Zero Pilot Gaiden: The German Dub

Guten tag!

As it happens, I did in fact acquire a German DVD of Zero Pilot as mentioned at the end of my post about it, and I’ve uploaded the entire German dub to Internet Archive here. This DVD was such a nightmare to get a hold of that I wanted to make it worth my while by turning it into a whole post, so let's find out more about the German release of this movie together.

(This German dub isn't particularly rare - it's available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV in Germany, but you can't watch those if you don't have a German account.)

As I've said, Zero Pilot's German release came startlingly quick on the heels of its Japanese premiere: while Japanese audiences first saw it on October 2nd of 1976, Germans got it just weeks later on October 26th, under the title Sturzflug in die Hölle (literally "Nosedive/Free Fall Into Hell"). Oddly enough I can't really find any information about this initial German run, because I haven't been able to turn up any German newspaper articles or other media relating to the film. I even ran through some old issues of Der Spiegel looking for mentions of it, which was... fun? I think? I don't really know what it was.

Very interestingly, I've also found evidence that Germany MIGHT have had the earliest home media release of the film in addition to the earliest theatrical run: an issue of Weltluftfahrt seems to indicate that the movie was available as of 1982 - one year earlier than its Dutch VHS release - from ITT Schaub-Lorenz in Pforzheim. I'm not amending this to my previous post about the film, because I'm not entirely sure if I'm interpreting my sources right - from everything I can find out about ITT Schaub-Lorenz, they manufactured radios and televisions and whatnot, and I don't see any indication that they distributed films. If they were selling Zero Pilot, though, they had an entirely different cut from any of the others featured on German home media, because the publication gives its length as 92 minutes, which, as we'll see, is much longer than the DVD releases.

You can see some of the original German lobby cards for the film here (scroll down a bit). Most of the lobby cards have pictures of airplanes or Hiroshi Fujioka as Saburo Sakai, but our man did make it onto one, albeit from the back:

On right, in foreground. (Look, just trust me on this.)

In addition to its theatrical run in Germany itself, the film was also shown a few times in Liechtenstein, first in January and February of 1978 and then again in October of that year. During the latter run, the same publications that were advertising Zero Pilot were also advertising some weird movie I've never heard of called Star Wars. Too bad that one didn't make any lasting impression!

As far as I can tell, Zero Pilot was first released to DVD in 2008 under its Sturzflug in die Hölle title, followed by another DVD release in 2009 as Kampfgeschwader Totenkopf ("Skull-and-Crossbones Bomber Wing") and one as Samurai Kamikaze in 2015. It also seems to frequently be packaged with other war movies in cheap 3-film DVD sets, some of which have shoved it alongside Umberto Lenzi's The Biggest Battle, Giuseppe Vari's A Place in Hell, Bitto Albertini's The War Devils and a movie I can't find anything out about called Operation Barbarossa. While the DVD I have says "Samurai Kamikaze" on the cover, as you'll see, the title card in the actual video file reads "Kampfgeschwader Totenkopf".

Multiple different severely truncated versions of the movie have been featured on these various DVD releases, with the 2008 one being the worst, at 78 minutes, and our 2015 version only barely better at 82. This seems to be the version used by Amazon and Apple Video, since they both give a running time of 81 minutes. You can find a list of the German voice cast here.

White guys on the cover of your Japanese movie about a Japanese pilot in the Japanese army is certainly a choice.

Now, for the thing about all of this that is really funny to me: for whatever reason, the 2015 DVD release (this is the one I've gotten my hands on) associates the movie very strongly with Akihiko Hirata, despite - I will stress this again - his being in the movie for under three minutes. It's not even like his name is first in the cast alphabetically or anything.

Poland does this too, on possibly the ugliest poster ever featured on this blog:

At first I thought "Well, maybe he was popular in Germany?" but finding that Polish poster has made me lean more towards believing that the reasoning behind this is because people don't know what he looks like (or at least can't put a name to a face). Maybe, once one distributor slapped his name first in the cast for whatever reason, everybody else went "yeah, his name is first, that means he must be the guy who plays the dude" and just rolled with it.

Anyway, I've gotten off the rails and did not even really intend to make a full post about this in the first place, so I'll leave things there. It's unfortunate to see how this movie has been treated in Germany (packaged with random war movies and sold for incredibly cheap), because even though it's not a particularly memorable picture, Koichi Kawakita's work on it deserves more respect than it's getting. Hiroshi Fujioka wore that fake mustache for you, Western audience! You could at least appreciate the film!

カネボウヒューマンスペシャル: 小児病棟 / Kanebo Human Special: Shouni byouto / Kanebo Human Special: Pediatric Ward (1980)

Release date: December 3rd, 1980

Director: Shintaro Sobue

Studio: NTV

Cast: Kaori Momoi, Ryuuzou Hayashi, Etsuko Ichihara, Nijiko Kiyokawa, Tanie Kitabayashi, Midori Kiuchi, Eri Ishida, Shiro Kishibe, Akihiko Hirata, Minori Terada, Senri Sakurai et al.

Availability: VHS release, no official streaming; available on archive.org in full. (You will want to fix the aspect ratio in VLC.)

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What we're looking at today is fairly rare: as I've mentioned many times, most of the work Hirata did towards the end of his career(/life, I guess) was in television, but very, very little of it is preserved. Fortunately, though, due to both its individual popularity and its place in a long-running series which was also popular, Kanebo Human Special: Pediatric Ward stuck around.

(Do note that this is entirely unrelated to the other "pediatric ward" movie Hirata was in, which is the 1983 Monday Wide Theater original Tearful Pediatric Ward. It's not surprising that he'd be in two of these, considering he got cast as a doctor all the time.)

Kaori Momoi plays Hatsuko Yamazaki, a nurse who, along with her friend Reiko Ogawa (Midori Kiuchi) is transferred into a pediatric ward. Yamazaki's troubles are initially limited to dealing with unruly children, but while she's still new at the job, she's taken to a private room and shown a baby boy who was born without hands, feet, or the use of his eyes, ears, and speech. At first, she's disturbed by the boy (who the hospital nicknames "Taro"; the go-to generic male name in Japan), even describing him as a "lump of flesh", but she quickly develops a deep affection for him. While everyone else at the hospital considers him barely human and certainly beyond help, Yamazaki cares for Taro, advocates for him, and treats him like a person.

