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.

____________

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.

From Odo Island to the Big Island: 70 Years of Godzilla in Hawai'i

Last year, we celebrated 70 years of the first Godzilla film, and next year, we'll celebrate 70 years of its American recut, Godzilla! King of the Monsters. But this year was the 70th anniversary of something that, I would argue, is even more interesting: the opening of the Hawaiian run of the original Godzilla. The newspaper clippings I'm going to present below are the very first English-language reviews of the film, and the version of it that critics were watching was uncut, un-Raymond-Burred, and English-subtitled. 

I'm going to do my best to cover some of Hawai'i's rich theater heritage in this post, but for a wider exploration of the subject, you absolutely must read Lowell Angell's Theaters of Hawai'i.

Part I: Hawaii Times

On October 3rd, the first rumblings began... a tiny ad on the second page of the paper indicated that something unusual was on its way. In recent years, Hawaii Times had reviewed contemporary American sci-fi and horror movies: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invaders from Mars, etc, but the Japanese films that were being shown at the three theaters covered by the paper's film department (the Kokusai/International, the Toyo, and the Nippon) were markedly different. Mother dramas were overwhelmingly popular, as were musical comedies starring the likes of Hibari Misora and Chiemi Eri, and if there was any hint of genre fare, it was in the form of kaidan films; many starring Takako Irie, all jidaigeki. This was the first modern Japanese monster movie, set in modern times, and it must have come as a shock.

On opening night, Hawaii Times previewed the film. In both the preview and the review from a few days later, the face of the film is Takashi Shimura, the only member of the cast who Hawaiian audiences would have been familiar with. HT's film reviewer, James T. Hamada, conjectures that the film's cast of young unknowns may have contributed to the theater being fairly empty during the premiere. (If I may interject, Hamada had seen Akihiko Hirata three months earlier in Itsuko and Her Mother, and Hamada's review marks the first time Hirata's name appeared in an English-language publication.)

Us Godzilla fans tend to have great respect for Raymond Burr for reprising his Steve Martin role in Godzilla 1985 because he genuinely cared for Godzilla, despite warnings that it would be bad for his image, and I don't think it would be too much of a reach to say we could probably feel the same way about Takashi Shimura. I don't know Shimura's personal feelings about being in the movie, but without a recognizable actor like him, Godzilla's initial appeal in the West may have been even lower.

Hamada's review of the film appeared in the October 6th edition, in a much longer column than was usually given to film reviews. It is fascinating. Hamada had some qualms about the movie's realism in practical terms, but praised its special effects right off the bat.

The most interesting thing to me here is that Hamada seems to understand that the film intends to present Godzilla as one of a species, and accordingly he uses the word "godzilla" without capitalization and as a plural, the way one would say "dogs" or "cats". Hamada comes away from the movie with the idea that "a godzilla" is something like a made-up species of dinosaur. The takeaway: Godzilla is not a character yet. Godzilla is just a big animal.

As someone who has not infrequently been the only person seeing a movie, when Hamada says "70 or 80 persons" attended the screening, that sounds like a fair amount to me. But the Kokusai could seat 1,200 people. Announced in 1939 and opening officially in 1941 with design by Hego Fuchino, it was one of many theaters in Honolulu, sitting in the 'A'ala Park district right next door to the Toyo, which also showed Japanese films, including some produced by Toho. After and during the war the theater was often referred to as the "International", the English translation of its name.

photo courtesy of Edna Kijinami, from the flickr account of Chie Gondo

The Kokusai, at its opening, was owned by Sanji Abe, president of Kokusai Kogyō. In September of 1942, Abe was arrested and placed into an internment camp for allegedly owning a Japanese flag. He was transferred between three different internment camps until being paroled in 1944 and released from parole in February of 1945. He would return to promoting and importing Japanese films after the war.

Part II: Honolulu Star-Advertiser

I include this as it does fit the scope of this article, but I should note that the balloon was not a strictly Hawaiian story. The above clipping was actually taken from the October 19th, 1954 edition of The Plain Speaker, published in Hazleton, Pennsylvania; Honolulu Star-Bulletin re-ran it in December of that year. You will notice that the publication date is several weeks before even the first limited-release screenings of Godzilla within Japan. This means that Americans were aware of Godzilla from the very, very beginning. Photos of the balloon must have made their way from Tokyo to American newspaper offices within days.

As for Honolulu Star-Advertiser's coverage of the film itself, it was fairly extensive. William W. Davenport writes about the film after having seen a showing at the Kokusai, the same theater featured above. This clipping is from the October 7th, 1955 edition.

