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160-559: Eiji Tsuburaya ( Japanese : 円谷 英二 , Hepburn : Tsuburaya Eiji , July 7, 1901 – January 25, 1970) was a Japanese special effects director , filmmaker, and cinematographer. A co-creator of the Godzilla and Ultraman franchises, he is considered one of the most important and influential figures in the history of cinema. Tsuburaya is known as the "Father of Tokusatsu ", having pioneered Japan's special effects industry and introduced several technological developments in film productions. In

320-575: A jidaigeki film directed by Hisatora Kumagai , and the unreleased propaganda musical The Song of Major Nango (both 1938). The latter film was directed and shot by Tsuburaya, and he completed it on September 6 of that year. In 1939, he was ordered to join the Kumagaya Aviation Academy of the Imperial Army Corps, where he was entrusted to shoot flight-training films. After impressing his superiors with his aerial photography, Tsuburaya

480-559: A pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has

640-672: A 33.7% rating, an achievement at the time. Due to the show's high ratings, TBS ordered an additional 10 episodes during preparations for the show's third Cours (episodes 27-39). Despite ratings dropping during the final weeks, Ultraseven still remained in the top five highest rated shows in Japanese television at the time. Sequels for both Ultraman , titled Ultraman Continues , and Ultraseven , titled Fight! Ultraseven , were proposed, but Tsuburaya Productions would not produce another Ultra series until 1971, with Return of Ultraman . The 12th episode, titled "From Another Planet with Love",

800-562: A 35mm print of King Kong and started to study the film's special effects frame-by-frame, without the advantage of documents explaining how they were produced: he would later write an analysis of the film's effects for the magazine Photo Times in October 1933. In the same year, Masano gave birth to a second child, a daughter named Miyako. However, the child would die of unknown causes in 1935. In December 1933, Nikkatsu granted Tsuburaya permission to use and study new screen projection technology for

960-496: A 3D film process known as "Tovision". While the project had been abandoned, it was later revived when the 3D film Bwana Devil (1952) became a box office hit in the United States. Hence, the company produced its first 3D film, future Godzilla co-writer Takeo Murata's The Sunday That Jumped Out  [ ja ] (1953). It features cinematography by Tsuburaya, who shot the short film by using an interlocking camera. After

1120-468: A Hong Kong-based film company. Tsuburaya's following significant production, director Hiroshi Inagaki's big-budget religious epic The Three Treasures , was created as Toho's celebratory thousandth film. Based on legends featured in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki , it stars Toshiro Mifune as Yamato Takeru and the kami Susanoo . The effects director and his crew shot several key sequences included in

1280-460: A Million . In contrast to his previous prototype, the crane was installed on a truck that operated on tracks, which made it able to change the camera's position in a matter of seconds. In December of that year, Osawa renamed the studio J.O. Studios and designated Tsuburaya as its chief cinematographer. From February to August 1935, he traveled to Hawaii, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand on

1440-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down

1600-569: A career spanning five decades, Tsuburaya worked on approximately 250 films —including globally renowned features directed by Ishirō Honda , Hiroshi Inagaki , and Akira Kurosawa —and earned six Japan Technical Awards. Following a brief stint as an inventor, Tsuburaya was employed by Japanese cinema pioneer Yoshirō Edamasa in 1919 and began his career working as an assistant cinematographer on Edamasa's A Tune of Pity . Thereafter, he worked as an assistant cinematographer on several films, including Teinosuke Kinugasa 's A Page of Madness (1926). At

1760-538: A complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )

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1920-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )

2080-456: A fairy tale-themed series, and Otomo proposed a space-themed series which would have been a cross of Lost in Space and Men into Space featuring giant monsters. TBS eventually settled on a fusion of Eiji's and Otomo's ideas and Eiji submitted a treatment titled The Ultra Garrison , which featured six trained astronauts (including an android named "John") stationed on a satellite called "Mother",

2240-541: A film by Jack Smight that was also about the Pacific War. Throughout the rest of 1960, Tsuburaya worked on other notable productions, such as the third film in the Transforming Human Series, The Human Vapor ; he also oversaw the creation of an extremely detailed miniature of Osaka Castle and directed its destruction scene for Hiroshi Inagaki's jidaigeki film The Story of Osaka Castle , and then directed

