of Gojira (the man) has never been
revealed, nor his job in the company and when he worked there.
Just who was "Gorilla-Whale," and why hasn't the studio ever brought him forward? Perhaps it's
because he never really existed. "I expect the [monster's] name was thought up after very careful
discussions between Mr. Tanaka, Mr. Tsuburaya and my husband," Honda's widow, Kimi Honda,
said in a 1998 BBC-TV documentary. "I am sure they would have given the matter considerable
thought." As for the burly man called Gojira, she added, "the backstage boys at Toho loved to joke
around with tall stories, but I don't believe that one."
23
CfV^zillfr's 'frirtkylfrtz
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TOHO MOTION PICTURE
COMPANY AND THE JAPANESE MOVIE INDUSTRY
Godzilla was born at the right time, and in the right place.
In 1954, fueled by a postwar economic boom, Japanese movie studios were entering a period of
unprecedented productivity. The Toho Motion Picture Company, which had already established
itself as an innovator in the film industry, was engaged in box-office battles with its rivals
(Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Shin-Toho, Toei, and Daiei studios) as it attempted to solidify itself as Japan's
biggest and most ambitious moviemaker. It was this competitive climate, in which movie studios
would take chances in order to make a splash, that made Godzilla possible.5
Toho was founded in 1937 by the merger of four small production companies that had all
embraced the production of sound films while older, more established movie studios were still
clinging to the tradition of silent movies with live narrators (benshi). The merger was orchestrated
by Ichizo Kobayashi, a railroad tycoon who had successfully revived the struggling Arima Electric
Railway Co. in Osaka by combining transportation with show business. In the early 19305,
Kobayashi extended a new railroad line out to a sleepy Osaka suburb, and at the end of the tracks
he built a theater staffed with an all-female opera troupe, the Takarazuka Company. Located off
the beaten path and kept under monastic conditions, Kobayashi's girls developed a mystique and
soon became all the rage — a burgeoning entertainment city sprang up around the theater, with
a zoo, a circus, and restaurants, and Kobayashi made a fortune on his railroad. Then, in hopes
of building an entertainment empire, Kobayashi began buying theaters in the Tokyo area,
envisioning a nationwide chain of movie and opera houses. To produce "talkies" for his theaters,
in 1935 Kobayashi acquired two movie studios, PCL (Photo Chemical Laboratory) and jo, and
formed the Toho Motion Picture Distribution Company to distribute the two companies' movies,
along with imported American films. Two years later, he bought out two more small companies
and solidified the entire operation into the Toho Motion Picture Company. (The name "Toho" is
pronounced "ho." Toho's birth date is usually listed not as 1937, but 1932, the year that its precursor
actually an abbreviation for "Tokyo-Takarazuka"; the Chinese character "Takara" can also be
PCL was established.)
Toho hit its stride in the late 19305 and early '405 by becoming the foremost producer of "national
policy films," a nice name for war propaganda movies. ns=
Honda and Murata holed themselves up in a Japanese inn in Tokyo's Shibuya ward to write the
screenplay, which took about three weeks. "Director Honda and I ... racked our brains to make Mr.
Kayama's original story into a full, working vision,"
Murata said. "Mr. Tsuburaya and Mr. Tanaka came
by and pitched their ideas, too. Mr. Tanaka's stance
as a producer was, 'Please don't spend too much
money.' Mr. Tsuburaya's stance was, 'Do whatever
it takes to make it work.' Mr. Tsuburaya gave us
such encouragement. Whenever I wondered, 'Ca
we do something like this?' he would say, 'I'll giv
it some thought.' Then he comes back the next day
and says, 'This is how we can make it happen.'"
Murata and Honda also introduced the OgataEmiko-Serizawa love triangle (originally, Ogata and
Emiko were lovers, while Serizawa was merely a
colleague of Yamane's), which gave deeper meaning to the characters' actions and lent a profundity
to Serizawa's suicide. They nixed Kayama's idea of
24