Although this article feels more sensational than Hamada's, several takeaways can be made. Davenport, for whatever reason, does not seem to be aware of the Romanized spelling "Godzilla" and uses "Gojira" throughout his review. He baldly spoils the film's ending but refuses to describe the Oxygen Destroyer in detail. We also learn that an advertising short film played after Godzilla: a "musical documentary on the soft drink industry" produced by your friend and mine Bireley's. I have to say, I can't really tell what the critic makes of the film itself, but he seems impressed with Godzilla as a monster.

Part III: Hawaii Tribune-Herald

The first Hawaii Tribune-Herald mention of the film is used on Wikipedia to claim that the earliest English usage of the name "Godzilla" occurred on November 20th, 1955, which, as we have seen from the Hawaii Times material above, is not true at all.

Not to get personal or anything, but when I read "Walked home afterward under comforting stars, never so big and brilliant. Hua caught up with me presently. 'I saw Godzilla, too,' he said." I wanted to cry. Imagine walking home under the beautiful night sky in Hawai'i with your friend after being one of the first people to watch Godzilla outside of Japan.

This second mention is vanishingly small, only an ad, but it introduces us to our next theater. I want to mention the Mooheau Theater because it only existed for a scant six years after showing Godzilla and was then destroyed in a tsunami. As this ad is from November 5th, either the writer of the above review saw the film in another theater, or was recollecting his experience after the film had left local theaters. The author would not have seen it at the Kokusai as this paper was published in Hilo, not Honolulu.

Because the theater was destroyed such a long time ago, most information I have about it is anecdotal. It apparently existed as far back as the late 1910s, and it seems that it began showing Filipino and Japanese imports sometime around the 1940s. One Lawrence Akutagawa writes in a Google Groups post (that I'm really not even sure should be public) that the Mooheau catered to "more formal Japanese dance" and was, like the Kokusai, situated on a street with several other theaters.

Wreckage of Mooheau Street, credit to Craig Miyamoto

Part IV: Further Historical Context

Most theaters during this time were single-screen. Movies rotated in and out of Hawaii's theaters relatively quickly, since, basically, if you can't show a bunch of movies at the same time, you have to show a bunch of movies in rapid succession instead. From my own research, I found that some films would become massively popular (such as Hideo Ōba's Always in My Heart, which was evidently a smash success) and be held over or return for several repeat runs, but this was fairly rare during the 1953-1955 years that my research focused on. It's frustrating that we can't get a clear picture of attendance for Godzilla during its original run, and anything I come up with would be total conjecture, but if we assume that attendance was low at the Kokusai and probably much lower at the Mooheau (Hilo circa 1950 had some 200,000+ less people living there than Honolulu), allowing for a week-long run in both theaters would give us numbers perhaps in the low- to mid-thousands.

I unfortunately couldn't drag up any interior photos of either the Kokusai or the Mooheau, but this is the Waikiki Theater, which sat 1,353 people, and so would have been a roughly similar size to the Kokusai.

The interior of Honolulu's Toyo theater. From State Historic Preservation Office.

Another solution to not having multiple screens within one theater was to just have a lot of theaters. It may seem odd to us today to think of a street with several movie theaters on it, sometimes right next door to each other, but again, we have to consider that these theaters were single-screen and often specific film companies would have vested interest in them - so one theater would specialize in Daiei films and rarely show anything else, or another theater would frequently host traditional dance performances along with movies, et cetera.

(I am, out of necessity, focusing on theaters that showed Japanese films mostly or exclusively, but I don't want to make it sound like these were the only theaters in Hawai'i; due to its incredibly diverse population, theaters showed imported films in a multitude of languages, as well as your usual run-of-the-mill American oaters and sweeping melodramas.)

Another early Japanese theater, the Honolulu-za, ca. late 1930s-early 1940s. From Hawai'i State Archives.

One last thing to consider is that the concept of a movie having English subtitles was, at least in this specific time and place, fairly new. From context it seems like the bulk of the audience for imported Japanese features during the early- to mid-1950s were people who could actually understand Japanese - unlike today, when it's easy for anybody who doesn't speak a lick of the language to see subtitled features in a theater. The following is an article from mid-1954 concerning the recent introduction of English subtitles to the Japanese features playing at the Nippon Theater, and it takes possibly the most logical tack towards subtitles that I've ever heard: if you don't need 'em, don't read 'em.

Therefore, despite what may seem like a very small and limited run, Godzilla arrived at a time where the odds were actually more in its favor in terms of reaching a larger audience than they may have been just a few years prior, when it would not have been subtitled.

Conclusions

I know this was a boring one. Thanks for reading. I have to go to bed now.

No, really. The popular opinion of the Godzilla series in America has historically been a matter of clueless Westerners poking fun at the sweaty guys in rubber suits bonking each other around while ineffectual miniature planes on visible wires fly overhead. We have held that opinion because what of Godzilla that has reached our shores has largely been an adulterated form of the original work: ever since Godzilla, King of the Monsters! we've been fed recuts and bad dubs, pan-and-scans and late-nite TV reruns. We are of course in the kaiju renaissance now: "tokusatsu" is a word in the dictionary, Minus One won an Oscar, Eiji Tsuburaya has been inducted into the Special Effects Hall of Fame, there is a vague sense within academia that Japanese monster movies may be worth looking at closely.