2400-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as

2560-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it

2720-511: A novel by Fusao Hayashi based on the Chinese legend of the White Snake , was Toho's first tokusatsu production to be completely filmed in technicolor (via Eastmancolor ). In preparation for the film, which was produced on a then-record budget of ¥210 million , Tsuburaya and his unit spent a month training with color process technology before shooting the effects. After working on The Legend of

2880-504: A previous entry in the effects director's curriculum. Taking inspiration from watching soybean paste in the broth of his wife's miso soup , Tsuburaya created scenes with storm clouds, as well as smoke and ash erupting from three volcanoes. His effects for Monkey Sun were described by biographer August Ragone as "comical and surreal". After operating on the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater production The Story of Bali , he directed

3040-617: A researcher at the British Film Institute in May 2015: this version was released in Japan on September 4 and 5, 2021, as part of an event celebrating Tsuburaya's 120th birthday. In March of the next year, Tsuburaya's directorial debut, the theatrical play Folk Song Collection: Oichi of Torioi Village , was released: it was an adventure film concerning a condemned romance and featuring political tones. Folk Song Collection: Oichi of Torioi Village

3200-637: A result, Tsuburaya pulled the alien character and episode from official publications, broadcasts and home media releases. However, the Hawaiian English dub and Cinar dub of the series broadcast the episode (which was re-titled "Crystallized Corpuscles") in North America. In 1985, Turner Program Services licensed the series in a 15-year contract from Tsuburaya Productions, who provided the English dubbed versions produced in Honolulu by Tsuburaya-Hawaii, Inc. in

3360-438: A result, he wrote an outline for the project and pitched it to Iwao Mori. Following Tsuburaya's agreement to create its effects, Mori approved the production, eventually titled Godzilla , in mid-April 1954; filmmaker Ishirō Honda soon took over the directing duties. During preproduction, Tsuburaya considered using stop motion to depict the titular monster but, as stated by special effects crew member Fumio Nakadai, had to employ

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3520-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),

3680-436: A series that would have been a hybrid of Thunderbirds and Lost in Space , Hajime proposed a new Ultraman series that would have included network and sponsors' input for each season, Jissoji proposed a time-travel themed show which would have focused on a time patrol team and their families, Kinjo proposed a children's horror/mystery show that would have been a hybrid of Ultra Q and The Twilight Zone , Sueyasu proposed

3840-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate

4000-502: A tea house in the spring of 1919, Tsuburaya met Yoshirō Edamasa , a pioneer of Japanese cinema . Edamasa asked Tsuburaya if he was interested in movies or photography; after he explained to Edamasa that he was interested in motion pictures, Tsuburaya accepted the director's offer to become an employee at his company, the Natural Color Motion Pictures Company (dubbed "Tenkatsu"). Therefore, Tsuburaya began working in

4160-432: A volcanic eruption on Sakurajima ; in the process, he was more fascinated by the projector than the movie itself. In 1958, Tsuburaya told Kinema Junpo that because he was extremely fascinated by the projector, he purchased a "toy movie viewer" and created his own film strips by "carefully cutting rolled paper, then making sprocket holes, and drawing stick figures [on the paper], frame by frame." Because of his craftwork at

4320-527: A young age, he became a provincial celebrity and was interviewed by the Fukushima Minyu Shimbun  [ ja ] . In 1915, at the age of 14, he graduated from junior high school , and begged his family to let him enroll in the Nippon Flying School at Haneda . After the school was closed on account of the accidental death of its founder, Seitaro Tamai, in 1917, Tsuburaya switched to

4480-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of

4640-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,

4800-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing

4960-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number

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5120-684: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider

5280-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto

5440-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to

5600-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through

5760-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey

5920-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of

6080-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and

6240-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and

6400-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have

6560-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns

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6720-598: The Indonesian government for the production of In the Shadow of Glory , producer Tomoyuki Tanaka began to consider creating a giant monster (or kaiju ) film, inspired by Eugène Lourié 's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident . He believed that it would have considerable potential, due to the financial success of previous monster films and the impact of news generating nuclear fears . As