Now, of course, if this were real life, every single person working at this hospital would be in massive trouble. Taro's parents end up in the picture midway through, and when his mother demands to see her son (whose real name is Junichiro), hospital staff shows her a random baby who supposedly is too fragile to leave his glass-walled room, and then eventually tells her the baby died. Yamazaki also takes Taro on a little excursion outside the hospital at one point, during which she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, which is the only part of the movie that felt really ridiculous.

But, in my opinion, any good daytime TV drama about a pediatric ward should have you yelling "No, girl! Don't steal that baby!" at the screen at least once.

I was honestly so captivated by this fake soundstage park at dusk.

What surprised me most about this movie is that it is actually good. I was expecting it to be your standard sappy daytime drama, but Momoi elevates the whole thing beyond what it might otherwise have been. Her rapport with "Taro", played alternately by a big blanket (for shots when Yamazaki is carrying him) and a deeply disturbing anatomically-correct dummy, is highly believable. And it's not just me saying this is a good one: Pediatric Ward had the highest viewership rating for a drama special in the Kanto region in 1980.

(A word about that dummy: according to Yomiuri Shimbun, staff became so attached to it that at the conclusion of filming, the dummy was ritually purified and then given a funeral. As we'll see, Yomiuri Shimbun had a vested interest in Pediatric Ward, so you can decide whether or not to trust them yourself, but I don't see why someone would make that up.)

Unfortunately Akihiko Hirata's role in Pediatric Ward amounts to basically a cameo; a single brief scene where he plays a surgeon named Dr. Tanigaki. His is not the only cameo, either - Senri Sakurai of the band Crazy Cats (who I have featured quite frequently here) also has a very brief appearance as a guy who's trying to jump off the hospital roof. Some other notables with slightly larger roles are Minori Terada as Taro/Junichiro's dad and Shiro Kishibe as a technician. Etsuko Ichihara, a favorite actress of mine, also has a role as a nurse, but it's not her best work and honestly I didn't even recognize her at first.

Not how you're supposed to wear that, but okay.

Pediatric Ward was the very first installment of the Kanebo Human Special series of TV movies, which ran for 20 years and was solely comprised of adaptations of works that had won Yomiuri Shimbun's "Women's Human Documentary Award". The lone sponsor of this series (and supporter of the award itself) was Kanebo Corporation, a huge-ass company who got its start in the 1880s producing textiles and eventually reached its tentacles into other industries such as cosmetics, food, and everyday goods. Kanebo Human Special was only one of many programs sponsored or co-sponsored by the corporation.

Yomiuri Shimbun and Kanebo's intent with their documentary award - the winners of which were the source material for each production in the Kanebo Human Special series - was specifically to highlight the role of women in society and in building the future. In fact, only women applicants were allowed. This focus on women is very noticeable in Pediatric Ward, which has essentially no important male characters, aside from Yamazaki's useless boyfriend and a doctor with main character energy. 

The original work that the TV movie was adapted from was published in Yomiuri Shimbun in May of 1980 as a serial novel, and then collated in book form in October. Considering our movie came out in December, that's a pretty quick turnaround from serial novel to book to movie. The TV adaptation changes the ending: in the original, Taro dies. The main character's name is changed as well. Not having read the book, I can't say whether there were more changes than those.

Egawa based some of the patients who appear in her novel on real people, but notably, she actually visited them to obtain their consent before writing about them. (It's unfortunate that this is notable, but many writers wouldn't even bother.) Egawa was also a regular participant in strikes meant to draw attention to the problem of nursing shortages, but was conflicted about these strikes due to feeling that they amounted to abandoning patients in need. This was what led her to write Pediatric Ward and participate in Yomiuri Shimbun's contest: an effort to find other ways of publicizing issues within nursing that didn't require leaving her patients.

Book version of Pediatric Ward featuring Kaori Momoi.

After hearing that the entirety of the Kanebo Human Special series was sponsored by a large corporation, one may assume that their intent was purely profit-driven, which may have been the case later, but from what I can gather it sounds like the production of Pediatric Ward was a matter of personal investment over profits. Several people who worked on getting the novel onto television screens were concerned that its subject matter would be too off-putting, but the Kanebo director whose idea it was to adapt the work told his production team to basically just do the thing without considering ratings (absolutely anathema for TV networks in Japan; see Yoshiki Onoda getting salty about it). 

The script for the TV adaptation was written by Akira Hayazaki (real name Yoshisuke Tomita), a prolific screenwriter who was apparently very good friends with Tora-san's Kiyoshi Atsumi. Hayasaka himself has been depicted in docudramas twice, played by Ken Ishiguro and Kei Yamamoto. As for the movie's director, Shintaro Sobue, I can say basically nothing; he seems to have worked in television for at least thirty years (between 1968 and 1998) but no biographical information about him has come to light in my research. Sobue may also have directed Hirata in Downtown Story, but Downtown Story is unfortunately one of a few series where I've been unable to determine how often or when Hirata appeared in them, so it's possible they never crossed paths.

The score - which is, to be honest, weird as hell; I was getting Vangelis vibes - was done by Jun Fukamachi, a fairly well-known synth/jazz composer who collaborated with Casiopea. There doesn't seem to have been any separate release of his score, which is too bad; it's great.

Pediatric Ward was released to VHS in 1987 (also sponsored by Kanebo); this remains its only home media release and tapes seem to be very expensive from the few I've seen up for sale or auction. I'm not sure about re-broadcasts - I found one source that seemed to suggest networks didn't want to re-air this due to its subject matter, but that source was most likely only speculating.

Normally here is where I'd say "That's about all I can give you for this one" and end the post, but I've actually got an issue of Kinema Junpo on order that contains a review of Pediatric Ward. I will have to add that in after this post has already been published because it's not in my hands yet (you know how it is with Neokyo), so watch this space if that sounds vaguely interesting to you.

(And, yes, this is going in my Crazy Cats tag.)

"Zero Pilot" Goes West

Today we're going to take a look at this somewhat odd VHS release of Toho's 1976 Zero Pilot, originally titled Ozora no Samurai ("Samurai of the Sky"). The reason why I say that this is odd is because the English-dubbed tape pictured above is the only physical release of this movie in the United States. You can get a Japanese DVD for relatively cheap, but if you don't speak any Japanese and want to watch it, your only option is to endure the dub.