But I want us to remember that there has always been an undercurrent of admiration for these films. From the very earliest days, there have been people appreciating Godzilla films. I want us to know that before the SNL skits and the MST3k episodes there were people like James T. Hamada who saw that something respectable was being done - that the effects were, in fact, good. I want us to think about walking home under the stars in the late autumn cool, talking to our friends about the giant lizard we just saw level Tokyo, the paleontologist and his empathy for the creature, the star-crossed lovers, the scientist fighting with his own conscience, and what it all meant.

The Serizawa Post (Godzilla 70th Anniversary Special): Part Two

In this half of the post, we're going to be covering trivia and other random information and images garnered from various sources. Some of these sources are in my own personal Godzilla collection, some I've found through online research; see my "works cited" section at the bottom of parts 1 and 2 for more detail.

Prepare yourself.

1.) Those diving suits were orange

This doesn't seem to be common knowledge, considering that I've never seen any figures or official (or non-official) art that has Serizawa's diving suit as anything other than either a drab grey or a dull yellowy color. You'll hear it tossed around often that we don't know what color the first Godzilla suit was, since it was filmed in black-and-white and no color photos exist, but in the case of the suits, we do have surviving props that give an idea of the actual color.

photo cribbed from reddit user /u/TVTriangle - sorry, hope you don't mind me and my 0 follower blog stealing your stuff

Additionally, both Hirata and Takarada said that being inside the suits was like "being in a blast furnace". The entirety of Godzilla was shot in late summer and that scene was filmed outside in an actual boat. The underwater scenes were filmed indoors, however, by placing a fish tank between the camera and Hirata, in the diving suit.

BTS photo with fish tank

2.) There's a weird non-canon Godzilla manga where Serizawa has a nephew

There's a lot of weird non-canon Godzilla manga, I know. Check out a fan translation by LSD Jellyfish - it's actually pretty good. And yes! This is indeed very, very pre-MonsterVerse.

yeah i don't know why they drew him with curly hair either

This comes from The Godzilla Comic, a completely bonkers collection of Godzilla short manga released in 1990 with contributions from some big names. There's also whatever is going on in Minoru Kawasaki's contribution:

Kawasaki's part is a short story about pop star Yuki Saito being recruited into the Earth Defense Force to use her singing skills to placate Godzilla. I have no idea if it's meant to be implied that all of this is taking place within a Toho movie (so all the actors are playing roles) or if it's some kind of alternate universe where everybody actually is part of the Earth Defense Force. This is far, and I mean far from the strangest thing in The Godzilla Comic. Let's see some much more normal manga now...

4.) Toho's own promotional manga

I actually can't find out much information about this one. It was reprinted in issue six of Godzilla Magazine alongside Monster Picture Story Godzilla, a more well-known manga. It appears to have been produced by Toho themselves (the Kansai branch, anyway) and ran in a newspaper or magazine. The machine translation of the text at the beginning says it's a "storyboard", but this is definitely not the original Godzilla storyboard; there are ample enough pictures of that out there, and it looks completely different. We can also tell from Godzilla's appearance - closer to the maquette, when he's drawn accurately at all - that this manga was clearly produced prior to the film's release.

The text accompanying the images is a simple description of a handful of scenes from the film, and wake up, babes, new German Friend™ lore just dropped.

This is the first time I have ever heard anything of the sort, and it is so severely non-canon that breaking it down is almost not even worth it, but the whole scenario doesn't make sense. It's unclear in the above sentence who "he" refers to - whether it was Serizawa or the German who was a POW, or if they were prisoners together - but no matter what, Serizawa is canonically 27 as of 1954 and therefore could not possibly have gotten his university-level education as a chemist until after the war. I believe that things like this (of which I've seen a few) are the remnants of earlier script drafts where Serizawa was much older that were not changed after he was aged down in the final version.

4.) More strange, plot-irrelevant Godzilla promo stills

You thought I was done talking about weird stills and deleted scenes? Never.

You have probably seen a poster or two for Godzilla (like this one, also featuring Ogata and Emiko looking cool in their Cabton) which included an image of Serizawa carrying Emiko that never appeared anywhere in the film. Here's a clearer image of that and another still from the same shoot:

And here is what the description says:

"Image still directed by Ishirō Honda. [As in] the still on page 51 of this book, Serizawa is wearing makeup based on the description in scene 41 of the script, 'Half of his face is wounded[...]'. According to Honda, he was conscious of German Expressionism in the style of [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]."