6880-678: The Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from

7040-455: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in

7200-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than

7360-585: The Tokyo air raids . During the two-hour-long attacks, he told his children fairy tales to keep them quiet. Later that year, Tsuburaya made the effects in Torajirō Saitō 's Five Men from Tokyo , for which he was credited as "Eiichi Tsuburaya". Five Men from Tokyo is a comedy film concerning five men who struggle to make a living after returning to Tokyo and remaining unemployed due to the Tokyo air raids on March 10, 1945, at

7520-671: The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor : consequently, the Imperial Japanese Government tasked Toho to produce a propaganda film that would influence the nation to believe they would win the Pacific War . The resulting film, Kajirō Yamamoto 's war epic The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (1942), became the highest-grossing Japanese film in history upon its release in December 1942 and won Kinema Junpo ' s Best Film Award . Tsuburaya directed its effects, which he created with

7680-716: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of

7840-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to

8000-448: The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics ,

8160-500: The "costume method" because he "finally decided it wouldn't work". This technique is now known as " suitmation ". Tsuburaya's special effects department filmed Godzilla in 71 days from August to late October 1954, on a budget of ¥27 million . He and his crew worked relentlessly, regularly starting at 9:00 a.m., preparing at 5:00 p.m., and finishing the shoot at 4 or 5 a.m. in the following morning. Upon its nationwide release on November 3, Tsuburaya's effects received critical acclaim and

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8320-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),

8480-461: The 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of

8640-569: The 4K remasters in an 11-disc box set (containing 4K Blu-ray 's with HDR and standard Blu-ray's) on July 7, 2023 to commemorate the 55th anniversary of Ultraseven . In December 2012, Shout! Factory released the Japanese version on DVD, licensed from UM Corporation through Tiga Entertainment. In July 2019, Mill Creek Entertainment announced that it had acquired most of the Ultraman library from Tsuburaya Productions through Indigo Entertainment, including 1,100 episodes and 20 films. Mill Creek released

8800-538: The August 1960 issue of American Cinematographer , he broke down the creative process behind Son Gokū , saying: "I was called upon to create and photograph a monkey-like monster which was supposed to fly through the air", adding: "I managed the job with some success and this assignment set the pattern for my future work." On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service suddenly attacked

8960-603: The Japan Cameraman Association, which later coalesced with other companies to become the Nippon Cinematographers Club (now known as the Japanese Society of Cinematographers  [ ja ] ). Shortly after that, the association would start to hold award ceremonies. In November of that same year, Tsuburaya quit Shochiku and joined Nikkatsu Futosou Studios . Around the same time, he began using

9120-685: The Japan Motion Picture Cinematographers Association. In 1948, however, Tsuburaya was purged from Toho by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers because of his involvement in propaganda films during World War II. Thus, he founded Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory with his eldest son Hajime and worked without credit at major Japanese studios outside Toho, creating effects for films such as Daiei 's The Invisible Man Appears (1949), widely regarded as

9280-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,

9440-671: The Moon , and Record of the Tragic Swords of the Tenpo Era . Because of the financial success of these films, Tsuburaya started being regarded as one of Kyoto 's leading cinematographers. In 1928, while working on eleven films at Shochiku, Tsuburaya began creating and utilizing new camera operating techniques, including double-exposure and slow-motion camerawork. The next year, Tsuburaya constructed his own smaller version of D. W. Griffith 's 140-foot tall shooting crane : having invented it without

9600-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently

9760-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand

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9920-502: The Samurai (1937), remarkably featured the first full-scale rear projection . In 1937, Tsuburaya was employed by Toho and established the company's effects department. Tsuburaya directed the effects for The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya in 1942, which became the highest-grossing Japanese film in history upon its release. His elaborate effects were believed to be behind the film's major success, and he won an award for his work from

