Ishiro Honda

At 81 years old, Ishiro Honda has this physical status:

Ishiro Honda (Honda Ishiro, 7 May 1911 – 28 February 1993), who was often mistaken in foreign publications as "Inoshiro Honda," was a Japanese film director and screenwriter.

He is best known for his kaiju and tokusatsu films, which include several entries in the Godzilla franchise, but he has also worked extensively in the documentary and war genres earlier in his career.

Honda was also a lifelong friend and collaborator of Akira Kurosawa, and she worked with Kurosawa extensively in the 1980s and 1990s.

Early life

Honda was born in Asahi, Yamagata Prefecture (now part of Tsuruoka), Japan's fifth and youngest child of Hokan and Miyo Honda. Hokan, his father, was the abbot of Honda Ryuden-in temple. His name is derived from the Japanese word for boar ("Inoshishi") and his fourth son ("shiro"), and he was born in the year of the boar. He had three brothers: Takamoto, Ryokichi, Ryuzo, Ryuzo, and one sister, Tomi, who died during her childhood. At Churen-ji, a temple in Mount Yudono, where the Hondas lived in a dwelling on the temple's property, Honda's father and grandfather were both Buddhist monks. The Hondas raised rice, potatoes, daikon radishes, and spinach, as well as making and selling miso and soy sauce. In addition, the family was also benefitted from a silk moth farm owned by one of Honda's brothers. During the summers, Honda's father earned money by selling devotionals in Iwate Prefecture, Akita Prefecture, and Hokkaido, and it is expected to return home before the winter.

Although Honda's brothers were given religious instruction at sixteen, Honda was learning about science. Honda's research and scientific curiosity, which ignited Honda's fascination with reading and scientific curiosity, was encouraged by Takamoto, who became a military doctor. Hokan became the abbot at the Io-ji temple in Tokyo in 1921, and the family moved to Suginami's Takaido neighborhood. Despite being a heralded student back home, Honda's grades dropped in Tokyo and middle school; he had trouble with topics involving equations such as chemistry, biology, and algebra.

After his father's transfer to another temple, Honda enrolled in the Tachibana Elementary School in Kawasaki and later in Kogyokashio Junior High, where Honda studied kendo, archery, and athletic swimming, but eventually with Achilles tendon repair. In 1937, Honda met Kimi Yamazaki and proposed her marriage in 1939. Honda's parents and Kimi's mother were supportive, but Kimi's father was against the sudden joining of the children. Although Kimi's father never approved of her marriage, he did give her a $1,000 payout after finding out about her pregnancy. The two couples simply signed papers at city hall, paid their respects to Meiji Shrine, and went home rather than having a traditional wedding reception.

As he and his classmates gathered to watch one of the Universal Bluebird photoplays, he became interested in films. Honda will often sneak into movie theaters without his parents' permission. On-screen texts were replaced in Japan at the time with benshi, narrators who stood outside the screen and gave live commentary, which Honda found more interesting than the films themselves. Honda's brother, Takamoto, had hoped for Honda to become a dentist and join his clinic in Tokyo, but instead, Honda applied to Nihon University for their art department's film major program and was accepted in 1931. The film school was a pilot program, which culminated in disorganized poor conditions for the class and teacher cancellations every so often. Though other students were forced to leave, Honda instead used the cancelled times to watch films at theaters, where he took personal notes.

A few kilometers from their university, Honda and four of his classmates rented a room in Shinbashi, where they would gather after school to discuss films. Honda had hoped for the group to collaborate on a screenplay, but they mostly ate and drank. Honda attended a salon of film critics and scholars, but few people attended, preferring rather to listen rather than listening. Iwao Mori, an executive in charge of photographic chemical Laboratories' manufacturing, met Honda while attending college (P.C.L.). Mori offered entry-level P.C.L. jobs in August 1933. Honda is one of a few students, including Honda. Honda later completed his studies while at the studio and became an assistant director, which required him to be a scripter in the editing department. On Sotoji Kimura's The Elderly Commoner's Life (1934), Honda later became a third assistant director. However, the military released a draft notice about Honda.