The "still on page 51" is this, another promo still:

Almost every single advance poster for Godzilla had Serizawa's facial scarring much more prominent than it was in the film, and so did the multitude of script drafts. I'm not sure if there was a specific reason why it was downplayed a bit more in the final film (my guess is either it was deemed too distracting or just really uncomfortable to wear). And I don't know about you all, but I'm positively riveted by the thought of a more German Expressionism-influenced Godzilla. 

5.) Serizawa's entry in the 2014 Godzilla dictionary

"A beloved student of Dr. Kyohei Yamane, he is a doctor who runs the Serizawa Scientific Research Institute. He has been engaged to Dr. Yamane's daughter, Emiko, since childhood, but he felt inferior after he was scarred on his face during the war, and he has kept his feelings for her to himself. From then on, he shut himself away in his laboratory and studied oxygen from every angle. In the process, he invented the Oxygen Destroyer, which destroys oxygen in water in an instant. However, because it could become a weapon worse than an atomic bomb depending on how it is used, he refrains from making it public, and is prepared to die if he is forced to use it as a weapon. At first, he continues to refuse to use it as a weapon against Godzilla, but [...] moved by [the Prayer for Peace], he decides to use it just once. He successfully destroys Godzilla, but then takes his own life. He dies at the age of 27."

6.) BTS photos

Photos taken at Ise-shima, which was used for the Odo Island filming locations. The location of the photo on the left is given as "a deserted beach beyond the Ishigami Cape [in Toba]". The photo on the right was taken at an inn where the cast and crew stayed.

7.) Bonus: whatever is going on in Daikajuu Deburas

This is a video game released in 1990 for the Nintendo Famicom that has a lot of intentional nods to Toho tokusatsu films, as well as other things like Ultraman. I'm gonna give you one guess as to what the game's eyepatch-wearing scientist is named.

You can guess it, I know you can. You got this.

Did you guess?

That's right, he's named Dr. Yamane.

_____

Works cited:

Godzilla and Toho Tokusatsu Official Mook, vol 1. Godzilla. Kodansha, 2023.

Kohei Nomura, editor. Godzilla Encyclopedia [New Edition]. Kasakura Publishing, 2014.

Koichi Kawakita, supervisor. Japan Special Effects Movie Encyclopedia Toho Edition BEST54. Seibido Publishing, 1999.

The Serizawa Post (Godzilla 70th Anniversary Special): Part One

Kinema Junpo issue from September 15, 1954

Since this year is the 70th anniversary of the first Godzilla movie and arguably Akihiko Hirata's most iconic role, I wanted to make a big post about it to celebrate. My initial idea was to begin the post by charting up a timeline that followed the development of Serizawa as a character through various drafts and revisions and then move on to random trivia, but after a while, my timeline became so huge that I decided to split the post into two parts. The second part will go up on Godzilla Day.

• February 10, 1954: Ishirō Honda's Farewell Rabaul is released to theaters. I argue that this is important, as Hirata's role in this film led to him being cast in Godzilla.
• May 1954: Shigeru Kayama submits a first draft of his screenplay for Godzilla. Serizawa is described as a pharmaceutical chemist, a friend of Yamane's who lost his eye in a wolf attack(!) while on a fossil dig in China. He is older than in the finished film (around 40), and had a wife who died of an illness some years prior. He also isn't engaged to Emiko but is "secretly in love with her". I get the sense that Kayama intended Serizawa to be a physically imposing, maybe even slightly creepy presence; in this draft his facial scars are more prominent and he's described as having a "large build".
• July 5, 1954: Production on Godzilla is officially announced.
• May-August 1954: Kayama's screenplay is revised and developed into a final version by Honda and co-writer Takeo Murata. Serizawa has more of a role here than in the Kayama version, and not too much is different from the film except for his age (32) and the fact that he has a housemaid (Honda intended to imply that Serizawa was or had been upper-class).
• July 17-September 25: Nippon Broadcasting System airs Kaiju Gojira, a radio drama adaptation of Honda and Murata's screenplay scripted by Shiro Horie, with extra scenes added for padding. Serizawa is voiced by Masahiko Naruse.
• July 1954: Akihiko Hirata screen-tests for the role of Hideto Ogata but does not get the part. At some point between now and when filming begins, he switches roles with Akira Takarada to play Dr. Serizawa instead. I talk about this at considerable length here.
• August 1, 1954: Rehearsal meeting.
• August 7, 1954: Crank-in at the Toba filming location.
• September 29, 1954: Filming concludes.
• October 23, 1954: Toho in-house preview screening.
• October 25, 1954: Iwaya Shoten publishes Kaiju Gojira, a novel adaptation of the NBS radio drama written by Sango Nagase and finalized by Shigeru Kayama. (NB: This is different from Kayama's novelizations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again.) As this has not been translated into English, I'm unaware of how, if at all, Serizawa's character differs from other versions.
• October 27, 1954: First screening of Godzilla in Nagoya.
• October-November 1954: Science Adventure Picture Story Godzilla, written and drawn by Wasuke Abe, is published in Omoshiro Book. I'm not exactly clear on this, but it seems like in this version of events Serizawa does not commit suicide at the end. (Yamane's the one with the German friend here.)
• Nov 3, 1954: Gojira is released to Japanese theaters across the country.
• March 1955: Kodansha publishes Monster Picture Story: Godzilla, written by Koichi Yoshida and illustrated by Shunichi Iwaigawa, in Bokura magazine. In it, the other characters learn about Serizawa and his weapon (name changed to "Oxygent") through a random unnamed soldier. Serizawa wears glasses instead of an eyepatch. (I believe this page shows meganekko Serizawa.)
• July 20, 1955: Shimamura Publishing co. releases Godzilla: Tokyo and Osaka Editions, Shigeru Kayama's novelizations of the first two Godzilla films. This was not based on the radio play and is Kayama's original work. Serizawa is largely the same as he is in the film but is described as having long hair that covers his missing eye instead of an eyepatch.