10080-703: The Skies and Kajirō Yamamoto's follow-up to The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya , General Kato's Falcon Fighters (all produced in 1943). For The Opium War , Tsuburaya and his team created miniature navy battle sequences and animation synthesis in urban landscapes. During the production of General Kato's Falcon Fighters (released in 1944), Tsuburaya had his first meeting with future collaborator and filmmaker Ishirō Honda . After watching The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya , Honda became interested in special effects and believed Tsuburaya's work in General Kato's Falcon Fighters

10240-585: The South , was released to Japanese theaters. Tsuburaya directed the film's effects for the typhoon and landslide scenes, which was his first experience acting as the effects director on a film by the future Godzilla director. Tsuburaya collaborated with Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka on The Man Who Came to Port later that year: this marked the first time the trio, who are considered the creators of Godzilla , ever collaborated with one another. During World War II, Toho had begun researching 3D films and completed

10400-562: The Telegian , which was Toho's second installment in the Transforming Human Series, marked Tsuburaya's first assignment of 1960. He then took on a project of a much larger extent, Storm Over the Pacific , the first-ever war film in color. His department created notably large miniatures for the film, with a 13-meter long miniature being filmed by Tsuburaya on the Miura Coast . Storm Over the Pacific

10560-489: The Tokyo Kanda Electrical Engineering School (now Tokyo Denki University ). While at the school, he started working as an inventor at the toy company Utsumi, and devised inventions including the first battery-powered phone capable of making calls, an automatic speed photo box, an "automatic skate" and the toy phone. The latter two earned him a patent fee of ¥500 . During a hanami party held at

10720-519: The United States and was later released worldwide, leading Tsuburaya to gain international recognition. However, for its American release, the movie was re-entitled as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! , heavily re-edited, and integrated with new footage featuring Canadian actor Raymond Burr . Tsuburaya's next major undertaking, The Legend of the White Serpent , a Hong Kong-Japanese film adaptation of

10880-410: The United States the following year, earned more at the box office than any previous science fiction film. Throne of Blood , an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Macbeth from renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa , was Tsuburaya's second film release of 1957. Kurosawa cut several scenes by Tsuburaya due to his displeasure with the amount of footage he made for Throne of Blood . He next served as

11040-618: The Voices of the Sea . While slowly rebuilding the company's Special Arts Department, he filmed all of the title cards, trailers, and the logo for Toho's films from 1950 to 1954. The first production featuring major contributions by Tsuburaya upon his return to Toho was reportedly a 1950 film directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and based on the life of Japanese swordsman Sasaki Kojirō . During this period, Tsuburaya also worked on Toho films such as Senkichi Taniguchi 's anti-war film Escape at Dawn (1950), directed

11200-471: The White Serpent , Tsuburaya made the renowned Toho logo, and his unit created the opening credits for most of the company's films. Between working on large-scale Toho films, he also created the effects for Nippon TV 's series Ninja Arts of Sanada Castle and several theatrical productions for Tokyo Takarazuka Theater . Toho's next assignment for Tsuburaya was Rodan , the first kaiju film ever produced in color. About 60% of Rodan' s ¥200 million budget

11360-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which

11520-563: The age of thirty-two, Tsuburaya watched King Kong , which greatly influenced him to work in special effects. Tsuburaya completed the first iron shooting crane in October 1934, and an adaptation of the crane is still in use across the globe today. After filming his directorial debut on the cruiser Asama in the Pacific Ocean, he worked on Princess Kaguya (1935), one of Japan's first major films to incorporate special effects. His first majorly successful film in effects, The Daughter of

11680-453: The aliens, monsters, and vehicles. Narita's design for Ultraseven was inspired by Mayan culture and originally chose silver and blue for the colors, but changed them to silver and red to avoid problems with the blue-screen matte process. Principal photography on the special effects began in May 1967 and casting began in June 1967. Many of the actors hired were chosen from Toho 's acting pool, since

11840-458: The army in 1923, Tsuburaya moved back to his family's house in Sukagawa. However, he suddenly departed just a few months later, in order to pursue a more established career within the filmmaking industry. In the morning of his departure from home, he left a note: "I won't return home until I succeed in the motion picture business, even if I die trying." The next year, he worked as the cinematographer on

