It’s a book I can marvel at!
-Norman England, director of Bringing Godzilla Down to Size (2008) and author of Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan’s Biggest Film Sets (2021)
This book is a literal treasure trove for tokusatsu enthusiasts who already think they know all there is to know about the genre. They don’t, and this book is a must have.
-John LeMay, author of The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies (2016)
A loving and painstaking tribute. It’s a watershed, detailed examination of an underappreciated art.
-Mark Savage, director of Sensitive New Age Killer (2000) and Purgatory Road (2017)
Refined with wartime propaganda and popularized through monster movies, tokusatsu is the art of Japanese cinematic special effects. From the dawn of cinema to the late 1970s, delve into the history of an underappreciated national art form. Discover the techniques used to bring tokusatsu films and television shows to life such as miniature sets, pyrotechnics, monster suit construction and innovative high-frame-rate cinematography. Follow the careers of such luminaries as Eiji Tsuburaya and Shotaro Ishinomori, underrated talents like Teruyoshi Nakano and Noriaki Yuasa, and figures little known outside Japan - Yoshiyuki Kuroda, Nobuo Yajima and many more. Discover how each generation of effects filmmakers mentored the next. Learn about unsung below-the-line heroes such as monster suit modelers, miniature makers and even pyrotechnicians who contributed much to the art with little credit. Get a candid look at the making of the effects sequences in monster classics like Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and Gamera, along with iconic television franchises such as Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Sentai. Yet the medium of tokusatsu is not limited to monsters and superheroes; it also encompasses war films, disaster flicks and even religious epics.
Japanese Special Effects Cinema: Godfathers of Tokusatsu Vol. 1 presents a comprehensive history of Japan’s special effects films and television in the Showa Period.