I will cut the list off here as anything further doesn't really count as "character development".

Despite the fluctuating prominence of Serizawa's role in Godzilla's storyline throughout preliminary materials, there are some things that have remained constant in pre-final drafts:

1. Dr. Serizawa is always described as missing an eye, although how he lost it varies, if any explanation is given at all. I don't believe there are any sources pre-dating the finished film that specify which eye; however I do think the choice to make it his right eye was deliberate as there is historical and literary precedence (Tange Sazen, Ishimatsu, Masamune Date, Oiwa, etc). You probably shouldn't be listening to my crackpot theories about this.
2. Serizawa always has the Oxygen Destroyer and is always the one to use it to kill Godzilla; as far as I'm aware he also dies at the end of every preliminary screenplay. How and why he's convinced to use the Oxygen Destroyer varies.
3. Some specific dialogue is consistent throughout versions, for example there is always a line where someone tells Serizawa that spending so much time in his lab is bad for his health.

Almost every character in Godzilla went through several changes before the final film (for example, Dr. Yamane was originally going to be a much more mysterious, antagonistic character, who wore dark clothing and glasses). Shinkichi has had more of a role at times, mostly in post-Godzilla serializations, to appeal to a younger audience; some versions have Emiko aged down as well.

On to some less technical stuff in part two...

____

Works cited:

^{Kayama, Shigeru. Toho SF Special Effects Film Series, vol. 3. Toho, 1985.}

^{Godziszewski, Ed. "The Making of Godzilla." G-Fan, #12. Nov/Dec 1994, pp. 34-39.}

^{Shodai Godzilla Research Reader. Yoizensha, 2014.} 

^{Japanese Giants, #10. 2004. p. 10.}

Galbraith IV, Stuart. Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo!. Feral House, 1998.

Was Akira Takarada Originally Supposed To Play Dr. Serizawa? (aka What's Up With Those Still Photos?)

When I read Stuart Galbraith's masterful book Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo!, I came across a quote from an interview the author conducted with Akira Takarada where he mentions that he and Akihiko Hirata were originally cast for each other's roles, with Hirata playing Ogata and Takarada playing Dr. Serizawa. The entirety of the quote goes like this, emphasis mine:

"At the time we had the very controversial news story of the tuna boat that was exposed to radiation. That was a major social issue. The radiation - the sleeping Godzilla - is coming from the deep sea, Honda said. Those were the kind of discussions we had. Akihiko Hirata and I switched roles. Mr. Hirata had more of a scientist-like face - simple as that."

I had no real reason not to accept this until I translated an interview with Ishirō Honda. The book that the interview was included in printed one photo from a series of stills of Hirata in what appears to be a student uniform, no eyepatch, with Momoko Kōchi. When the interviewer brings these stills up to Honda, Honda seemingly denies the story about Hirata originally having been cast as Ogata. Or so I thought at first.

I'm a bit rough on the exact wording due to the machine translation, but the gist of the exchange went like this:

1. The interviewer mentions the photos and asks Honda if this was a scene that was shot for Godzilla and then cut from the film.
2. Honda says no, they were still photographs, and that it was like they were "old lovers".
3. The interviewer brings up the stories about the role switch. (It isn't framed as a question: the interviewer essentially just states "there are stories that Hirata was originally supposed to play Ogata's role.")
4. Honda says "No, that wasn't the case".

So I read this and I immediately thought, "oh, that's interesting". Honda says the role switch didn't happen? But then I realized that there are two ways you could interpret Honda's response of "No, that wasn't the case":

1. No, Hirata was never meant to play Ogata's role.
2. No, that wasn't the case for those specific stills. As in, Honda neither confirms nor denies whether Hirata was meant to play Ogata. He just says that isn't what's going on in those stills.

But those stills still bothered the hell out of me.

I thought hard about this. I thought way, way too hard about this. I had been assuming that the uniform in the stills was a university uniform, and that led me to believe the stills did show Hirata playing Ogata. My reasoning for this was that Serizawa would canonically have been a little young to be in university¹ until the last year of the war or just after it, but we also know that he canonically lost his eye at some point during the war, so he would have been wearing the eyepatch while at school. But I took another look at the interview, and the interviewer is just saying "student clothes", not "university". And so, considering that style of cap was worn by schoolboys from early age up to university, I don't think there's much reason to doubt that the photos are meant to depict Serizawa as a teenager. 

Ed Godziszewski mentions this in his 13-minute featurette on the development of the film's story, and says that there's "conflicting information" about the images, bringing up all possibilities: deleted scenes, promotional still photographs, or photos from the casting process during which time Hirata was slated to play Ogata. 

So it's probably Serizawa in the stills, but what about the switch? Well, we're gonna go back to Godziszewski on this one.

Godziszewski printed a fine article on the development process of Godzilla in issue #12 of G-Fan, which included the most elaborate explanation of Hirata's original casting as Ogata that I have yet found. I would still like to see a Japanese primary source for this, but I respect Godziszewski, and if he says something, I believe it. Also, although the article in G-Fan ran in 1994, it's a reprint of an article from an issue of Markalite that ran in 1981, so we have a source that goes even farther back than the 1985 interview. This is the relevant paragraph of the article in full:

"Director Honda was able to tap a fine cast of actors from the Toho lot. The distinguished and highly respected Takashi Shimura was selected to play the eminent paleontologist Dr. Yamane. Akihiko Hirata was originally selected to play the role of Ogata, but after several screen tests he was deemed unsuitable for the part, instead being given the role of Dr. Serizawa. The handsome young actor Akira Takarada was given the role of Ogata, his good looks more appropriate to a romantic lead."

Uh huh, sure. I also want to note that filming on Godzilla began around the first week of August, which means the casting process was probably underway in July. So... happy 70th anniversary to all that business.

I know that in the end none of this really matters, but it compels me. I am [gestures to blog] slightly biased, I admit, but the fact that Hirata absolutely nailed that role is an objective truth, evidenced by Dr. Serizawa's lasting impression not only on the Godzilla franchise even up to its American MonsterVerse iterations but also on movies that have nothing to do with Godzilla - Pacific Rim and its "Serizawa scale", for instance. I dearly love Akira Takarada, but I think Hirata was the natural choice for that role: not only had he been acting for slightly longer than Takarada, but he had also shown, in films like Farewell Rabaul and Tetsuwan Namida Ari, that he could convey a character's internal strife very well.

And it's crazy to think that the role of Serizawa as we know it today almost just kind of... wasn't.

____

^{1 This in and of itself is interesting and somewhat convoluted. If we assume that Serizawa is 27 when Godzilla takes place in 1954, as canonically stated, and that he lost his eye at some point during the war, it would mean that, if he were a veteran, he would have been in the military - presumably in active combat - in his late teens at the oldest. However, aside from early script drafts in which he was planned to be much older (at one point he was 40 and widowed), I cannot recall any finalized material specifically referring to him as a war veteran, so I think it's reasonable to consider the possibility that he could have been wounded as a civilian. My personal theory to explain this slightly iffy timeline is that Serizawa as a character retains some backstory from earlier drafts in which he was written as older, even though his age was shifted down in the final film. This would also negate those weird fan theories you hear about him having worked with Nazis during the war as he could not possibly have gotten a university-level education until, again, the last year or so of the war or immediately after it.}

Toho SF Tokusatsu Eiga Series vol. 3 (Godzilla/Varan/Godzilla Raids Again) (1985)

I recently got my hands on something I've wanted for a long time: this gorgeous, very heavy paperback published by Toho as part of a series on their tokusatsu films. This one details the history of Godzilla, Godzilla Raids Again and Varan. Not only does it include extensive film stills and basically entire scripts, it also features interviews with several people involved with the films.

This book was published in May 1985 and the interview with Hirata was conducted in March 1984, so around four months before his death. I should note that this book is not the first time this interview was printed: it was conducted by Toshimichi Otsuki as a bonus feature on a vinyl LP put out by King Records that presented a condensed version of Godzilla as a sort of audio drama. I'm guessing that's the reason why this interview is not as long as the other two that the book included - it's basically liner notes from an LP.

Although I have gone through this multiple times to check for accuracy, please keep in mind while reading that it is largely a machine translation and can't capture the same nuance as a translation done by a real human. Where applicable, I've used English-language titles for films mentioned within the interview.