12000-541: The assistance of navy-provided photographs of the Pearl Harbor attack: in the process, he also worked with future Godzilla collaborates Akira Watanabe and Teizō Toshimitsu for the first time in his career. His work on the film was supposedly one of the main reasons behind its major success and gained him the Technical Research Award from the Japan Motion Picture Cinematographers Association. The film depicted

12160-687: The attack so realistically that footage from it was later featured in documentaries on the Pearl Harbor attack. Around the same time as The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya was in production, Toho's effects department was filming Japan's first puppet film , Ramayana . The film's screenplay—based on the Sanskrit epic of the same name —had been written by future Moonlight Mask creator Kōhan Kawauchi in 1941, under Tsuburaya's supervision. Tsuburaya's next four major productions were all war films: Masahiro Makino 's The Opium War , Tadashi Imai 's Watchtower Suicide Squad , Kunio Watanabe's Decisive Battle in

12320-420: The benefit of using blueprints or manuals, the wooden crane allowed Tsuburaya to improve camera movement and was able to be used in and outside the studio. The creation proved to be a success, although it did not guarantee total safety: one day, while Tsuburaya and an assistant were preparing the crane in order to film a scene, the structure collapsed, sending him plummeting to the ground of the studio. A witness of

12480-467: The character would disguise his invisibility powers by dressing up as a clown. Due to the enormous box-office success of Godzilla , Toho quickly gathered the majority of the crew behind the film to create a smaller-budget sequel to the film, entitled Godzilla Raids Again : Tsuburaya was officially given the title of special effects director for the first time, having always been credited under "special technique" beforehand. Shot in less than three months,

12640-416: The company had a minor slate of films to work on, they also began testing matte painting and optical printing. Toho was on the verge of disbandment due to the three major labor disputes that occurred at the studio during the late 1940s. According to Akira Tsuburaya, his father had to sneak around the Japanese police and U.S. tanks deployed during these strikes and disputes in order to get to work. To repel

12800-477: The company's jidaigeki films. However, while the studio agreed with his decision to project these films cast into a location use using location plates, not all of his technological developments were met with approval. While he was filming the final scenes for Asataro Descends Mt. Akagi in February 1934, Tsuburaya fell out with Nikkatsu's CEO, who had no acquaintance with what Tsuburaya was creating and assumed that he

12960-410: The completion of The Sunday That Jumped Out , Murata discussed creating a kaiju film about a giant whale attacking Tokyo, which Tsuburaya devised the previous year. Tsuburaya, therefore, resubmitted the conception of this production to producer Iwao Mori. Although this project never materialized, elements of it were included in early drafts of Godzilla the following year. Tsuburaya's next project,

13120-553: The couple's sons to be baptized , since Masano had been converted to Catholicism by her younger sister. Masano persisted in introducing her children to the Catholic faith and ultimately converted her husband. In 1944, Tsuburaya met future Godzilla producer Tomoyuki Tanaka during the production of the Mikio Naruse -directed war film Until the Day of Victory  [ ja ] , which

13280-532: The cruiser Asama in order to shoot his directorial debut, Three Thousand Miles Across the Equator , a feature-length propaganda documentary film. During the expedition, his second son, Noboru , was born on May 10, 1935. Upon returning from the voyage, Tsuburaya began work on Princess Kaguya , an adaptation of the 10th-century Japanese literary tale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter . He did not only serve as

13440-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there

13600-689: The effects for Shūe Matsubayashi 's Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender , his first war film in six years. In order to film submarine scenes for the film, a model seabed terrain was built in the first Toho miniature pool (dubbed the "Small Pool" after a bigger stage was completed). He also filmed his effects for a technicolor version of the film, but they were converted to black-and-white for the final version. In August 1959, Tsuburaya, together with his sons Hajime and Noboru, shot footage of two dragon puppets in Tsuburaya's laboratory at their house in Setagaya , Tokyo for

13760-458: The effects for Taniguchi's Beyond Love and Hate  [ ja ] , staged miniature ships to depict a battle in Hiroshi Inagaki's Pirate Ship  [ ja ] , and directed the effects for Kenji Mizoguchi 's The Lady of Musashino . In February 1952, Tsuburaya's exile from public office was officially lifted. That same month, Ishirō Honda's second feature film, The Skin of

