95 Facts About Eiji Tsuburaya

Eiji Tsuburaya was a Japanese special effects director, filmmaker, and cinematographer.

At the age of thirty-two, Eiji Tsuburaya watched King Kong, which greatly influenced him to work in special effects.

Eiji Tsuburaya completed the first iron shooting crane in October 1934, and an adaptation of the crane is still in use across the globe today.

In 1937, Eiji Tsuburaya was employed by Toho and established the company's effects department.

Eiji Tsuburaya directed the effects for The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya in 1942, which became the highest-grossing Japanese film in history upon its release.

In 1948 Eiji Tsuburaya was purged from Toho by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers because of his involvement in propaganda films during World War II.

In 1950, Eiji Tsuburaya returned to Toho alongside his effects crew from Eiji Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory.

Eiji Tsuburaya served as the effects director for Toho's string of financially successful tokusatsu films that followed, including, Rodan, The Mysterians, The Three Treasures, Mothra, The Last War, and King Kong vs Godzilla.

Eiji Tsuburaya was born Eiichi Tsumuraya on July 7,1901, at a merchant house called Otsukaya in Sukagawa, Iwase, Fukushima Prefecture, where his family ran a malted rice business.

Eiji Tsuburaya was the first son of Isamu Shiraishi and Sei Tsumuraya, with a large extended family.

When Eiji Tsuburaya was three years old, his mother Sei died of illness at the age of nineteen, shortly after giving birth to her second son.

In 1913, Eiji Tsuburaya saw his first film, which featured footage of a volcanic eruption on Sakurajima; in the process, he was more fascinated by the projector than the movie itself.

Therefore, Eiji Tsuburaya began working in the film industry at the age of eighteen, as Edamasa's camera assistant, contributing to films such as A Tune of Pity and Tombs of the Island ; reportedly, he served as a screenwriter during this period.

Eiji Tsuburaya joined Shochiku in 1925 and would have his breakthrough as the cameraman and assistant director on Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness.

In 1928, while working on eleven films at Shochiku, Eiji Tsuburaya began creating and utilizing new camera operating techniques, including double-exposure and slow-motion camerawork.

Griffith's 140-foot tall shooting crane: having invented it without the benefit of using blueprints or manuals, the wooden crane allowed Eiji Tsuburaya to improve camera movement and was able to be used in and outside the studio.

In 1933, Eiji Tsuburaya saw the American film King Kong, which inspired him to work on movies featuring special effects.

In 1962, Eiji Tsuburaya told the Mainichi Shimbun that he attempted to convince Nikkatsu to "import this technical know-how, but they had little interest in it because, at the time, I was seen as merely a cameraman who worked on Kazuo Hasegawa's historical dramas".

Eiji Tsuburaya managed to acquire a 35mm print of King Kong and started to study the film's special effects frame-by-frame, without the advantage of documents explaining how they were produced: he would later write an analysis of the film's effects for the magazine Photo Times in October 1933.

Akagi in February 1934, Eiji Tsuburaya fell out with Nikkatsu's CEO, who had no acquaintance with what Eiji Tsuburaya was creating and assumed that he was wasting the company's money.

Eiji Tsuburaya did not only serve as the film's cinematographer, but was in charge of special effects for the first time.

Shortly after, Eiji Tsuburaya received a research budget and began studying optical printers to create Japan's first version of the device, which he designed.

In November 1939, while Eiji Tsuburaya was still at the flight school and undertaking assignments at Toho, he was appointed head of Toho's Special Arts Department.

Accordingly, in May 1940, Eiji Tsuburaya began directing the documentary The Imperial Way of Japan for Toho Education Films' branch, the Toho National Policy Film Association.

Eiji Tsuburaya was given his first ever credits for special effects for his work on Sotoji Kimura's Navy Bomber Squadron, which featured a bombing scene with a miniature airplane.

Eiji Tsuburaya was in charge of effects for the film and received his first accolade from the Japan Motion Picture Cinematographers Association.

Eiji Tsuburaya's next undertaking, Son Goku, was released on November 6,1940.

Eiji Tsuburaya directed its effects, which he created with the assistance of navy-provided photographs of the Pearl Harbor attack: in the process, he worked with future Godzilla collaborates Akira Watanabe and Teizo Toshimitsu for the first time in his career.

Additionally, Eiji Tsuburaya expressed dissatisfaction with the size of the shooting stage, the art materials, the method of performance, etc.

Shortly before Toho distributed General Kato's Falcon Fighters in cinemas, Masano and Eiji Tsuburaya's third son and last child, Akira, was born on February 12,1944.

Later that year, Eiji Tsuburaya made the effects in Torajiro Saito's Five Men from Tokyo, for which he was credited as "Eiichi Eiji Tsuburaya".

In late March 1948, Eiji Tsuburaya was purged from Toho by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers because of his involvement in propaganda films during World War II.

In 1949, five major Daiei Film productions featuring effects directed by Eiji Tsuburaya were released to Japanese theaters: Japanese horror filmmaker Bin Kato's The White Haired Fiend, Keigo Kimura's Flowers of Raccoon Palace, Kiyohiko Ushihara's The Rainbow Man, Akira Nobuchi's The Ghost Train, and Nobuo Adachi's The Invisible Man Appears.