So the main thing to know about this movie is that it's based off of the life of former flying ace Saburo Sakai. That this film was (at least at one time) readily available to an English-speaking audience is somewhat apropos, considering that Sakai's life and wartime activities were brought to such an audience in 1957 via Samurai!, an autobiography ghostwritten by Martin Caidin. The reliability of Samurai! has been called into question, and Sakai himself states that the 64 kills Caidin ascribes to him in the book - a number also given on the back of the VHS box - is not an accurate reflection of his actual record. I should emphasize, however, that Zero Pilot isn't based on any specific work by Sakai, but rather a kind of general overview of his life. 

Although we're mostly looking at the overseas release of this movie and not its production history, I would be remiss not to mention that the film was financed by Taikan Productions. Taikan was ostensibly a production company, but really it was a religious organization formed as an offshoot of Tenka Ikka no Kai ("One Family Under Heaven"), a company founded by a dude named Kenichi Uchimura that was absolutely, 100% a pyramid scheme. This kind of thing was getting to be such an issue in Japan in the late 1970s that new laws against pyramid schemes were enacted, resulting in the dissolution of Tenka Ikka no Kai and the jailing of its founder for three years.

Moving swiftly on... despite its incredibly shady financing, the people who worked on the actual movie did their absolute best, and the result is definitely up to Toho's reputation for remarkable special effects. Godzilla fans will recognize the name of Zero Fighter's SFX director, Koichi Kawakita, for whom this was his first time in a directorial role. Toho was really going through it in the 1970s, but even so, no footage or miniatures were reused, and Kawakita's attention to detail is what saves this from being a totally forgettable film. It's also kind of fun to see old Toho regulars like Ren Yamamoto and Yoshio Katsube still sticking it out even while the studio was faltering.

One area where Zero Pilot is unfortunately pretty forgettable, though, is within Akihiko Hirata's filmography. This is one of his "show up, look authoritative, explain some stuff, and then leave" roles, and his cumulative screen time amounts to around three minutes (I did count). His English dubber's vocal style is best described as "drunk and belligerent". The only really notable thing about this role is that it's the only time Hirata and Hiroshi Fujioka - best known by far as Takeshi Hongo AKA Kamen Rider Ichigo - ever crossed paths.

Hirata and Fujioka do share the screen directly in several scenes, which I find more amusing than I probably should. Here is an annotated screenshot that you can use to annoy your friends who don't watch tokusatsu.

Moving even more swiftly on, let me now begin talking about what I actually made this post to talk about: the tape.

So I guess the most pressing issue on my mind here is who exactly is responsible for that dub. Well, ultimately, the answer to that is Toho themselves, considering they exported an English-dubbed version of it in 1984 (trailer here). But in terms of who actually executed the dub, that would be the Matthew Oram/Barry Haigh group, a Hong Kong-based outfit who should be very familiar to Godzilla and Shaw Brothers fans. Among many other roles, Matthew Oram himself dubbed Dr. Mafune in the English version of Terror of Mechagodzilla. In Zero Pilot Oram dubs Hiroshi Fujioka as Saburo Sakai, but for whatever reason the export trailers feature Barry Haigh voicing Sakai instead.

What is very, very strange about this English dub is that it actually features alternate footage. Two entirely separate versions of the film's bookending scenes were shot, with the export version featuring Hiroshi Fujioka sporting a mustache and the Japanese cut having him 'stacheless. This kind of sounds like something I just made up, but you can see it for yourself here.

(...did that say "OBAN International Finance Group"?)

Although the dub itself was commissioned and produced closer to the film's 1976 release, it didn't make its way onto VHS until ten years later, in 1986. (Zero Pilot itself was first released to home media in 1983 with subtitles for the Dutch market.) The Combat Video VHS is what the kids refer to as a "big chungus" (Godzilla, King of the Monsters! for scale):

The 1986 Combat Video VHS release was not, however, the first time the dub was heard on American shores. The film ran throughout March of 1984 and into April at Los Angeles' Kokusai/Crenshaw theater. During this theatrical run it was shown on a double-bill with Nomugi Pass, which also features Hirata in a very small and somewhat silly role (all his character really does is get grossed out by how badly silk-spinning mills smell). I don't technically know for certain that Zero Pilot was shown dubbed, but considering Toho were responsible for exporting it and they'd already had a dubbed version sitting around since the '70s, it seems pretty likely to me that they would have given the dub to American distributors.

Most everything I've talked about so far is not terribly obscure information, but Combat Video itself is a bit harder to get a bead on. "Combat Video" is in fact not the name of a specific label, but an offshoot/series/arm/??? of a larger outfit called Video City Productions, an Oakland-based distributor active throughout the 1980s (specific dates elude me). Video City was no stranger to Japanese war films, also releasing Toei's Port Arthur (featuring our man as well) and The Imperial Japanese Empire in 1985. Other illustrious titles distributed by the company include Crazy Fat Ethel 2, SS Hell Camp, White Cannibal Queen and The Last Orgy of the Third Reich.

You know... I'm kind of just... starting to wonder if this tape might not actually have been officially licensed by Toho.

What in the who?

In the interest of brevity, and because I originally intended to restrict the scope of this post to just the Combat Video VHS, I'm not going to go over the film's release in other countries, but it actually did make it quite far. Just to give a quick summary: West Germany was the first to receive Zero Pilot a remarkable matter of weeks after its Japanese release, followed by Sweden and Finland the next year, Denmark in 1978, Portugal in 1979, Spain in 1980 and finally Hungary in 1991. I think it's fairly safe to say that despite being a Japanese product, this movie was at least in some way intended to be palatable to an international audience. We can tell that Toho was considering how it would be received overseas by the fact that they catered Hiroshi Fujioka's facial hair to their intended viewers' perceived taste.

On that note, I'll leave you, but before I do, let's just take a nice long look at the German DVD release of Zero Pilot, which for some unknown reason decided to give Akihiko Hirata top billing despite, as mentioned, only having three minutes of screen time.

I won't disclose whether or not I searched this up on eBay and bought a copy.

火曜サスペンス劇場「受験地獄」/ Kayō sasupensu gekijo: Juken jikogu / Exam Hell [1982]

Release date: Aired on January 12th, 1982

Director: Masaharu Segawa

Studio: Produced by Kokusei Broadcasting and NTV

Cast: Yōsuke Tagawa, Miki Jinbo, Akihiko Hirata, Mariko Tsubota, Masuo Iwamoto, Takeo Namai, Ryūsuke Ōbayashi, Kiyoshi Hitomi et al.

Availability: No home media release; extremely infrequent re-broadcasts. Available in full on Internet Archive.