13920-612: The end of World War II . Even though Toho was unaffected by the Tokyo bombings, as the company was located in Seijo, the amount of film productions was reduced due to the Occupation of Japan . Because of this, the company produced only eighteen films in 1946, with Tsuburaya working on eight of them. During the same year, Tsuburaya became head of the special effects production department at Toho and established its cinematography, compositing, art, and development units. Since he and his effects unit at

14080-431: The episodes for violence, language and commercial time and featured new music cues. Unsatisfied with Cinar's resultant work, Turner put the series into their vaults until 1994, when they were alerted that the episodes were never broadcast. Ultraseven was dusted off for the "Toons 'Til Noon" and " MonsterVision " blocks on TNT . The "Toons 'Til Noon" broadcasts received substantially heavy editing to make them suitable for

14240-427: The family, leaving Tsuburaya in the care of his grandmother Natsu. Through Natsu, Tsuburaya was related to the Edo period painter Aōdō Denzen , who brought copper printing and Western painting to Japan, from whom Tsuburaya considered to have inherited his manual dexterity. His uncle Ichirō, who was Sei's younger brother, was five years older than him and acted like an elder brother to him. Thus, Tsuburaya began to use

14400-488: The film The Hunchback of Enmei'in Temple . Tsuburaya joined Shochiku in 1925 and would have his breakthrough as the cameraman and assistant director on Teinosuke Kinugasa 's A Page of Madness (released the following year). In 1927, he shot Minoru Inuzuka 's jidaigeki films Children's Swordplay and Melee , both starring Kazuo Hasegawa and Tsuyako Okajima, as well as Toko Yamazaki's The Bat Copybook , Mad Blade Under

14560-413: The film became a box office hit. As a result, Godzilla established Toho as the most successful effects company in the world, and Tsuburaya obtained his first Japan Technical Award for his efforts. Instantly after completing Godzilla in October, Tsuburaya began working on another Toho-produced science fiction film, The Invisible Avenger , which was released to Japanese theaters in December 1954, under

14720-685: The film industry at the age of eighteen, as Edamasa's camera assistant, contributing to films such as A Tune of Pity (1919) and Tombs of the Island (1920); reportedly, he also served as a screenwriter during this period. Despite Tenkatsu becoming part of the Kokatsu Company and Edamasa leaving his job in March 1920, Tsuburaya kept working at the studio until he was ordered to serve the Imperial Japanese Army between 1921 and December 1922. After leaving

14880-474: The film was released in April 1955. Just a month later, Tsuburaya began directing the effects of Half Human , his second kaiju film collaboration with director Ishirō Honda. Among his efforts on this film, the effects director notably created stop-motion animation, rear-screen miniature, and miniature avalanche sequences. In April 1956, Godzilla became the first Japanese film to be widely distributed throughout

15040-621: The film's Moon landing sequence; he would later meet Pal in Los Angeles in 1962. Since films featuring his contributions were attaining global popularity and praise for Japanese cinema, Hearst filmed Tsuburaya directing the effects for Battle in Outer Space , and he later received the Special Award of Merit at the fourth Movie Day  [ ja ] ceremony prior to its release. A smaller-scale science fiction film, entitled The Secret of

15200-464: The film's cinematographer, but was also in charge of special effects for the first time. For the film, he worked with animator Kenzō Masaoka to create miniatures , puppets, a composite of Kaguya emerging from a cut bamboo plant, and a sequence in which a ship encounters a storm. While the original print of the film is considered to be lost, a shortened version, screened in England in 1936, was discovered by

15360-424: The film's status to a theatrical feature. Tsuburaya's final film released in 1958 was Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress . Tsuburaya began 1959 by working on the special effects for Mighty Atom , a tokusatsu television series based on Osamu Tezuka 's manga series Astro Boy . Although neither he nor his company were credited in the show itself when it aired between March 7, 1959, and May 28, 1960, he supervised

