Tomoyuki Tanaka

**Tomoyuki Tanaka** (田中 友幸, *Tanaka Tomoyuki*, April 26, 1910 - April 2, 1997) was a Japanese film producer
, most famous for creating the Godzilla franchise. He was born in Kashiwara, Osaka, Japan on April 26, 1910, and died in Tokyo on April 2, 1997. Tanaka was married to the actress Chieko Nakakita (1926 – 2005). He died of a stroke at the age of 86.

## Tomoyuki Tanaka

### Spouse(s)

Chieko Nakakita (1957–1997 (his death)

Soon after graduating from Kansai University in 1940, Tanaka joined Taisho Studios which merged with Toho Studios in 1941. After four years with the company, he began producing his own films, and his first effort, Three Women of the North, was released in 1945.In his 60-year career with Toho, Tanaka produced more than 200 films.

He is best known as the creator, with storyteller Shigeru Kayama, director Ishirō Honda, writer Takeo Murata and special-effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, of Godzilla, the towering embodiment of post-World War II anxiety. Tanaka created Godzilla in 1954 in an effort to illustrate the terror Japanese felt after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In an interview in 1985, Tanaka summed up the symbolism of Godzilla:

In those days, Japanese had a real horror of radiation, and that horror is what made Godzilla so huge. From the beginning he has symbolized nature's revenge on mankind.

The classic 1954 film Godzilla (1954; released in the U.S. in 1956 as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!) would spawn a series of sequels, adding up to 28 films by 2004. Tanaka produced every Toho monster movie up to his death in 1997. He often worked with the other three members of the Godzilla team: Honda, Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube, to complete such works as The Mysterians (1957) and Matango (1963). Tanaka produced six films directed by the acclaimed Akira Kurosawa. Their film Kagemusha (1980) was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar and took the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

The 1998 American reimagining of Godzilla was dedicated to his memory.

## Career

One of the top two producers at Toho during Japan’s Golden Age of Filmmaking (alongside Sanezumi Fujimoto), and the man responsible for fostering the birth of the innovative, popular, and lucrative kaiju eiga film genre. Indeed, several films he produced during the 60s had extra scenes of giant monsters forcibly inserted to “enhance” their marketability. He is also known for producing several of Akira Kurosawa’s works, and played an instrumental part in the founding of Mifune Productions. In general Tanaka’s films were categorized as “man” movies, or films that appealed to male audiences, whereas Fujimoto’s films targeted the female demographic.

Tanaka’s most famous production was, of course, the original Godzilla movie in 1954. He had received the greenlight and the resources to move ahead with a Japanese-Indonesian co-production, but the Indonesian government, still harboring bitter sentiment from World War II, barred the Japanese from entering the country. On the plane ride back home, Tanaka struck upon the idea of a film about a sea monster, and approached Toho president Iwao Mori, who approved the new direction. Tanaka pulled together the creative team of director Ishiro Honda, special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube, to bring his idea to fruition.

Tanaka took great pride in his work, and was very protective of the Godzilla series in particular. He was hospitalized during the production of Yoshimitsu Banno’s controversial Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), and after viewing the finished product he barred Banno from ever directing another kaiju film under his watch. (Many years later, Banno would serve as a co-producer for Gareth Edwards’ 2014 reboot of Godzilla.)

Tanaka would continue to produce kaiju films well into the 1990s, gradually relinquishing producer duties to his apprentice Shogo Tomiyama. In all Tanaka produced 22 Godzilla films, including every film in the original Showa and Heisei series. Tanaka provided the original screenplay treatments for the first two films in the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy; after his death in 1997, his image was used in Rebirth of Mothra 3 (1998). Tanaka received a dedication in the end credits of Roland Emmerich’s [much reviled] American Godzilla (1998).