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It's back-to-school season! Let's look at a very apropos TV movie.

Image credit kenta2005 on ameblo

Although the author went uncredited (at least in the 1982 version; the 2014 remake does seem to credit him), Exam Hell was based off of a short story by Kyutaro Nishimura, which first appeared in the March 30th edition of Shukan shōsetsu ("Weekly Novel"). Nishimura was a mystery author, best known for his Inspector Totsugawa series, and in writing Exam Hell he turned to the evergreen subject of Japan's grueling university entrance exams. Contemporary criticism describes the story as "[...]a high-quality social mystery that satirizes the strange social phenomenon of 'Exam Hell' and leads to a surprising ending".

While entrance exams are pretty hellish everywhere, the title of Exam Hell wasn't picked at random and nor did it originate with Nishimura: as a term it dates as far back as the 1930s, to the magazine Juken junpo ("Weekly Exam"), a publication geared towards students preparing to take entrance exams - any entrance exam, whether it be high school, university, or vocational. So what I'm trying to express here is that "Exam Hell" is not just a random combination of words, it's a neologism that the Japanese audience would likely have understood to be referencing a specific concept, the way English speakers might recognize a term like, oh, I don't know, let's say "shopping spree" or "terrible twos".

The story of the original work - which the 1982 film deviates from - focuses on a wealthy university student named Masahiko Kimura who decides to call in a fake bomb threat to his school after oversleeping, with the intent of forcing the exam to be re-scheduled. Kimura gets away with it initially, but later, his plot is discovered by another student, Koichiro Sato, who happened to see Kimura at the scene and connect him to the fake threat. Sato uses this information to blackmail Kimura, demanding at first 100,000 yen and then increasingly exorbitant sums. Eventually, Kimura becomes fed up, goes to Sato's house, and murders him as he's in the middle of writing another blackmail letter, but there's the twist: the contents of that last letter were an apology and Sato's plans for his own suicide due to guilt and his conviction that he'll never get into university.

Where the 1982 version differs (and don't read on if you plan to watch it) is that instead of murdering the other student - who is renamed Sayama in the film - Kimura tries to lure him out in public, fails, and goes to his house with a knife, intending to kill him, but arrives to find medics carting his body out after he had committed suicide. Sayama's demand is also adjusted to a somewhat higher amount of money, obviously.

If you'd like a really good (but short) summary of the 1982 version, see this suspense drama blog here (in Japanese).

Out of the many films that were broadcast as part of the Tuesday Suspense Theater timeslot between 1981 and 2005, viewers really, really liked Exam Hell. It made such an impact, in fact, that it was ranked #1 in NTV's poll of works that viewers most wanted to rewatch. To much fanfare (at least among those who make fanfare about such things), Exam Hell was remade in 2014, and the chief producer of that remake, Hitoshi Taihira, actually joined NTV because of the impression that the 1982 version made on him. This means that Exam Hell has the distinction of being one of the only movies within Hirata's filmography to have been remade.¹ (Said remake may or may not be BL; I was never entirely clear on that.)

Image credit hassy1936-gorin on livedoor.

In the 1982 Exam Hell, Hirata plays Masahiko Kimura's father² Senichi, with Masuo Iwamoto starring as his wife. We're lucky to actually have a few behind-the-scenes pictures from this one, which you can see on this Mariko Tsubota fanpage. In the remake, Hirata's role is filled by Katsumi Takahashi. Takahashi began his acting career well after Hirata had passed away, but his Wikipedia page notes that, growing up, he was a big TV watcher and specifically a big fan of Taiyo ni Hoero!, which Hirata had a fairly prominent recurring role on. One wonders how Takahashi might have felt about getting his role.

(Ryusuke Oki, who plays Sayama in the 1982 version, starred with another Onoda sibling when he played a similarly suspicious guy in 1983's Chitei no satsui, which features Yoshiko Otowa in a small role.)

Lot of graphic design choices going on here.

The 2014 remake is available on DVD and streaming on Hulu, but unfortunately our 1982 Exam Hell remains obscure. Some blessed soul did upload it to Internet Archive (and check out that watermark!), but it's not getting a lot of attention in the way of re-broadcasts despite the nostalgia for it. It has also never received a physical media or streaming release, as far as I'm currently aware. I've only been able to confirm broadcasts in 2008, 2024 and 2025, but it's not out of the question that there were others.

Having watched the 1982 Exam Hell, I can see why people liked it so much. Kimura and Sato/Sayama are fairly sympathetic characters, and have very understandable motives for what they're doing that are laid out clearly without getting ham-fisted or cheesy the way a lot of other Suspense Theater movies tend to. It's a good movie, but even more so - if this makes sense - I can imagine it being the kind of thing that would stick with someone if they watched it as a teenager or young adult in the 1980s.

You can also find an original song from the 1982 Exam Hell called Hakyoku no seishun ("Youth's Catastrophe") collected on a Tuesday Suspense Theater soundtrack album. No one has uploaded it online, but the CD is pretty cheap secondhand, so just gimme a minute and I'll have it here.

Anyway, that's about all I can give you for this obscure but apparently well-loved TV movie. We're lucky it's extant and watchable - the vast majority of Hirata's work in TV (and I do mean VAST MAJORITY) has been lost to time or draconian network reorganizations.

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1 That is, one of the only ones that have BEEN remade, not one of the only ones to BE a remake. The only other remakes I'm aware of are 2008's I Want To Be A Shellfish, 2007's The Family, and Sanjuro, also from 2007. (You could probably get more pedantic about this if you wanted to count all the film versions of Chushingura and the story of Musashi Miyamoto as "remakes", but I wouldn't consider those remakes, just adaptations.)

2 Which is ironic considering that in real life he was Masahiko's brother.

Nekotei Newsletter #2, Aug 1985 (Akihiko Hirata memorial doujinshi) - English Translation

I think you should all buckle up.

This is a translation of the memorial doujinshi published in 1985 by Nekotei Newsletter, which includes a few words at the beginning by Ishiro Honda and then two back-to-back essays by Motohide Katayama, the first of which your author was not entirely dry-eyed while transcribing. I originally posted about this doujinshi a few years back (wow, I was terser then; I should revamp that post a bit) and was delighted to finally get a saved search hit on it recently, so I got my hands on it as soon as I could.

I'll let this thing speak for itself, but suffice to say, as we've seen here and there over the course of this blog's existence, Hirata was very much beloved by both his fans and the people around him, and his death came as a huge tragedy, if not necessarily a shock, as he'd been ill for some time. It still is a tragedy 42 years later, but this doujinshi presents some really rare insight into the state of the fandom (as it were) at the time. And not to be a cornball or anything, but reading Katayama's essays felt like... is there an expression in any language that combines both "looking into a mirror" and "shaking hands emphatically with someone"? Because it was like that.

I should note that I have excluded the filmography section from translation since that is easily available elsewhere. This post will contain only the essays. I'm also including full scans; it's 16 pages, so you'll have to scroll quite a bit, but the translation is below. This is mostly a machine TL but I have checked it over to make sure it's reasonably accurate to the best of my abilities.

Before we move on, I just want to say that I don't think I can overstate the importance of Katayama's essay on television. Katayama was writing entirely from memory and notes that he had personally taken while looking at TV guides, and he mentions several titles that - as far as I can tell - have literally no presence on the internet at all. Meaning: if it were not for Katayama having kept notes throughout the 1970s and writing them up in 1985 for this doujinshi, all record of Hirata having been in these specific titles Katayama mentions would be lost. It keeps me at night to think about how much else is out there that has been lost to time.

Anyway.

Unless I'm mistaken this portrait was based off of this photo.

Ishiro Honda's tribute.

"Thinking of Mr. H..." by Motohide Katayama, page 1

"Thinking of Mr. H..." by Motohide Katayama, page 2

"Thinking of Mr. H..." by Motohide Katayama, page 3

Katayama's TV essay, page 1

Katayama's TV essay, page 2

Katayama's TV essay, page 3

Editor's note

From Ishiro Honda

It is a great loss that we have lost Hirata; I find it deeply regrettable.

He appeared in various films of mine, ranging from Godzilla to Terror of Mechagodzilla, but his role in the original Godzilla was particularly significant. The young Hirata's sharp, intelligent appearance was perfectly suited for the role of a brilliant scientist who lived like a recluse. Acting is a human endeavor, so if an actor is averse to monster or special-effects films, you simply can't expect a good performance. While there are certain roles that demand a specific actor (and we do cast newcomers), I consistently relied on a core group that included Hirata and [Yoshio] Tsuchiya. Hirata, for his part, seemed to genuinely enjoy appearing in my films.

He was an actor with an honest, straightforward approach to performance; he would express exactly what I had in mind, making him a wonderful actor to work with. He memorized his lines quickly, and I have almost no memory of ever struggling to direct him.

Although we rarely had the chance to go out for drinks together in town, he was always the first to join in the fun whenever [we] gathered at my home. He was a serious man who was always considerate of others, so I could always rely on him when it came to organizing things.¹

May [he] rest in peace.

Thinking of Mr. H...

[By Motohide Katayama]

"They told me they'd add lines and make it a more important role, so I agreed. But when it came down to it, nothing had changed at all. That Sawako Ariyoshi, she really is something else..."

It has been a little over a month since Mr. H passed away - the man who shared those words with me when I visited his dressing room during the revival of Ranbu at the Imperial Theater. Hearing the sudden news of that talented authoress [Ariyoshi]'s death recently, I found myself - however cliche it may sound - deeply contemplating the transience and fragility of human life. I also recall something else Mr. H said back then: "I'm a movie actor at heart, you see... I get bored if I have to perform the same thing for weeks on end." He also spoke of his future work: "I have two or three stage productions scheduled for the rest of the year." Yet, that production of Ranbu in February 1983 - during which some criticized Ariyoshi's unusual directorial style - turned out to be Mr. H's final stage appearance, as well as the sixth and last time I ever met him in person. He fell ill before he could play the villain in the special Fujiko Yamamoto production schedule for September; after a brief period of improvement around the New Year, he passed away on July 25th, 1984.

I almost certainly first recognized Mr. H as an actor back in my kindergarten days. For a child whose dreams were filled with monsters and war, movies - especially Toho's bright, entertaining films - were the ultimate form of amusement during that twilight era of the late 1960s and early '70s. I cannot say for sure how many films I saw on the big screen or television, but somewhere along the way, I found myself drawn to Mr. H. It wasn't Yoshio Tsuchiya, Tadao Nakamaru, [Hideyo] Amamoto, Seizaburo Kawazu, Susumu Fujita or Jun Tazaki who captured my heart. The process defies words; one simply comes to like the person. Any attempt at a rational explanation feels superficial - a distortion of something that exists in a realm beyond language. It was akin to what Motoori Norinaga called "mono no aware" [...] and there the feeling remained, fixed and constant.

The difficulty inherent in being an actor lies precisely in this realm. Moreover, only poetry can truly hold its ground here; both praise and condemnation are essentially directed at one's own fantasies, unable to spill over into the outside world. Having written this, I will sidestep the ultimate, difficult question of why I like him; suffice it to say that my deep attachment can be understood as a clear sense of "fandom".

Scouring the TV listings in Weekly TV Guide for Mr. H's name had been a habit of mine from elementary school right up until recently. Dissatisfied with this one-way connection, I eventually wrote a fan letter during the autumn of my fifth-grade year. When no reply came despite my long wait, I tried sending another - but thinking that a messy, scrawled note from a child wouldn't work, I asked my mother to add a few lines this time.

"Motohide, I hear you always watch my shows. I understand you served as a class representative. [I was] class rep during the first term [of sixth grade] and the experience of leading a class is incredibly useful when you grow up. Do your best to become class representative again in the sixth grade. To that end, try not to watch too much TV; cultivating a habit of reading books is more important. Build up your body. And always remain a fine student of L'ECOLE DE L'ETOILE DU MATIN². Right now, I'm filming the movie Terror of Mechagodzilla, it's scheduled for release during the spring break in March. As for TV, I appear in shows like Taiyo ni Hoero!, Rise to the Heavens³, The Family Game, and Onihei Hankacho, though not every week. Please give my regards to your mother. It's cold out, so take care not to catch a cold."

That was the full text of the letter, and the joy of confirming it was in his own handwriting was a feeling I would experience only a few times in my life - far surpassing the emotion of passing a university entrance exam.

My first face-to-face meeting with him took place four months later. It was for a play newly written by Koji Toita titled Legend of the Saints, a production featuring the unusual casting of Eiko Muramatsu and Senri Sakurai as a young couple. Mr. H appeared on stage as a teacher at a girls' school. I must have been trembling as I stood at the entrance to the dressing room after the performance. I can still vividly recall the sensation of my head burning hot with the tension of crossing a line I wasn't supposed to cross. Mr. H came out when called, still wearing his stage makeup and a yukata.