15520-515: The film, such as a battle between Mifune's character Susanoo and the eight-headed dragon Yamata no Orochi and an eruption of Mount Fuji . On The Three Treasures , Tsuburaya used for the first time the "Toho Versatile Process", an adaptation of Toho's optical printing process that he developed on a budget of ¥62 million for widescreen color films and revealed in May of the same year. The movie earned over ¥340 million , against an initial ¥250 million budget, ranking as Toho's highest-grossing film of

15680-788: The first Japanese science fiction film. In 1950, Tsuburaya returned to Toho alongside his effects crew from Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory. At age fifty-three, he gained international recognition and won his first Japan Technical Award for Special Skill for directing the effects in Ishirō Honda's kaiju film Godzilla (1954). He served as the effects director for Toho's string of financially successful tokusatsu films that followed, including, Rodan (1956), The Mysterians (1957), The Three Treasures (1959), Mothra , The Last War (both 1961), and King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). In April 1963, Tsuburaya founded Tsuburaya Special Effects Productions ; his company would go onto produce

15840-424: The first full-scale rear projection . The German staff were allegedly impressed by his elaborate miniature work on the project. In September 1936, Ichizō Kobayashi merged the film studios P.C.L. Studios and P.C.L. Film Company with J.O. Studios to create the film and theatre production company Toho . Film producer Iwao Mori  [ ja ] was appointed as production manager at Toho: having become aware of

16000-405: The first line of defense against alien invaders. Kinjo felt that the idea was lacking an essential element and suggested adding a superhero. The treatment underwent massive revisions after TBS felt the idea was too similar to The Great Space War and the new version included giant monsters while retaining the original Earth Defense Force element at TBS' request. TBS eventually suggested to make

16160-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had

16320-514: The importance of special effects during a tour in Hollywood , in 1937 Mori hired Tsuburaya at the company's studio in Tokyo , establishing the special effects department on November 27, 1937, and treating him as the section's manager. Shortly after, Tsuburaya received a research budget and began studying optical printers to create Japan's first version of the device, which he designed. Among Tsuburaya's first film assignments at Toho were The Abe Clan ,

16480-429: The incident, named Masano Araki, was one of the first people to run to his aid: she visited Tsuburaya daily while he was hospitalized, and the pair formed a relationship shortly thereafter. On February 27, 1930, Tsuburaya married the decade-younger Araki. Their first child, Hajime , was born on April 23, 1931. In May 1932, Tsuburaya, Akira Mimura, Hiroshi Sakai, Kohei Sugiyama, Masao Tamai, and Tadayuki Yokota established

16640-644: The independent special effects company Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory  [ ja ] , an unofficial juridical entity . Henceforth, he worked at major film studios outside Toho without on-screen credit. In 1949, five major Daiei Film productions featuring effects directed by Tsuburaya were released to Japanese theaters: Japanese horror filmmaker Bin Kato 's The White Haired Fiend , Keigo Kimura's Flowers of Raccoon Palace , Kiyohiko Ushihara's The Rainbow Man , Akira Nobuchi 's The Ghost Train , and Nobuo Adachi's The Invisible Man Appears . This last movie

16800-453: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system

16960-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of

17120-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,

17280-416: The materials (film elements, videotapes, audio masters) to Tsuburaya Productions. Bandai Visual released the series on Blu-ray in Japan as two separate sets with the first released on November 21, 2014 and the second on January 28, 2015. In September 2020, NHK aired 4K remasters of the series, converted from 16 mm film with HDR . In April 2023, Tsuburaya announced that Pony Canyon would release

17440-453: The mid-1970s. Finding this English version to be lacking, Turner commissioned the Canadian children's programming production house, Cinar , to dub all 49 episodes for run in syndication. The TPS/Cinar produced episodes featured new opening and closing credits, eyecatches, new episode names, and even a change of name for the character of Anne Yuri, who was dubbed as "Donna Michibata". Cinar edited

17600-480: The miniature photography done by his staff at Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory. Around the same time, Tsuburaya also directed the special effects for a storm sequence featured in Honda's Inao: Story of an Iron Arm , for which he also constructed the miniature for the title character's rowboat. Next, he worked on Monkey Sun , co-written and directed by Kajirō Yamamoto as an all-star remake of his 1940 film Son Gokū ,

