Godzilla Day Extra: How Many People Have Played Dr. Serizawa?

I did my serious, long-form Godzilla Day post, now it's time to do the "I can write whatever I want" one.

Ask most people who have seen a couple of Godzilla movies who played Dr. Serizawa and I'd wager most of them would be able to name Akihiko Hirata. Maybe. I could be assuming too much here. A solid 4 out of 10 respondents would most likely call him "Akihito", but at least they'd have the general idea.

But, regardless, I'd like to get a little silly with it and ask another question: Who else played Dr. Serizawa? I'm not talking about any of those extraneous Monsterverse Serizawas. I'm talking about our man Daisuke. How many people have played him? In my totally objective opinion as a normal human being, I consider the answer to that question to be not one, but six. I will elaborate forthwith.

Daisuke Serizawa #1: Akihiko Hirata

You know, him:

Daisuke Serizawa #2: Masahiko Naruse

Pre-faceplate removal.

If we were doing this chronologically, I would put this entry at the top, because Naruse was actually the first person to play Dr. Serizawa. He had the honor of voicing him in the radio drama Kaiju Gojira which was broadcast by Nippon Broadcasting System in late summer of 1954, preceding the film's release by several months. Something I'd like to note is that, while Naruse's given name was properly pronounced "Masahiko", the kanji (昌彦) can also be read a different way. And that different way is Akihiko. ("Masahiko" is also Hirata's older brother's birth name, of course, but if I recall correctly, it's spelled with different kanji.)

Naruse was an accomplished screen actor who was frequently cast in villain roles. As with many Japanese actors who continued their career through the decline of the film industry and the rise of television, he was more prolific on TV than he was in the theater. Us tokusatsu fans might recognize him as the robot secretary in episode 48 of Ultraseven, who has had several figures and toys made of him. He would later play the human form of some other aliens in the Ultra series as well, namely Alien Prote and Alien Nackle from Return of Ultraman. 

Naruse did end up co-starring with Hirata in one film: Siege of Fort Bismarck, 1963, the one where he jumps into the Big Pool with all his clothes on. Apart from that, the two had guest roles in different episodes of a few television series, but never in the same episode at the same time.

[sighs deeply] I have to cover Young Serizawa next, I guess. I knew this day would come.

Daisuke Serizawa #3: Miki Otani

The Docs are a must for any Serizawa cosplayer worth their salt.

So I actually do not know who this person is. I'd include a picture of her, but I can't find any, so we have to look at that goddamn thing instead. Another Miki Otani has a Wikipedia page and is a fairly prolific voice actor, but her name is spelled with different kanji, so I'm not sure it's the same person. Godziban's Otani plays multiple roles including singing the title theme and narrating at various points, and also voices Luluvera, the priestess of the juvenile Battra named Basshu. (A lot happens in Godziban, please don't ask me to summarize it all.)

I may not have been able to find out much information about Miki Otani, but I at least have her name. For our next two entries, however, we're going to take a look at two actors whose identity is entirely unknown, before concluding with one actor for whom it would be difficult to find anybody in the world who hasn't seen him at least once.

Daisuke Serizawa #4: Whoever this person was

I've never, ever heard anybody speculate about the identity of the two people playing Serizawa and Ogata in the shots of them during their dive to deploy the Oxygen Destroyer, which is unusual, considering that people have speculated about pretty much every single millisecond of Godzilla. Takarada and Hirata filmed their scenes on land, with an aquarium full of water placed between them and the camera to simulate the ocean, but there were actual underwater scenes filmed with "stunt" actors as well, and to my knowledge, no one has ever identified who those actors were.

One guess would be that they were Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka, the film's two main suit actors. Nakajima was no stranger to (almost dying during) underwater filming, so Toho definitely had in him someone who could do underwater scenes in a heavy suit. But that's just conjecture. We might never know. These days stock footage might be used in a similar circumstance, but it's obvious that the underwater scenes in Godzilla were shot specifically for the film, since one of the actors is holding the Oxygen Destroyer prop.

"Daisuke" "Serizawa" #5: Whoever this person was

You're kidding me here, right? Surely Terry Morse or whoever else I can blame for this would not truly have the audacity to use a body double for Serizawa in profile shots?

The actors who played the body doubles of the Japanese cast in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! were uncredited within the film, and I cannot find any other sources that mention their names. If this particular body double wasn't either a crew member or a random person they hired for a single day of work, I guess it's plausible we might find them in Jewell Enterprises' other two sterling productions, Untamed Women and Girls on the Loose, but I'm sure as hell not scrubbing through those movies on the off chance I might be able to spot this person.

Also, it bothers me that the font they chose for the closing credits makes the letter "T" look like a capital "C", somehow.

Comoyuki Canaka. You can't unsee this now.

Our last Serizawa needs no introduction.

Daisuke Serizawa #6: James Hong

James Hong, along with his comedy partner Sammee Tong, voiced all¹ the Japanese roles in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. I'll let Wikipedia explain the process:

"The dubbing for the entire film was recorded in under five hours. James Hong and his then comedy partner Sammee Tong were cast to provide the voices. They were locked in a room with Morse and were told to read for every role. Each line was recorded at different speeds and the best one was chosen to match the footage. The voice actors never saw the film as they recorded their lines, and completed the entire film sitting at a table with a microphone before them. Hong confirmed that several Japanese actors auditioned for the voice-over job. However, Hong and Sammee Tong were hired due to their versatility. Tong recorded voices for six older characters, while Hong recorded for seven younger characters."

Locked in a room with another guy, given nothing to contextualize your role, just you, a microphone, and a table, for five hours? Sounds more like a police interrogation than a dubbing session.

I almost didn't include Hong in this list, because once I start to talk about dubs, that way madness lies. Because who dubbed Serizawa in the Spanish dub of Godzilla? Or the Chinese dub? Or the Russian dub? How many languages has it been dubbed into? If I start counting voice actors, do I have to expand this list to include every single voice actor from every single dub? Is that a threat? It might be. But for now, we're going to let James Hong represent all non-Japanese Serizawa VAs, and leave it at that.

So, yes, six people, and one of them a woman. Between Miki Otani and Dr. Ashizawa from Water Monster Yagon I think we can posit that being a Serizawa or Serizawa-adjacent character is open to all genders. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

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1 Just to be as pedantic as possible, I should also mention the unknown second Serizawa dubber who occasionally cuts in for brief lines. As far as I know this other voice actor hasn't been identified, and the way the dub switches between him and Hong gives the whole thing an even more slapdash quality than it already had.