Eiji Tsuburaya was disappointed with his lack of competence on the project and gave up his ambition to become a Daiei employee after The Invisible Man Appears was finished.

In 1950, Eiji Tsuburaya relocated some equipment and employees at Eiji Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory to Toho's headquarters; his independent company was merely the size of six tatami mats inside Toho Studios.

Eiji Tsuburaya directed the film's effects for the typhoon and landslide scenes, which was his first experience acting as the effects director on a film by the future Godzilla director.

Eiji Tsuburaya collaborated with Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka on The Man Who Came to Port later that year: this marked the first time the trio, who are considered the creators of Godzilla, ever collaborated with one another.

Eiji Tsuburaya, therefore, resubmitted the conception of this production to producer Iwao Mori.

Eiji Tsuburaya believed that it would have considerable potential, due to the financial success of previous monster films and the impact of news generating nuclear fears.

Instantly after completing Godzilla in October, Eiji Tsuburaya began working on another Toho-produced science fiction film, The Invisible Avenger, which was released to Japanese theaters in December 1954, under the title Invisible Man.

Eiji Tsuburaya instructed his crew to portray the title character's invisibility in various ways throughout the film, including optical synthesis, and suggested that the character would disguise his invisibility powers by dressing up as a clown.

Just a month later, Eiji Tsuburaya began directing the effects of Half Human, his second kaiju film collaboration with director Ishiro Honda.

Toho's next assignment for Eiji Tsuburaya was Rodan, the first kaiju film ever produced in color.

Eiji Tsuburaya next served as the special effects director for The Mysterians, a science fiction epic directed by Ishiro Honda.

Eiji Tsuburaya won another Japan Technical Award for his widescreen effects in The Mysterians.

Eiji Tsuburaya next directed the effects for Honda's Varan the Unbelievable, a film about a giant monster awakened in the Tohoku mountains that surfaces in Tokyo Bay.

Eiji Tsuburaya began 1959 by working on the special effects for Mighty Atom, a tokusatsu television series based on Osamu Tezuka's manga series Astro Boy.

Around the same time, Eiji Tsuburaya directed the special effects for a storm sequence featured in Honda's Inao: Story of an Iron Arm, for which he constructed the miniature for the title character's rowboat.

Eiji Tsuburaya filmed his effects for a technicolor version of the film, but they were converted to black-and-white for the final version.

Eiji Tsuburaya's following significant production, director Hiroshi Inagaki's big-budget religious epic The Three Treasures, was created as Toho's celebratory thousandth film.

Eiji Tsuburaya won the Japan Technical Award for Special Skill and was presented with the Special Achievement Award at Movie Day.

Eiji Tsuburaya reportedly paid homage to producer George Pal's Destination Moon in the film's Moon landing sequence; he would later meet Pal in Los Angeles in 1962.

Since films featuring his contributions were attaining global popularity and praise for Japanese cinema, Hearst filmed Eiji Tsuburaya directing the effects for Battle in Outer Space, and he later received the Special Award of Merit at the fourth Movie Day ceremony prior to its release.

Eiji Tsuburaya then took on a project of a much larger extent, Storm Over the Pacific, the first-ever war film in color.

Eiji Tsuburaya's department created notably large miniatures for the film, with a 13-meter long miniature being filmed by Tsuburaya on the Miura Coast.

In 1961, Eiji Tsuburaya directed the effects for Mothra, another kaiju film created in collaboration with Ishiro Honda.

Allegedly inspired by his own dreams, Eiji Tsuburaya created the eponymous giant, moth-like kaiju, which would go on to become one of the icons of Japanese fantasy cinema, alongside Godzilla and Rodan, and appear in numerous films thereafter.

The script's early drafts were sent back with notes from Toho asking for the monster antics to be as "funny as possible"; Eiji Tsuburaya embraced this approach, seeking to emotionally appeal to children and expand the genre's audience.

Many of the sequences for the battle between the two monsters were purposefully filled with humorous details, but the approach was not favored by most of the effects crew, who "couldn't believe" some of the things Eiji Tsuburaya asked them to do, such as Kong and Godzilla volleying a giant boulder back and forth.

Eiji Tsuburaya directed sequences at a miniature outdoor set on the Miura Coast, which depicted the giant octopus's attack on the Faro Island village.

Sadao Iizuka said that Eiji Tsuburaya "focused" Toho to purchase the "Optical Printer 1900 Series" in order to facilitate the production of special effects, while noting that optical synthesis technology became popular following the film's release.

Eiji Tsuburaya soon moved on to film miniatures and produce optical animation for The Lost World of Sinbad.

Eiji Tsuburaya utilized his 1900 optical printer to remove damage in composite photographs for the picture and create Godzilla's atomic breath; he went on location to shoot some composite plates of Nagoya Castle for the scene where Godzilla destroyed the building.

Since Godzilla actor Haruo Nakajima could not destroy the castle's model entirely, as originally planned, Eiji Tsuburaya first attempted to salvage the shot by making Godzilla seem enraged by the castle's strong fortification, before eventually choosing to re-shoot the scene with a more fragile model.

