"Godzilla" premieres in Nagoya, Japan - October 27th, 1954

On this day in 1954, the King of the Monsters made his big screen debut when the original “Godzilla” premiered in Nagoya, Japan. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that stomps its way through history every day of
the week. I'm Gay Bluesier and in this episode, we're
continuing our march to Halloween with a look at Japan's
original movie Monster, the One and Only Godzilla. The day

(00:45):
was October twenty seventh, nineteen fifty four. The King of
the Monsters made his big screen debut when the original
Godzilla premiered in Nagoya, Japan. The now classic film, titled
Goer in its native country, received a wide release in
Japan six days later. Then, in nineteen fifty six, a

(01:07):
dubbed and heavily edited version of the film was released
in the United States under the title Godzilla, King of
the Monsters. Although envisioned as a standalone film, the success
of the original Godzilla ultimately led to dozens of sequels
and reimaginings. Later installments in the Blooming franchise tended toward

(01:28):
humor and spectacle, but the first entry isn't the goofy,
campy monster movie you might expect. While it certainly has
action scenes and cheesy special effects, the film's tone is
gloomy and somber, and it treats the disaster of a giant,
rampaging lizard with deadly seriousness. That's because the original film

(01:49):
was released just nine years after the atomic bombs dropped
by the United States killed more than two hundred thousand
Japanese civilians and soldiers. When the lights went down and
the theatre on opening night, the Japanese were still grappling
with nuclear fallout, lingering radiation, sickness and disfigurements, and the
occupation of their country by a hostile foreign power. The

(02:13):
film they were about to see was very much an
allegory for that nuclear destruction, with the eponymous monster serving
as the embodiment of what director Ishiro Honda called the
invisible fear, the ever present dread that another nuclear bomb
might fall at any moment. Because of Japan's shared cultural trauma,

(02:34):
Godzilla or Gojhira deeply resonated with Japanese audiences, and many
moviegoers reportedly left the theatre in tears after seeing it.
At the time, the American military had forbidden discussion of
atomic bombs, but through Honda's film, the public was given
the chance to confront and come to terms with its
feelings on the subject a painful but necessary step on

(02:57):
the road to Catharsis. A lot of the film not
only echoed the recent past of wartime Japan, but also
its present. In nineteen fifty four, a few months before
Godzilla's premiere, a fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon five
was struck by the fallout of US nuclear testing at
Bikini at Toll And. In the movie, a similar nuclear

(03:19):
test stirs the primordial Gojira from its slumber in the
Pacific Ocean, causing it to come ashore and wreak its
vengeance on the humans who disturbed it. The film leaves
the origin of the monster ambiguous, with a scientist character
simply describing it as a kind of transitional creature somewhere
between the marine reptiles and the evolving terrestrial animals. However,

(03:43):
one of the producers, Tamoyuki Tanaka, later went on record
saying that his original intention was for Godzilla to be
a dinosaur sleeping in the Southern Hemisphere that had been
awakened and transformed into a giant by the atomic bomb.
The design of Godzilla reflects that origin as well, its
giant stature and mushroom shaped head evoke the explosive cloud

(04:07):
produced by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
its scaly, burnt black skin and spiked back resemble the
haunting figures of those who survive the nuclear blasts. Even
the creature's iconic roar isn't so much a projection of
strength or dominance as it is a mournful cry of pain.

(04:40):
The original Godzilla is fascinating from a sociological perspective, but
it's also a great example of the ingenuity and creativity
of Japanese filmmaking. Take that otherworldly roar, for instance, The
sound effects team tried to create it using real world
animal sounds, but none of them were a good match
for the monster on skin. They all felt too familiar.

(05:02):
But then the film's composer, Akira Ifukube, had an epiphany,
why not use a musical instrument to make the roar instead?
So here's what he did. He donned a pair of
leather gloves, coated them in pine tar resin, and then
dragged his fingers up and down the e string of
a broken down double bass. The distressed noise that resulted

(05:25):
became the signature sound of Godzilla. And it's been the
basis of the creature's roar ever since. Another instance of
out of the box thinking was how the filmmakers created
their monster star. Earlier sci fi movies such as King
Kong had employed stop motion figures to bring their creatures
to life, but for Gojira, the effect was achieved by

(05:46):
an actor in a costume, aided by miniature models and
camera tricks to help him look enormous. The man inside
the monster was a Japanese actor named Haru Nakajima. He
starred in the original nineteen fifty four film and then
reprised the role for eleven sequels. Nakajima clearly got well
acquainted with the scaly suit over time, but when he

(06:09):
first landed the role, he didn't even know what the
character would look like. All he knew was that it
would be some kind of ancient sea creature that would
be awakened by an underwater test of the h bomb.
With nothing else to go on, Nakajima prepared for the
role by spending ten days at the zoo observing the
movements of elephants, gorillas, and bears. But no amount of

(06:31):
research could prepare Nakajima for the reality of being stuffed
inside a giant lizard suit. The original costume was notoriously
difficult to move in because it was made from ready
mixed concrete and weighed about two hundred and twenty pounds.
Concrete was the best option available in nineteen fifty four,
as rubber was still hard to come by an early

(06:53):
postwar Japan. As you might imagine, though, it made the
suit cumbersome and suffocatingly hot. In fact, Nakajima said he
sweated so much in the original suit that after a
day of filming, he could wring out the perspiration from
his undershirt and fill half a bucket. Not only was
Nakajima a team player, he was a bit of a

(07:13):
pioneer too, when it comes to the kind of acting
he was doing. It would later give rise to a
whole new genre known as tankusatsu, which heavily featured practical effects,
including actors wearing giant monster costumes. Thousands of movies and
TV shows were and still are made using that process,
and Nakajima was the forefather of them all. Oh and

(07:36):
if you thought it was strange that Nakajima wasn't sure
what kind of creature Godzilla was, going to be. That's
only because the film's producers weren't sure either. Originally, it
was just going to be a giant mutant octopus, which
could have put Nakajima out of a job since they
could have just set looseer real octopus on those miniature cities. Thankfully, though,

(07:58):
the creative team decided to take a weirder approach, one
that actually resulted in the character's Japanese name, Gojhira. At
one point during development, the plan was for the monster
to be a cross between a gorilla and a whale,
and even though that idea was eventually scrapped in favor
of a more dinosaur like design, they kept the original name,

(08:18):
which is a portmanteau of the Japanese words for gorilla
and whale. Although critics didn't think much of Gojira, upon
its release, audiences were captivated, and the Toho Studio quickly
put together plans to make more movies starring its breakout monster.
They're still at it today too, as twenty twenty three
mark the release of the thirty seventh film in the series,

(08:41):
with several more installments planned for the years ahead. As
a result, Godzilla now holds the record for the longest
ongoing film franchise in history, beating its second place competitor,
James Bond by a full eight years. What's really interesting, though,
is how the Godzilla see has managed to stay relevant

(09:01):
for so long. The tone of the movies and even
the character's role in them are always changing to better
align with the audience of the era. In the nineteen sixties,
for example, when Japan's postwar economy was rebounding, Godzilla loosened
up a bit. For a while, he was portrayed as
a cranky public menace, a bully who had to be

(09:22):
chased off by the army or by a more good
natured monster like Mathra. Then he gradually became a more
heroic figure who would defend Japan from other invading monsters,
even if he did still trash a few cities in
the process. The transformation of Godzilla from a symbol of
national trauma to something more like a protective deity is

(09:44):
a testament to the endurance and adaptability of both the
character and the nation that birthed in. I'm Gabe Luzier,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
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(10:06):
at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments
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Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again soon for another Spooky
Day in History class.