Kujira Gami

Directed by
 Running time
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***Kujira Gami***  (Japanese: 鯨神, Hepburn:,   *Kujira gami*?, Lit. *Whale God*), also known as ***Killer Whale,*** is a 1962 Japanese tokusatsu film directed by Tokuzo Tanaka. It was released in Japanese theaters on July 15, 1962.

## Plot

In the early Meiji era, huge whales, feared to be devil whales, appeared on the coast of Kyushu for generations, and dozens of fishermen had already died due to their ferocious nature. Shaki ( Kojiro Hongo ) , a young fisherman whose father and brother were killed by the whale that the villagers fear as a whale god, vows revenge on the whale god. The village whale owner ( Takashi Shimura ) is said to give a mansion with his daughter Toyo ( Kyoko Enami ) to those who defeated the whales . At that time, a whale fisherman, Kishu ( Shintaro Katsu ), appears in the village . Kishu disagrees with Shaki and commits Ai (Shiho Fujimura), a poor daughter who falls in love with him, but Shaki is obsessed with defeating the whale god and does not accept the love of Toyo and Ai. Then, Kishu recklessly possesses the whale god who reappears. A myriad of harpoons of the villagers' obsession are driven into the whale god, and the final battle between the angry whale god and Shaki begins. Eventually, Shaki, who was dying but won, felt himself becoming a whale god.

## Cast

* Katsu Shintaro   as   Kishu
* Kojiro Hongo   as   Shaki
* Fujimura Shiho   as   Ei
* Reiko Fujiwara   as   Okoma
* Michiko Takano   as   Yuki
* Takemura Yosuke   as   Kasuke
* Takashi Shimura   as   Village elder
* Kyoko Enami
* Kichijiro Ueda
* Koji Fujiyama
* Bontaro Miake

## Staff

* Directed by   Tokuzo Tanaka
* Written by   Kaneto Shindo
* Based on a novel by   Koichiro Uno
* Produced by   Masaichi Nagata
* Music by   Akira Ifukube
* Cinematography by   Setsuo Kobayashi
* Production design by   Shigeo Mano
* Special effects by   Chikara Komatsubara, Takesaburo Watanabe, Hiroshi Ishida

## Titles

* Kujira gami (Worldwide release title)
* Kujiragami (Japanese title)
* Whale God (Japanese: 鯨神 Original Japanese release title)
* Killer Whale (Worldwide release title)

## Overview

After receiving the Akutagawa Prize for the film, Daiei immediately acquired the rights to make it into a movie. At that time, Uno was offered an original fee of 1 million yen by Daiei. The script of Kento Shindo, who has many social works, was directed by Tokuzo Tanaka , who was the backbone of the Daiei period drama in " Infamous ", and Akira Ifukube, who is famous for Toho 's monster movies , was in charge of the music.

## Special shooting

The special shooting is credited to Komatsubara, but it was actually managed by Toru Matoba . At that time, Daiei had a special effects pool at the Kyoto studio , so special effects were mainly shot in Kyoto. Fuminori Ohashi created the whale god, and created a full-scale scale model with a total length of 30 meters and a 5.5-meter model at a huge cost of 8 million yen, but the modeling was excellent, but it hardly moved, and in the end the alpine good idea to create a miniature, that was taken is almost at it  . As a result, the full-scale model was used only for the entwined scene with the actor, and the 5.5-meter model was used only for the diving scene. In addition to that, special photography that seems to be Daiei has been effective, such as animating a group of seabirds that are a precursor to the appearance of the whale god  .

Steel Hongo IsaoJiro and Shintaro Katsu is riding on the back of a whale God, it was responsible for the animation synthesis tide cleaning was a cut-and-paste by  .

## DVD

* It was released as video software by Daiei Video in 1984.
* It was made into DVD software in 2006, and a low-priced DVD was released in 2014.
* Was released from the 2014 "bi-weekly Daiei special effects movie DVD Collection" ( De Agostini , but launch in) had been planned, it was removed from the lineup at the time series extension of the 2016  .

## Simultaneous screening

" Young warrior of sad love "
Screenplay- Jun Sagara , Tetsuro Yoshida / Director- Masaki Nishiyama / Starring- Yukio Hashi
It is a song movie that made the song of the same name of the bridge into a movie .
## References

This is a list of references for **Kujira Gami**. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

1. ↑ https://eiga.com/movie/36075/