Eiji Tsuburaya. You may not be familiar with his name; however, you may know a few of his friends. In 1954, as head of Special Visual Techniques at Toho Tokyo Studios, he, along with director Ishiro Hondo and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, created the first Godzilla movie. In 1963, he started his own special effects laboratory and founded Tsuburaya Productions. In January 1966 his company aired the first 'monster' television series called Ultra Q, followed in July by Ultraman, and in November by a premiered comedy-monster series, Monster Booska. The Ultra Series continues to this day.
He was born Eichi Tsuburaya on July 7, 1901 in Sukagawa City, Fukushima Prefecture--the firstborn son of Catholic parents, Isama and Sei Tsuburaya. Sadly, Eiji's mother died when he was only three years old. He was raised by his father, grandmother, and extended family. He attended Sugugama-Chori Elementary School in 1908 and graduated by age 15. It was at that time that he developed his love of building model airplanes--a hobby that would stay with him throughout his lifetime. In fact, as a child he used to dream of just flying away someday. It was that dream of flying that prompted him to enroll in flight school. In 1916 he entered the Nippon Flying School. The following year the school closed down, and he took a job at a toy making company in Tokyo in order to finish school and complete his training as an electrician.
I guess you could say that his first job in the film industry was as an assistant cameraman, or cinematographer, in modern terms. He worked as an assitant to Yoshiro Edamasa at the Nippon-Tonnenshoku-Katsudo (Kokkatsu) Studios in Kyoto. That was in 1919. From 1921 to 1923 he served as a member of the correspondence staff to the military in World War I. After that he joined Ogasaware Productions and was head cameraman on the movie Hunchback of Enmeiin (Enmeiin no semushiotoko), and then as assistant cameraman on Teinosuke Kinugasa's innovative 1925 film, Kurutta Ippeiji (A Page of Madness). In 1926 he joined Shochiku Kyoto Studios and by 1927 he was a full-time cameraman. It was at that time that he began developing new processes. He was the first one to use a camera crane in Japanese film, and in the 1930 film Chohichiro Matsudaira, was the innovator of a new film illusion created by super-imposing an image. This was the start of his special effects career. The work for which he would come to be known.
That wasn't all that happened in 1930. It was also the year he married Masano Araki. Hajime, the first of their three sons was born the following year. He moved about through several studios in the 1930s, and became increasingly well known for his work. During his time at Nikkatsu Studios, King Kong came to town, the movie of course. He remembered thinking to himself that someday he would create a monster movie like that. In 1937 he developed another innovative technique, a new type of screen process which was used in a German/Japanese co-production called The New Land. Later that same year he became Chief of Toho's brand new Special Effects Division. During the war he directed and produced numerous propaganda films such as Kaigun Bakugeki-tai (The Naval Bomber Fleet),1940, and Hawaii-Marei Oki Kaisen (The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malay), 1942. The latter film made its way to the Movietone newsreels, sold to Frank Capra by General MacArthur's film unit, and used as actual footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The post-war era was difficult for Japan and the Japanese. It was very hard to distance himself from his wartime involvement, and so he did freelance work until he returned to Toho in 1950.
As mentioned earlier, Godzilla (Gojira) was created in 1954 along with Hondo, Tanaka, and composer Akira Ifukube. Rather than use the stop action technique popularized by Willis O'Brien in King Kong, he used a man in a rubber suit to create his special effects. This effect, of course, is now characteristic of Japanese kaiju movies, and it came to be known as "suitmation." The slower moving and thunderous effects were then created by using high-speed film and intense lighting. For this he won his first Film Technique Award. He won another Film Technique Award for The Mysterians, 1954. As the story goes, he started his own special effects lab in 1963 called Tsuburaya Productions. In 1966 Ultraman was born. It became the first internationally distributed live-action Japanese television series, and spawned the Ultra Series that continues to this day.