"Glad you could make it. Come on in," he said, guiding me to a corner at the far end of the large dressing room shared by the male actors. The moment one comes face-to-face with the "real thing" - the person who is truly significant to you - is a time of both intense excitement and profound exhaustion. I cannot recall exactly what was said; all I remember [from the moment] is the sight of the couple Keisuke Sunagawa and Nobuyo Oyama standing near the entrance.

For the roughly ten years that followed, I maintained a nodding acquaintance with Mr. H - and to use a rather trite expression, that time felt both long and short. Our second meeting took place not long after, on July 31st, 1975, at the final performance of the Imperial Theater's summer production of The Sound of Music, starring Kaoru Yodo as Maria and Tetsuro Sagawa as Captain von Trapp, with Asao Koike and Kojiro Kusanagi in supporting roles. Mr. H, who played the Nazi admiral [von Schreiber], appeared in the audience just before the curtain rose; dressed in a sports shirt and holding a portable cassette recorder, he spotted me and strode over. I was taken aback. "My scene isn't until the very end anyway," he explained. "There are so many great songs in this show, so I thought I'd sit out here and record them right up to the last minute". As I watched his sturdy figure - after shaking my hand - disappear into a corner of the auditorium, I found myself grinning, filled with genuine delight. The Mr. H I knew was a truly good man in the best sense of the word - someone whose earnest, gentle nature was imbued with a serious intelligence. He was a man who never failed to show thoughtful consideration, even to an obscure fan like me - let alone to his regular colleagues. I wish he had taken more [time off]; it might have made things a little easier on him. When I recall the Mr. H who always treated me with such sincere warmth, the words spoken by Koji Tsuruta at [his] wake move me deeply, bringing tears to my eyes.

At 2:50 PM on July 27th, I pressed my palms together in prayer for a moment outside the gates of Honganji Wadabori Betsuin, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered; then, feeling strangely hollow, I walked toward Shimotakaido Station. I happened upon a secondhand bookstore and wandered inside. The proprietress at the counter seemed to be watching a live broadcast of the funeral; I could hear the reporter using the standard phrases reserved for such sad occasions. A greengrocer who supplied the shop arrived and struck up a conversation with her. "Looks like something's going on over there today." "It's Yoshiko Kuga's husband." "Oh, really? Remind me, what kind of man was he?" A portrait of [Hirata] appeared on the television screen. The greengrocer leaned forward intently to get a better look. "Oh, right, this guy. He was on TV a lot until recently, wasn't he?" "That's him. It's such a shame, he was still young."

Yes, he was young. I had assumed he would live forever, but I supposed that was wishful thinking. There is a strange, stark quality to the way a person simply ceases to be. Right now, I have exactly ten postcards from Mr. H beside me. Eight of them are New Year's cards; the one from 1984 bears the printed red greeting "Happy New Year," followed by a message written in his characteristically elegant handwriting: "I underwent surgery for a duodenal ulcer in September, so I'm taking some time to recuperate". It was a long convalescence - too long to take the message at face value - yet I couldn't simply dismiss it, either.

"He's been getting steadily better lately," people had been saying. That comment from So Yamamura, his senior from the University of Tokyo, formed the basis for how Mr. H was regarded in his later years. Indeed, Mr. H was the sort of actor whose depth and richness only grew with age. He was someone with a promising future ahead of him. The day when his renown as an accomplished actor would eclipse that of [Yoshiko Kuga] was truly close at hand. Yet fate is ever cruel, and that future was sealed off forever.

(Note: This piece was drafted last September and has now been revised. My grief remains unchanged.)

Motohide Katayama's TV Essay

It goes without saying that, like many other film actors, Akihiko Hirata shifted the primary focus of his career to television during the late 1960s. Here, I would like to present a record of Hirata's television appearances - to the best of my knowledge - as a reference for readers. Please not that I am currently 22 years old; while I believe I have covered the period from 1974 onwards reasonably well, there are likely significant omissions regarding the 1980s, a time for which I did not keep detailed notes. I ask for your understanding.

Everyone is likely familiar with Ultra Q and other tokusatsu shows, but his role as Mr. K was truly excellent. He appeared in Daitetsujin 17 for exactly one cour - thirteen episodes starting April 1, 1977. He appeared in episode 12 of Taiyo ni Hoero! as Toshio Kawamoto, a corrupt detective; he delivered a compelling performance in this tragic role, portraying a man who brings about his own ruin through entanglements with organized crime. Later, coinciding with the arrival of Yusaku Matsuda's character, Hirata returned to the series as Nishiyama, an inspector from the Metropolitan Police Department. He transferred to the role of the Nanamagari Precinct Chief, appearing in over forty⁴ episodes and becoming known for his shouting outbursts. Episode 88 in particular was essentially a showcase for [Chief Nishiyama]. There was even a storyline three or four years ago involving a bomb planted at his home.

In other police dramas, he frequently played the role of the criminal. He appeared in Shigeru Amachi's License to Kill on July 12, 1975, and February 19, 1976; playing a politician's secretary in the former and a yakuza executive in the latter. He made four appearances in Jiro Sakagami's Detective at Dawn (December 3rd, 1975; June 30 and September 15, 1976; and September 1, 1977) and played a public prosecutor in Tomorrow's Detective (November 29, 1978). In Running to the Dawn (starring Saburo Shinoda and Kenji Takaoka), he played Keiichiro Tokimura, a company president who orchestrates a staged kidnapping (February 22, 1977). He also appeared in Special Mobile Investigation Unit as a high-ranking police official.

He appeared as a semi-regular, playing the same role of a bureau chief at Haruta Bank as in the film version - the TV adaptation of The Family Game (1974, Asahi Broadcasting). Incidentally, while Yumeji Tsukioka played Daisuke Manpyo's legitimate wife in the movie, Yoshiko Kuga took over the role for the TV series.

In 1974, he appeared as a parent in the elementary school-themed drama Rise to the Heavens, starring Hitoshi Nakayama and Toshio Kurosawa (episodes aired November 2 and 9). Around the same time, he was a regular in the 30-minute daytime soap opera A Wife's Mistake, playing a husband who suspects his wife of infidelity; his character eventually dies after driving drunk and plunging off a cliff. He also played a husband in Yoko Tsukasa's daytime drama Skin of the Mountain (1981) and was a regular in Haruko Mabuchi's River of Flames.

