In 2024, one of the world’s most famous Japanese characters, Godzilla, celebrates his 70th birthday.
But where did he come from, and what is the life story of this enduring character who has managed to make it in Hollywood and continues to feature in films made both in Japan and in the UK?
Tokusatsu: Japanese ‘special effects’ born out of constraints
The basic premise for the first film in the series, Godzilla (1954) is that nuclear tests awake a kaijū (ancient monster) who goes on to attack Japan. The film naturally required depiction of the monster alongside human roles, and the job of how to achieve this fell to a man named Tsuburaya Eiji.
Tsuburaya initially wanted to film the kaijū in stop-motion, as had been done in King Kong (1933), the forerunner of many monster films. However, they only had half a year left until the film was due to be released – too little time to shoot in stop-motion – so instead they went with actors wearing monster suits, called kigurumi in Japanese, playing their roles on miniature sets.
Adopting this kigurumi approach was only ever Plan B for Tsuburaya, but it ended up becoming an important element Japanese kaijū films becoming so well known throughout the world. In stop-motion, stationary subjects are shot one frame at a time, so that no blurring is visible in the final images. However this means that fast, large movements inevitably look rather unnatural. In contrast, by using kigurumi suits, the actors can be filmed actually moving in front of the camera. In addition, the scale of the miniature sets is also larger than that of a stop-motion film. The resulting sense of size and weight imparts a wonderful sense of power to the monster scenes, which are truly the highlight of these films.
The Japanese techniques used in these monster films, typified by kigurumi and enlarged miniature sets, are called tokusatsu and have gone on to find many fans around the world.
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Godzilla films and post-war Japan
The first Godzilla film was such a big hit that one in ten Japanese people saw it on its release. In 1956 a re-edited version achieved success in the US, and it was also screened in the UK and other countries. It evolved into a series, with 28 films being released up until 2004.
The biggest selling point of Godzilla films is, of course, the monsters. Mothra, Radon, King Ghidorah… A wide range of these characters destroy whole cities as they battle Godzilla and mankind. Equally interesting, however, is the fact that many of the films reflect the situation that Japan found itself in following World War II.
For example, the first Godzilla film was released nine years after the end of the war, and includes dialogue throughout that evokes a sense of the after-effects of the conflict. However, by the time we reach the third film King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), the mood has changed completely. The atmosphere is upbeat throughout, reflecting the ambience of Japan at the time, as it shifted from reconstruction to growth. One side effect of economic growth is the social problem of pollution, and this features as a major story element in Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971). Then Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), made at a time when Japan was enjoying an unprecedented boom, depicts the country as an economic powerhouse on the rise.
In this way the various Godzilla films mirror their times, and can even be seen as a perfect introduction to the post-war history of this East Asian island nation.
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Godzilla enters a new era
Up until 2004, all 28 Godzilla films had depicted the kaijū monsters using tokusatsu special effects, i.e. miniature sets and kigurumi suits as described above. Even though Computer Graphics (CG) had been making great strides in Hollywood blockbusters since the 1990s, they were only used to a limited extent in Godzilla films. Given the limited budgets of Japanese films at this time, it would have been hard to create a CG version of the lead character.
This changed when the Japanese Godzilla films returned, after a 12-year hiatus, with Shin Godzilla (2016). This time, no kigurumi were used and Godzilla was portrayed in full CG. At the same time, director Anno Hideaki insisted that the texture and movement of each part of Godzilla’s body should be designed with the kigurumi original in mind.
The CG version of Godzilla was developed further in Godzilla Minus One (2023). Here, although the overall image of Godzilla was preserved, the depiction on screen made the most of the capabilities of CG, rather than working with the constraints of kigurumi.. The results were highly acclaimed, and the film ended up winning the 96TH ACADEMY AWARD Ⓡ for Best Visual Effects.
The budgets for both Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One were amongst the highest ever for Japanese-made films, yet there is still a huge gap when compared with Hollywood’s blockbusters. Nevertheless, Yamazaki Takashi, the director who won the award, says that ‘constraints are the mother of creativity’. Indeed, these words echo what happened 70 years earlier, when it was precisely such constraints that led to the development of tokusatsu and resulted in world-class works.
Having shed the mantle of tokusatsu and gained a crown at the Oscars, where will Japanese Godzilla films go next? What kind of history will they weave in this new world? Only time will tell.
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Maruyama Takeshi was born in 1986. Having grown up with Godzilla films, he has been writing articles on Godzilla and other tokusatsu works since he was a university student. He is also involved in planning and presenting events that feature staff and performers from the Godzilla universe.