Eiji Tsuburaya went on location to shoot a segment featuring the United States Navy discharging missiles at Godzilla: this scene was included in the movie's version for the US market, whereas it was omitted from the original Japanese version.

In January 1964, while in New York, Eiji Tsuburaya ordered Oxberry's 1200 optical printer, a model that at the time was owned by only one other studio in the entire world: Disney.

Eiji Tsuburaya went on to operate this technology on Ultra Q, Tsuburaya Productions' first television series, which was a combination of two of his previously discarded projects, tentatively titled Unbalance and WoO.

Eiji Tsuburaya spent two months filming the scene where the fleet circles Kiska Island in thick fog on an indoor stage set since the fog could not be controlled by the wind during open shooting.

Eiji Tsuburaya made a scene depicting the atomic bomb falling upon Hiroshima, which Honda biographers Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski called an "impressionistic display of smoke and fire".

The dance was included in the film after a Toho employee suggested it to Eiji Tsuburaya, who was already supportive of anthropomorphizing monster characters with comical characteristics.

Eiji Tsuburaya had begun working on the new tokusatsu series in the autumn of the previous year: TBS executives wanted to produce a series as thriving as Ultra Q and wanted a full-color program that would "take the monster line to the next level".

Eiji Tsuburaya had spent significant amounts of studio money to build his models for the Godzilla films, so TBS aimed to monetize these miniatures and was looking for a task that could repurpose the sets and suits from the Godzilla franchise.

Eiji Tsuburaya provided input on Narita's designs, with some being inspired by the art of Miyamoto Musashi.

Eiji Tsuburaya supervised the production of every episode of the series and served as the de facto special effects director for episodes 18 and 19.

Also in 1966, Tsuburaya worked with Honda for the kaiju film The War of the Gargantuas, produced in collaboration with Henry G Saperstein, which centered on scientists investigating the appearance of two giant hairy humanoids who eventually fight each other in Tokyo.

However, his disciple Sadamasa Arikawa actually served as a de facto special effects director for this film, with Eiji Tsuburaya's credit being merely ceremonial.

The ensuing 1967 release featuring Eiji Tsuburaya's contributions was Ultraseven, the third entry in the Ultra series, which had been influenced by the British TV series Thunderbirds.

In 1967, Eiji Tsuburaya Productions' writing crew took elements from Shinichi Sekizawa's screenplay, The Flying Battleship, and inserted concepts from it into a TV series, Mighty Jack, which was similar in concept to James Bond and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

The production was reported to have had a budget of, but Eiji Tsuburaya's department had difficulty making realistic creatures for the picture after its American producer pulled out of the project.

Eiji Tsuburaya quickly moved on to his next project, Battle of the Japan Sea, regarded as the third film in the "Toho 8.15 series".

Eiji Tsuburaya was sent to Mishuku Hospital in Meguro to continue his recovery, but refused to remain there, as he expected to complete Birth of the Japanese Islands on schedule: instead, he accepted an offer to recover and receive medical treatment at Ukiyama Villa on the Izu Peninsula in Ito, Shizuoka, where he was instructed to cancel any assignments.

In December 1969, Eiji Tsuburaya completed filming the Expo '70 project and moved to his Ukiyama Villa with his wife Masano, where he persisted in writing his autobiography and the film outlines Japan Airplane Guy and Princess Kaguya.

Eiji Tsuburaya was later entombed at the Catholic Cemetery in Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan.

Eiji Tsuburaya remarked that King Kong heavily influenced him to work in special effects.

Eiji Tsuburaya decided to create special effects sequences in films by using miniature effects and synthesis technology involving layered film strips.

Eiji Tsuburaya constantly converted new special effects techniques and tested them on a daily basis and became the founder and head of Japanese special effects, earning him the title "Father of Tokusatsu".

For Godzilla, Eiji Tsuburaya decided to create a new suit acting technique, later known as "suitmation", because the film's small budget and tight schedule restrained him from portraying Godzilla via stop motion.

Eiji Tsuburaya refused to surrender control of his sector to the mainstream director: he refused to allow directors to stare into the viewfinder in case they assessed elements like the set or camera position and opposed when his footage was re-edited.

Honda-san and Mr Eiji Tsuburaya got along so well because they were both very mature men.

Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima remarked that although Eiji Tsuburaya was usually smiling and had a refreshing disposition onset, he was often angry with the staff.

When he brainstormed ideas for a new film, Eiji Tsuburaya was known for his quiet but intense style.

Scripter Keiko Suzuki said Eiji Tsuburaya envisioned his own editing plan, and he often filmed scenes unscripted.

Eiji Tsuburaya is a true inspiration, and a one of a kind innovator of special effects, the likes of which we'll probably never see again in cinema.

Eiji Tsuburaya had intended to work on Honda's Space Amoeba, but he died shortly after filming began.

On January 11,2019, after construction over a period of five years, the Eiji Tsuburaya Museum opened in his hometown of Sukagawa, a tribute to his life and work in film and television.