In Memoriam: Akira Takarada, Godzilla’s Favorite Co-star

Japanese actor Akira Takarada passed away in Japan on March 14 at the age of 87. He had a long career stretching back to 1954, ending only with his death (a 68-year career!). He was under contract to Toho Pictures during the 1950s and ’60s and starred in some of their best-known films, including many Godzilla and other giant monster and sci-fi films. At the age of 20, he starred in the very first Godzilla film, GOJIRA (1954) and would be seen in its American re-edit, GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956). He would appear in several more films by the same director, Ishiro Honda, including MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO, KING KONG ESCAPES, and LATITUDE ZERO. Toho Pictures otherwise treated him as a light leading man and put him in several comedies and musicals, as well as at least one gangster picture where he sings some tunes. He was a staunch hero in the sci-fi films and an amiable, likeable handsome young lad in the other films. However, he revealed a wider range of acting ability when he did dramatic roles for directors Mikio Naruse and Yasujiro Ozu.

More Kaiju Poetry: Mothra in 1961, 1992 and 1996

Back on June 1, 2014, I wrote about “The Poetry of Kaiju,” as found in the 1964 kaiju (Japanese monster) film, GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (aka GODZILLA VS. THE THING), with its stunning images of Mothra eggs and the otherworldly twin fairies who guard them.

This past month I opted to watch three additional films about Mothra, the giant caterpillar-turned-butterfly, and its fairy guardians, in search of similar poetic imagery.

The Poetry of Kaiju: Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964)

At the end of my previous entry, a critique of GODZILLA (2014), I offered a teaser of this one, with five images from the first classic Godzilla movie I went back to after seeing the new one. After taking a number of screen grabs, I thought I’d make an entire entry composed of scenes from the film to show how poetic imagery infused the entire film (and other Japanese kaiju–giant monster–films) in a way that seems alien to the creators of the remake. By happy coincidence, I’ve been reading a book of academic essays called In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), edited by William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, and it happens to contain an essay called, “Mothra’s Gigantic Egg: Consuming the South Pacific in 1960s Japan,” by Yoshikuni Igarashi. The essay looks at the first two Mothra films, MOTHRA (1961) and GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1964, aka GODZILLA VS. THE THING, as it was called in its U.S. release in 1964), and discusses Japan’s relationship to the South Pacific, where Mothra originates, in its history and popular culture and how the South represents an “innocent past” and a “mirror of Japan’s desire to escape the effect of its economic success—consumerism.” Igarashi goes on to discuss GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA and how Godzilla “represents a threat to Japan’s postwar prosperity” while Mothra has become “an emblem of Japan’s consumerism.”

Following are images from the film interspersed with excerpts from the text of Igarashi’s essay: