by John Petty

Created on: October 26, 2008

As Toho Studio's producer Tomoyuki Tanaka flew home after his latest film project, intended as a joint Japanese-Indian production, had fallen through, he desperately tried to come up with another idea to sell to his bosses. He knew it would have to be something spectacular, but what?

Looking out the plane's window over the seemingly-endless ocean, his mind turned to recent events in which a Japanese tuna fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, had been contaminated with radioactive fallout after the first hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll. The incident had become a cause celebre in Japan, evocatively termed by many, "the second atomic bombing of Japan."

Tanaka desperately wanted to make a movie that would present to the world the horror through which Japan had suffered in the wake of the atomic bombings that ended World War II. He wanted to showcase the agonizing effects of that act, and he wanted to make the rest of the world understand what it truly meant to live in this newly-minted Atomic Age. Unfortunately, Japan was in a sensitive position politically in 1954, seeking entrance into the United Nations, and the film that Tanaka envisioned would never be approved by his superiors as it was too politically charged.

Suddenly, however, another thought came to him. Currently, Japanese movie-going audiences were flocking to see the American science-fiction film, " The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," recently imported from Hollywood. With outstanding special effects by Ray Harryhausen, it was the story of a giant behemoth who rises out of the waters to lay waste to the works of man. Audiences in Japan, it seemed, were as enamored of big special effects movies as were their American counterparts.

And then it all came together in his mind. ""What if," he thought to himself, "a dinosaur, sleeping in the Southern Hemisphere, had been awakened and transformed into a giant by the bomb? What if it attacked Tokyo?"

And there it was. The perfect solution to his dilemma. By using this giant monster as a metaphor for the atomic bomb, Tanaka could tell the story he wanted to tell, but in a way that his superiors would find acceptable in such politically charged times. It was perfect, but an idea is a far cry from a finished product.

Upon his return home, Tanaka did indeed sell his bosses on the idea, even though no Japanese film studio had ever attempted a project of this magnitude, and it was then that the real work began. Tanaka first hired noted novelist Shigeru Kayama to write

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