Spoiler alert: he liked monster movies.

image sources: Godzilla 1954 and Son of Godzilla behind-the-scenes

image sources: Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Godzilla, Farewell Rabaul, Secret of the Telegian, The Three Treasures, Story of Osaka Castle, Sanjuro, King Kong vs. Godzilla

image sources: Adventure in Kigan Castle, Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster, Atragon, Ebirah, Son of Godzilla, Admiral Yamamoto  

image sources: Prophecies of Nostradamus, The Family, Latitude Zero, Crazy Big Explosion, Terror of Mechagodzilla, The War in Space, The Imperial Navy, Sayonara Jupiter

______

This interview was conducted at Akihiko Hirata's home on March 9th 1984 and was effectively his last interview.

Mr. Hirata, are there any memorable moments from your time in the film Godzilla [1954]?

Hirata: Hmm... well, I guess it would be the Lucky Dragon no. 5 incident. It was right after that, so there was a certain fear of hydrogen bomb tests. And then there was anger. All of that stuff appeared in Godzilla, so the script really resonated with me and I was very impressed. Even now, it's well-received, but I wonder why it didn't have more recognition back then! I feel like it's even more valuable now. At the time, it was seen as kind of a light "monster movie". I'm dissatisfied with that. I think the critics at the time really should have taken the hydrogen bomb tests, the fear and anger towards nuclear weapons, and things like that seriously. It's not something outlandish at all. Godzilla was great after all. Godzilla's face is good, too. I wonder, did they make a Godzilla [model] for each movie?  

Yes. It's completely different between Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, and even after King Kong vs. Godzilla, they made a new one almost every time. They did use some modified ones, though.

Hirata: It was scary, after all. I think that scariness is what makes Godzilla so appealing.

Especially since there were so many nighttime scenes.

Hirata: That's right, yes. Well, the initial discovery was during the day, but you know. At first [laughs] I had no idea what Godzilla was like when I was filming.

That's a bit strange.

Hirata: Yes. I couldn't see it.

Was that during filming? There are stills from before filming started that show it in detail.

Hirata: When it came to the movie, it was pretty all over the place. Well, no matter what, it wouldn't be called optimistic, to use today's terms. I thought it would be boring if it became too gloomy, but after watching it, it was gloomy after all, in the end [laughs].

Godzilla appeared as a culmination of the negative aspects of human civilization, like nuclear testing, and in the same way, I think Dr. Serizawa also carries the negative aspects of humanity. He keeps that in check with reason, but if he were to act on instinct like Godzilla, I think the Oxygen Destroyer could become the next Godzilla...

Hirata: Yes, that's right, that's right.

If you take one wrong step when using science for peaceful purposes, it can turn into a lethal weapon. I think that's the aspect that the movie portrays.

Hirata: So, Serizawa, [TL: Hirata uses "-san" for Serizawa and not "hakase" or "sensei".] you know, he didn't have many lines, right? He didn't talk much. I think that was good. If Serizawa had done all the talking and solved all the mysteries, I think that would have been shallow and boring. I think that's also a good part of the original story, or the script.

That's the part that Takashi Shimura fills in.

Hirata: That's right. Well, he never makes excuses for his actions, or anything like that. He shows it through his actions. So, I think it's great drama.

At the time, people were drawn to the special effects.

Hirata: Yes, that's right.

As for the drama, it was, well... it's weird to say it's worthless, but it's become less important. The special effects were so amazing that people just couldn't help but look at them...

Hirata: It couldn't be helped. We thought the same at first. But then, after a decade or two, you watch it and you think, "Ahhh...!" The drama is very well done. I watched it slowly on video the other day... especially when you're watching it on a small screen like video, you're always more interested in the drama than the special effects. I thought, "Wow, the drama is well done," and "The people are well acted." And it turned out Serizawa and Yamane were the ones who were written the best. I didn't realize that when I was doing it. I just tried to make it not too tragic or sorrowful, that's what I remember.

Mr. Hirata, you've appeared in many Godzilla films aside from [the first], but are there any other works that have stayed in your mind?

Hirata: Special effects movies?

Yes.

Hirata: Rodan?

Rodan, right. Godzilla gradually became a champion of justice in later years.

Hirata: Yes, that's right. He became an idol, didn't he? 

That was boring. He was a symbol of fear and terror. 

Hirata: Yes, yes. So Godzilla has to remain the great enemy.

He can't be evil.

Hirata: Well, even his face has changed, you know.

He's become cuter.

Hirata: Yes, he's charming. Son of Godzilla was really funny [laughs].

It's a little one-sided...

Hirata: No, you see, as a service, it's okay to make something like that once in a while, for kids. After all, the main point of Godzilla is that he is the embodiment of evil. That's what Godzilla... you know, even a mechanical one came out, as Mechagodzilla. That kind of thing is just boring. Godzilla has to be a living thing, a slimy thing, otherwise it's not interesting.

