Obligatory introduction post.

Hello! My name's Rhys, nice to meet you. I should probably have an easy-to-access introduction post for anybody coming to this blog for the first time. 

This is (quite obviously) a fanblog dedicated to Akihiko Hirata. My point in running this blog is to provide English-language information on the more obscure parts of his filmography. I became an instant fan when I watched Godzilla '54 for the first time, and the more research I did, the more startling it was just how many of his best-known roles are entirely unknown outside of Japan. (Of course, this blog does cover stuff that is obscure even in Japan - the goal here is to be a resource for anything that doesn't have much information about it.) You can read this as a blog focusing on Showa-era film/television more generally... if you're willing to tolerate frequent digressions.

I am an amateur (very amateur... maybe “aspiring amateur”?) film historian with an interest in Showa-era film. I love to cite sources and add footnotes and fill out bibliography sections. I spend far too much money on Yahoo! Auctions. I am also fervently dedicated to film preservation, which means that all films and videos you see on this blog are backed up in several places - if a link dies, it will not be lost forever.

I will occasionally post fan translations of various materials, but I will always be up-front about my qualifications: I do understand a little Japanese and can read kana, but outside of a handful of kanji used for given names, I rely on carefully cross-checked machine translations for a lot of things. I take this stuff very seriously and if anything I post is inaccurate please feel free to let me know.

I'd be happy to do posts on request... I can't imagine a situation where anyone would be clamoring for that kind of thing, but if someone writes to me saying "please tell me everything you know about Taiyo ni Hoero!", who am I to refuse?

I don't know if anyone else is out there doing things like I am, but I know I can't be the only English-speaking fan. I love and welcome any and all comments, suggestions, anonymous messages asking "why are you like this", whatever. Send it my way. This fandom has been alive and kicking since the 1950s and I hope to contribute to keeping it that way.