Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters

[Maka]

Hello UYD,

My mother gave me an early Christmas gift: the book Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters by August Ragone. It follows the life of Eiji the creator of Godzilla (Gijiro), Ultraman, Ultra Q, Ultra Seven, Rodan, the Mysterians, Varan, Mothra, Gorath, King Ghidorah, Destroy All Monster, etc. It is coffee table book with lots of great photos of the master of special effects. If you like Japanese monsters you will like this book.

I am not a die hard Japanese monster guy. But I enjoyed the book so much I read it in two days.

Here are few parts I found interesting:

1) Hired by the Imperial Government to make propaganda films for WWII, Tsuburaya made "Hawai Mare Okikaisen (The War at Sea From Hawaii to Malaya)." His special effects team created meticulous miniatures from photographs. After the war, the American Occupation forces mistook Tsuburaya's realistic footage as real footage of the attack. Some of it actually ended up in documentaries about Pearl Harbor.

2) The original Godzilla suit (worn by Haruo Nakajima), weighed 220 pounds and under the studio lights roasted the actors. They suffered from heat exhaustion and blackouts and found themselves breathing fumes from burning rags soaked with kerosene (fire in Tokyo).

3) Tsuburaya Productions held a lot of power because of their success. They almost had an unlimited budget for special effects for some movies. Tsuburaya bought The Oxberry 1200 optical printer, state of the art for special effects composition in 1965 for 40 million yen (~$570,710 USD today). Only one other company own one at the time, Disney.

4) Ishiro Honda, director with many of Tsuburaya's films, was also a long time collaborator with Kurosawa and most likely ghostwrote and directly any number of scenes of Kurosawa last 20 years of filmmaking.

You get a real sense of huge scale the Tsuburaya team's work.

I remember watching Ultraman when visiting my Grandparents in Hawaii as a kid. After reading this book, I want to watch them again.

Here's a review of the book:http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/11/09/031734.php

Here's wiki on Tsuburaya:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Tsuburaya


Peace,

maka

[Jet_Jaguar]

4) Ishiro Honda, director with many of Tsuburaya's films, was also a long time collaborator with Kurosawa and most likely ghostwrote and directly any number of scenes of Kurosawa last 20 years of filmmaking.

I can remember reading somewhere that Honda ghost-directed a couple of the segments in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, does the book say anything like that? I think the segment "The Tunnel" is one of them. That's probably one of my favorite parts of Dreams, a movie that I honestly find to be somewhat dull despite having some beautiful images (I also enjoy the rather oddball cameo by Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh).

[Maka]

I can remember reading somewhere that Honda ghost-directed a couple of the segments in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, does the book say anything like that? I think the segment "The Tunnel" is one of them. That's probably one of my favorite parts of Dreams, a movie that I honestly find to be somewhat dull despite having some beautiful images (I also enjoy the rather oddball cameo by Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh).

Guy Mariner Tucker wrote "After Honda passed away, there was a sense of relief among those who had worked alongside of him. They could finally reveal what he had deferentially refused to acknowledge at the time: that he had been a major force behind Kurasowa's last movies. In 1990, after I had just seen Kurosawa's Dreams and thought I saw Honda's fingerprints, I interviewed Kurosawa, and he went to great lengths to deny that Honda had much of anything to do with the picture, even though on their next collaboration, Rhapsody in August, Kurosawa himself freely told reports at Cannes that Honda was responsible for a sequence they had found uniquely entrancing - a long pan shot of ants filing to and from a tree."

Just another reminder that greatness often due to collaboration and surrounding yourself with quality people.

Peace, maka