It is a creature that has lived since ancient times, so what would happen if it were to appear in reality? What would happen to the city that had finally been rebuilt almost ten years after the war? There is a sense of fear that everyday life would be destroyed.

Hirata: Well, at that time, things had just been rebuilt to a certain extent, right? The fear of that being destroyed might be an interest, or perhaps a concern. Now, in this world that has achieved such rapid growth - especially in Japan - what would happen if Godzilla appeared again? And what would happen if Godzilla destroyed it? It has become a big concern now.

Yes. I am particularly interested in what would happen if the buildings in Shinjuku were to collapse.

Hirata: Especially young people today have no idea that Tokyo, or even Japan, was in ruins. People who have no knowledge of the war, I think those kinds of people are interested. We'd never want to see it turn into ruins again, though.

Apparently Toho is making a new Godzilla movie.

Hirata: That seems to be the case. Well, I guess it's the allure of destruction that comes with Godzilla, and I feel like that's what young people today are looking for.

That's right. The generation below us doesn't know about the Vietnam War or the campus protests. They don't have a sense of danger when it comes to destruction.

Hirata: They don't. They're in a safe zone, and if something were to happen, I think they have a strong desire to watch from a safe distance.

It's good to have an objective, third-party perspective. So, now there's a huge Godzilla boom. Do you think there's a reason for this?

Hirata: I guess it's the influence of American movies, isn't it? Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Those kinds of things were very well received. "Even Japan can do it, there's no way we can't make something like that," a kind of nationalism... no, I don't know [laughs]. I think there's a kind of "Even Japan can do it!" feeling.

Yes, the fact that such a work was made 20 or 30 years ago is what makes it strong. How was it appearing in Sayonara Jupiter?

Hirata: Well, I didn't have many scenes in that. For me, it was a special effects movie, but it was a story about the near future. The near future is a possible story, 150 years from now. So, I can't experience 150 years from now, but I think it was a good experience to see what humanity, the Earth, and the universe will be like in 150 years. I prefer monster movies to special effects movies. It makes me feel like I'm watching a video game.

In the old days, they would hang things from wires and fly them, trying to make them look real. With Star Wars, it feels like they used computers to ensure the film would turn out [as expected].

Hirata: So everything is already calculated. It's like it was already done before the movie was made. You can predict everything, right? I think that's boring. After all, [with] handmade monsters, it appears, and you wonder, [where will it go]? You don't know until you shoot it. I think it's more interesting to make things like that, where there are still some unknown parts.

That's right. When you see the crater of Mt. Aso explode and Radon falling while burning, you can feel the passion of the people who are making it. You can see that they are making movies by hand, like making a pot or weaving cloth. But when it's made into a video by a computer, it feels like something is missing.

Hirata: When monsters appear, there's something romantic about it.

It's like nostalgia for something yet to be seen.

Hirata: Yes, yes. It's this inherent [TL: The word he uses here either means "slime"/"sludge" or is a word that does not directly translate, which refers to a specifically human sense of melancholy; a rough approximation might be "sordidness" or "doldrums".] that humans have. The unknown, the unknown fear. Those things are symbolized by monsters, and they're fascinating. So whether it's Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it's interesting to watch the parts where aliens appear.

That's right. Modeling techniques and special effects makeup have become very advanced over there, so it would be interesting to see them develop even further.

Hirata: That's right. Have you seen Sayonara Jupiter?

No, I haven't seen it yet.

Hirata: I haven't seen it either. Well, it seems like the special effects and stuff are going really well. So it's fine as it is. If anything, I prefer special effects movies with monsters in them.

Everyone likes monsters themselves, too. I would say they're grotesque-looking.

Hirata: That's why people like that kind of thing, and nowadays there are a lot of fairy tales and commercials with monster motifs. The reason those things are so popular is because people have a romanticism about monsters.

They say that romance has disappeared in the modern age. That's why people are interested in Godzilla and monsters.

Hirata: In the human world, drama is fading away, isn't it?

Ah, you're right.

Hirata: So I think we expect that kind of thing from monsters all the more.

Thank you very much.

____

Here are some other bonus pictures from the book.

Akihiko Hirata dressed as a Shintō priest and Momoko Kōchi as a shrine maiden, from a "Godzilla Festival" on October 25, 1954, after filming was completed. I've seen this picture floating around and always wondered what the context was.

The top middle and bottom middle photos are stills related to Godzilla that do not appear in the film. Honda was asked in an interview if these were scenes that were shot and then deleted, but he claims that they weren't, and were simply still photographs. The bottom right is just a random picture from Varan I guess.

...also, what in the world is going on with that Son of Godzilla behind-the-scenes photo?