He was an indispensable figure in period dramas as well. Early in his career he was a regular as police constable Shunzo Sasaki in Kikugoro Onoe's Young Lord Samurai's Detective Chronicles, and also appeared in Koshiro [Matsumoto]'s Onihei Hankacho. He had a long association with the Onihei series, appearing as a superior official (a junior councilor) in both the 1975 series starring Tetsuro Tamba and the more recent version starring Kinnosuke [Nakamura], (appearing in the former on May 14, May 28 and August 27). In the 1974 Kurama Tengu [TV series], he played the role of Katamono Komakine, the Kyoto deputy, in the three party Strange Tale of the Mountain Party arc (October 30, November 5 and November 12); his final scene showed him struggling after being tied to a pillar by Tengu. Masaya Takahashi played the Mountain Party leader Matsuyoshi Imamura, and Toshio Sugie served as director.

In Atsuo Nakamura's Kogarashi Monjiro, he played the yakuza boss Kanpachi, meeting a sordid and undignified end. He exuded a menacing presence as the corrupt physician Yoshioka Dogen in Toshu with Broken Umbrella Villain Hunting (Jan 27 1976) and as the corrupt constable Jinjuro Akazawa in Whirlwind of Edo II (June 24 1976, directed by Yoshiki Onoda).

In the Meiji-era drama Ronin of the Wasteland, starring Toshiro Mifune (Sept 15. 1976), he played Taketo Yamakawa, a Choshu-faction samurai shot dead by Go Wakabayashi. In the final episode of Hidden Eyes - which also featured Mifune alongside Toru Emori - he played Shuzen Hattori, a man plotting his lord's assassination with the help of a henchman played by Hideyo Amamoto. In New Zatoichi, he appeared as the yakuza boss Denbei of Shikagawa (Feb 7 1977). Other roles included appearances in Detective Stories of Denshichi (July 19, 1977), Falcons of Edo (March 28, 1978 as the Chief Censor Hara), Whirlpool of Edo (July 6, 1978) and Oedo Investigation Network (Feb 7 1979 as a Junior Councilor) - the latter being a rare merchant role, though the character was a corrupt magistrate.

He gave a fine performance as the sinister Tenmaya in Falcons of Edo IV (April 20, 1975). In Mito Komon, he played a virtuous senior retainer who is cut down almost immediately after appearing (Aug 14, 1978). In Fangs of Edo, he played the ultimate villain in the final episode; commanding a henchman played by Rinichi Yamamoto, he was spectacularly cut down by Mifune, delivering a memorable final line: "You are nothing but beasts"...

He also appeared in Teruhiko Saigo's A Tough Man, playing Yoshizumi - a department manager at a regional trading company - with a touch of earnest humor (appearing in four episodes; Oct 5, 12, 19 and 26, 1975). In another drama by writer Shigeo Hanato, Hanaborou, he played the father-in-law of Yoko Shimada's character, a man who meets an untimely death (appearing in two episodes, Jan 5 and 12, 1976). Appeared twice in Toshiba Sunday Theater. In Tobidashi (May 23 1976), his role was a doctor; the character watches over the budding romance between Keiko Sekine and Ryu Manatsu. His next appearance was in Snow Waltz, where his role wad the male lead opposite Mitsuko Kusabue. Both productions were made by regional stations.

He was a semi-regular in Matsuo Kayo's Judgement (1978), playing a judge. He also held a semi-regular role as a police chief, appearing in at least seven episodes. Hideki Takahashi appeared as a guest star in this rather melodramatic suspense series (April 1, 1977). Other credits include Ken Utsui's Rose Strait and Momoe Yamaguchi's Red Shock, in which he appeared [in four or more scenes] as the stoic JAL captain flying Momoe.

For NHK, he appeared as Kiyoshi Miyazaki, president of Mitsui & Co., in After the War: Dismantling the Zaibatsu (July 28, 1977). Subsequently, he took on roles in documentary-style productions, such as the Director of the Minister's Secretariat at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in NHK Special: The Day of Zero Imported Food (March 23, 1978) and a role in Saturday Drama: Shimoyama Incident (July 11, 1978). He also appeared in the historical drama Burning Grass, playing the Kamakura-aligned court noble Ichijo Yoshiyasu (appearing in three or four episodes). He played the role of Futaro Shiwa-Butsu in Blood Relatives (based on the novel by Hitomi Yamaguchi and starring Keiju Kobayashi).

He made guest appearances in Kumiko Oba's Comet-san and Yukio Aoshima's Mean Old Lady. He played a company president in [...] Star Dash Number 1 (starring Ikue Sakakibara and Yoshimi Iwasaki). He played the king of a certain nation in Monkey (starring Masaaki Sakai and Masako Natsume) and [appeared in the second season]. In the nighttime melodrama When a Woman Turns Around (starring Yoko Yamamoto), he was a regular, playing the ex-husband; a weak-willed man who did whatever his father (played by Yoshi Kato) told him to do (1977). In Yoshiko Mita’s Unforgettable Days (1979), he played a managing director pursuing Mita’s husband (Takao Inoue), who had vanished with company secrets and committed suicide by jumping from the office building in the final episode.

In the four-part spring 1979 series Wide Labyrinth, he played a managing director who is promoted to company president following the death of the incumbent (a fictional event). He also played a "parachuted" executive in So Kuramoto’s Shadows of Sand (where he portrayed an effeminate personnel manager) and appeared in Oryu-san, Fujiko Yamamoto’s ...Nani ga?, the role of Ishiguro (a gentleman back from France) in Mitsuko Mori’s Why? First Love South Wind, and Jinpachi Nezu’s Lovers, all in 1980.

In 1981, his roles included an advertising manager for a lingerie company in Yukiyo Toju’s Rainbow Forest, an advertising manager for a watch company in Ryoko Nakano’s Cheers to the Bad Wives of Japan!, and a pastor in Kaori Momoi’s Downtown Story. Then came the 1983 Yumie Hiraiwa drama series Lake Festival.

For some reason, nothing comes to mind regarding 1982.

At some point, he also made two or three appearances in a show called Kanasaka.