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Career

As an assistant director, Honda returned to Toho. He appeared in two films: Motoyoshi Oda's Eleven Girl Students and Kunio Watanabe's Declaration of Love in 1946. He appeared in three films, 24 Hours in an Underground Market (jointly directed by Tadashi Imai, Hideo Sekigawa, and Kiyoshi Kusuda), and The New Age of Fools Parts One and Two, directed by Kajir Yamamoto in 1947. Many people were forced to form Shintoho as a result of labour unions and workers in Toho. Kunio Watanabe tried to convince Honda that Shintoho will be a director sooner, but Honda refused to remain neutral and Toho stayed at Toho. Despite struggling at Toho, Honda appeared in a handful of films directed by Film Arts Associates Productions.

Honda was on location in Noto Peninsula, working on Kajir's Child of the Wind, the first film Arts publication. Honda worked with Yamamoto again on Flirtation in Spring, from January to March 1949. Honda reunited with his colleague Akira Kurosawa in September 1949 and began as a chief assistant director on Kurosawa's Stray Dog. Second unit photography by Honda, which pleased Kurosawa and has said to Honda "owe a great deal" for capturing the film's post-war mood. In 1950, Honda appeared in two films by Kajir Yamamoto: Escape from Prison and Elegy, the last film made by the Film Art Associations. On Senkichi Tani's Escape at Dawn, Honda also served as an assistant director.

In 1949, Honda had to produce documentaries for Toho's Educational Film Division before being promoted to a feature film director. Often, Toho used documentary projects as experiments for assistant directors who wanted to become directors. The documentary Ise-Shima, a twenty-minute highlight reel of Ise-Shima's cultural attractions, was Honda's directorial debut. Local officials had ordered it to help increase tourism to the national park. The film explores a brief history of the Ise Grand Shrine, the local people, the economy, and pearl farms. It's also known that this film was the first Japanese film to properly use underwater photography. Honda had intended to use a small submarine-like craft but the project was scrapped due to budget and safety issues. Rather, skilled divers were involved in the design. For a compact 35-millimeter camera, Honda had sent a camera technician who designed and manufactured an air-tight, waterproof, metal-and-glass housing.

Ise-Shima was completed in July 1949 and Toho's triumph was a huge success. The documentary was then available in several European nations. The documentary remained on Japanese television television for a long time before it resurfaced in 2003. Honda On Stray Dog, Akira Kurosawa, was hired just after. Honda began pre-production on Newspaper Kid, which would have been Honda's first feature film directorial debut, but the project was shelved. Rather, Honda began work on another documentary called Story of a Cooperative (A.K.A. Flowers Blooming in the Sand and Co-op Way of Life (cooperative life).

Co-op was a documentary about the emergence of consumer cooperatives in Japan postwar. It was also written by Honda, with Jin Usami's supervision overseeing the development and the Ministry of Health and Welfare as a sponsor. Any studies indicated that some animation was used to explain co-ops's operation, but these reports have yet to be confirmed. The film was shot on October 6th, 1950, and has since been lost. However, Honda recalled that the film was good enough to convince Toho to assign Honda his first feature film.

Toho had offered Honda the opportunity to produce and direct a war film titled Kamikaze Special Attack Troop during filming. Toho decided not to proceed with the scheme after finding Honda's book, which openly criticised World War II's leaders, to be too bleak and realistic. Honda recalled that the studio felt it was "too late after the war" to produce such a film. If the venture been completed, it would have been Honda's first directorial feature. Since the script was lost, it has been defunct.

Honda created The Blue Pearl, his first feature film at the age of 40. It was one of the first Japanese feature films to use underwater photography, and it was the first studio film to be shot in the Ise-Shima region. Honda initially refused to direct war films, but later decided against it after Toho agreed to have him direct Eagle of the Pacific, a film about Isoroku Yamamoto, a man with whom Honda expressed the same concerns regarding the war. It was the first film in which Honda collaborated with Eiji Tsuburaya.

He supervised the first Godzilla (1962), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1968), and several others until 1975. He has also directed such tokusatsu films as Rodan, Mothra, and The War of the Gargantuas. The following years were spent producing various science fiction television shows. Ultraman, Mirrorman, and Zone Fighter were all his characters in the superhero movie Return of Ultraman, Mirrorman, and Zone Fighter. In addition, he produced the cult film Matango. After directing Terror of Mechagodzilla in 1975, Honda quit filmmaking, but Akira Kurosawa, his old friend and former mentor, was persuaded to return as a producer, project manager, and creative consultant on his last five films, including Madadayo, where he is said to have made uncredited writing contributions.

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