In honor of the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire trailer dropping, I thought it would be fun to venture into the origins of the number one kaiju himself, “Gojira” aka Godzilla.
Godzilla was famously inspired in part, by the Daigo Fukuryū Maru boat incident. On March 1, 1954, the crew of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5) fishing boat was contaminated by radioactive dust from the United States’ Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test. The film’s opening scene of Godzilla destroying a Japanese vessel is actually a direct reference to these events. Honda came at this monster movie with the perspective of making it more like a war drama, with the monster embodying the dangers of nuclear combat. The imagery of the film was influenced by the destruction of Japan that Honda saw first-hand before and after the war.
The film was directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya who originally proposed for a giant octopus creature. Teizô Toshimitsu and Akira Watanabe decided to base Godzilla’s design on dinosaurs and combined elements of a Tyrannosaurus, Iguanodon, and the dorsal fins of a Stegosaurus. Kazuyoshi Abe was hired early in production to design Godzilla but his ideas were later rejected due to Godzilla looking too humanoid and mammalian, the design included a head shaped like a mushroom cloud. Abe was retained to help draw the film’s storyboards.
Despite wanting to have utilized stop motion animation, Tsuburaya reluctantly settled on suitmation, a form of special effects in which a stunt performer wearing a suit interacts with miniature sets.
Now, with the appearance of the creature and aesthetic of the film finalized, a couple finishing touches had to be addressed. First, the name of the monster. With nothing sticking, the crew started referring to the monster as “G,” which stood for “Giant.”
There was a heavier crew member that was given the nickname “Gojira” by his coworkers, a made up combo of the words gorira, meaning “gorilla,” and kujira, meaning “whale.” This nickname was not only used for naming the monster, but it was also used to design the first prototype of the Godzilla suit. The pièce de ré·sis·tance was Godzilla’s roar. To make the roar, film scorer Akira Ifukube rubbed a leather glove along the loosened strings of a double bass, then slowed down the recording.
“Gojira” was first released in Nagoya, Japan on October 27, 1954. It set a new opening day record for any Toho film by selling 33,000 tickets at Toho’s cinemas and selling out at Nichigeki Theater.