Next were the long-form dramas on commercial networks; he likely had a fair amount of work here, but since I kept no notes, I cannot be certain of the details. In 1983, he played Mashita Nagamori, one of the Five Commissioners, in TV Asahi’s New Year’s drama Sekigahara. In the Kaimaku Wide Theater slot, he played university professor Ryokichi Takigawa (showing off his mountaineering skills) in [The Mystery of the Broken Rope] (originally aired Jan 27, 1979). In Full Moon Murder Case and Don't Lay A Hand on the Bride (aired Feb 24, 1979, and June 27, 1981, respectively), he gave a powerful performance as an eccentric publishing company president with Koji Tsuruta as his chief subordinate; Aiko Morishita played his wife.

Then, in Serial Killer Torima, he played an investigation section chief; and in a police drama starring Tatsuya Mihashi and Kanako Higuchi, he played a criminal, featuring a memorable scene where he meets secretly with Kyoko Enami. In Finger of the Earth, he played an ambitious university professor, and in Wilderness of Youth (aired Jan. 2, 1978), he took on the role of a Diet member who shares a bed scene with Kiwako Taichi.

For Nippon TV’s Tuesday Suspense, a crime drama series featuring stars like Koji Tsuruta and Yuko Natori, he played an investigation section chief. In TBS’s Saturday Suspense, he appeared as a superior officer in two installments of the series starring the late Shinsuke Minami as a detective. He also appeared in TV Tokyo’s New Year’s 12-hour historical dramas, such as After That, Musashi (playing Matsudaira Izu-no-kami) and Isoroku Yamamoto. Oh yes, he also had a regular role as a vice-principal in a youth-oriented drama from the past starring Yosuke Natsuki or Raita Ryu (airing Sunday nights at 8:00 on Nippon TV). Then there was an action series - I can't recall the exact title - featuring a theme song by Dick Mine; in it, he played a Diet member who gets betrayed and eliminated by Ko Nishimura. Reiko Niwa played his only daughter.

I believe he appeared as the president of a public corporation in the first season of The Hangman, and later became a regular in New Hangman. Shingo Yamashiro, who appeared as a regular in that show, also ended his career playing a comic relief role, as everyone knows. His gaunt cheeks in his later years were a painful sight.

Moving on to non-drama appearances: first and foremost, there was Pittashi Kan-Kan. Along with the Godzilla boom, this program contributed significantly to reshaping the public image of Akihiko Hirata and garnering him renewed appreciation. He appeared on the show nearly a hundred times between 1975 and 1979, and even served as host as a substitute for Hiroshi Kume. He also displayed his brilliant answering skills on Quiz Derby (August 28, 1976) and appeared several times on Association Game. On Thanks for the Meal, he famously prepared "French toast à la Yoshiko." Then there was Tetsuko's Room, where he appeared several times with his wife. He also appeared on Let's Meet at Three, specifically the "Reunion" segment, and Guess It Right on March 10, 1979, as well as Saegusa's Roaring Laughter Salon on Saturday mornings. He also appeared on programs hosted by Fujiko Yamamoto; specifically, Fashionable and You at Three o'Clock on the same day: September 18, 1978. He even introduced Nordic cuisine from Shibuya on the show Cooking Heaven (March 20, 1976). In 1983, as part of the "Godzilla Revival Festival" campaign, he appeared on Wide Wide Fuji and even NHK’s NC9, where he expounded on the true nature of Godzilla. I also recall him appearing on Morning Jumbo Madam to promote the release of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

There was that memorable joint appearance with Beat Takeshi and Tamori, as well as his roles on We are the Funny People and Today is the Best.

(Note) He provided the Japanese dubbing for the villain in the Columbo episode "A Friend in Deed" [How to Dial a Murder]. Akihiko Hirata was by no means an ordinary actor; rather, he possessed a personality that was perhaps too distinctive. His work surely served as a rebuke to the fools (in his family and elsewhere) who branded him as "nondescript."

Editor's Note

A year has gone by since the passing of Akihiko Hirata. During this time, there have been (at least to my knowledge) no publications or magazine articles commemorating [his achievements]; this deeply regrettable fact has surely left and indelible mark on the minds of those who truly cared for him. Of course, it may be too much to expect good sense from the stubborn and narrow-minded world of journalism; after all, they are merely the vanguard of mass manipulation. Yet, even the wisest of sages never forgets a betrayal. It is to strike a blow against this silence that I present Volume 2 of Nekotei Newsletter to the world. While it is a profound honor to compile this memorial issue for the deeply admired Hirata, I cannot help but regret that, inevitably, given my own laziness and lack of ability, the result is nothing more than a crude little booklet.⁵ I would be happy if it could, at the very least, quench some of the thirst felt by those who loved Hirata so dearly.

Furthermore, fully aware that it may be presumptuous, I humbly dedicate this publication to the late Akihiko Hirata. I received the cooperation of many people in compiling this issue, and I am deeply grateful to them all. I spoke with Ishiro Honda on April 21st, the day before the recording sessions for his film Ran began, he kindly made time for me despite it being such a rare day off [for him]. I am deeply apologetic for constantly making such unreasonable demands of him.

I also received immeasurable assistance from [Motohide] Katayama, a friend of Hirata's for over a decade, who contributed two articles and let me program booklets from stage productions in which Hirata had appeared; this publication would not have been possible without him. Finally, I asked Kazuhiro Hanayama to handle the design and the lettering for the section titles; I would like to make special mention of the fact that, since we could not use a photograph for the cover this time, he created original lettering for it as well. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Tatsu Mori, who handled the photomechanical processing despite his busy schedule; Nobutaka Suzuki, who assisted with some of the proofreading, and Ichiro Omata, who helped prepare the camera-ready copy.

While compiling the list of films in which Hirata appeared, I was struck by the sheer number of works I had not yet seen. For instance, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will likely never truly appreciate the full measure of Gertrude Lawrence's talent. Yet, Hirata was a magnificent screen actor; in seeking out the films I have yet to watch, it is still possible to catch glimpses of his artistry as a performer; facets of his talent that remain little known. Though [he] has ascended to the heavens, the radiance in his eyes as they appear on the silver screen will never fade. (July 15, 1985)

_____

Footnotes:

1) The specific word Honda uses here is "sewanin" which means sponsor, mediator, caretaker, that sort of thing.

2) I do not know what this means in this context. Writing a letter to a fifth-grader including a phrase in French might be singularly the most Akihiko Hirata thing I have ever heard.

3) Ten made agare [天まであがれ]. This one is weird - he himself confirms he was in the show, but I can find literally no evidence for it whatsoever.

4) My list says 33 episodes, but one of us may be wrong.

5) Editor, that "crude little booklet" currently resides in my house with candles around it.