17760-644: The newspaper because he believed the photograph "broke children's dreams". When the Space Race erupted between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, Tsuburaya counseled Toho to produce a film about a lunar expedition. Therefore, his next film, Battle in Outer Space , was a science fiction epic about a group of astronauts who battle extraterrestrials on the surface of the Moon . Tsuburaya reportedly paid homage to producer George Pal 's Destination Moon (1950) in

17920-575: The nickname Eiji ("ji" indicating second-born) instead of Eiichi ("ichi" indicating first-born). In 1908, he started attending the Dai'ichi Jinjo Koto Elementary School in Sukagawa, and it was soon realized that he had a talent for drawing. During his boyhood, Tsuburaya became interested in flying because of the recent success of Japanese aviators; he soon started building model airplanes as a hobby, an interest he would pursue throughout his entire life. In 1913, Tsuburaya saw his first film, which featured footage of

18080-677: The not-too-distant future, Earth finds itself constantly under attack from extraterrestrial threats. To combat them, the Terrestrial Defense Force establishes the Ultra Garrison, a team of six elite members who utilize high-tech vehicles and weaponry. Joining their fight is the mysterious Dan Moroboshi who is secretly an alien from the Land of Light in Nebula M-78 and transforms into his true alien form, Ultraseven , in times of crisis. After

18240-408: The ones used for Eagle of the Pacific , since they featured many more of his technological approaches and syntheses. Because of the success of Eagle of the Pacific and Farewell Rabaul , Tomoyuki Tanaka believed Tsuburaya should make more tokusatsu films with Honda. Tsuburaya's next film would become Japan's first global hit and gain him international attention. After failing to renegotiate with

18400-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by

18560-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with

18720-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,

18880-453: The police, the labor strikers erected a barricade, using a large fan, made by the special effects department of the company, which was equipped with the Zero fighter engine that Tsuburaya had used during the war. These events led to the creation of Shintoho ; Tsuburaya would create the effects for the studio's first film, A Thousand and One Nights with Toho (1947). In late March 1948, Tsuburaya

19040-556: The professional name "Eiji Tsuburaya". In 1933, Tsuburaya saw the American film King Kong , which inspired him to work on movies featuring special effects. In 1962, Tsuburaya told the Mainichi Shimbun that he attempted to convince Nikkatsu to "import this technical know-how, but they had little interest in it because, at the time, I was seen as merely a cameraman who worked on Kazuo Hasegawa's historical dramas". He managed to acquire

19200-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as

19360-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning

19520-430: The series a direct sequel to Ultraman and have it focused on Hayata and Fuji's son, who would be able to call upon Earth monsters for help and only transform into Ultraman in times of desperation. Tetsuo Kinjo began working on an outline, combining elements of TBS' best ideas and his own, such as elements from his rejected proposal WoO , which featured an alien unwittingly becoming a savior of mankind. Kinjo's outline

19680-462: The series on Blu-ray and digital on December 10, 2019 in standard and steelbook editions. In July 2020, Shout! Factory announced to have struck a multi-year deal with Alliance Entertainment and Mill Creek Entertainment, with the blessings of Tsuburaya and Indigo, that granted them the exclusive SVOD and AVOD digital rights to the Ultra series and films (1,100 episodes and 20 films) acquired by Mill Creek

19840-478: The special effects director for The Mysterians , a science fiction epic directed by Ishirō Honda. The first color CinemaScope film ever directed by the duo, The Mysterians is often called the "definitive science fiction movie". Tsuburaya won another Japan Technical Award for his widescreen effects in The Mysterians . A new sub-genre for Toho was born with Tsuburaya's first movie of 1958, The H-Man , which

20000-747: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this

20160-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This

20320-415: The studio was one of the financial investors for Tsuburaya Productions. Yoji Hashimoto and Toshimichi Miwa were put in charge of duties with TBS for the show, while Eiji Tsuburaya served as the chief producer and supervisor for the show and Masami Sueyasu reprised his role as a hands-on producer for Tsuburaya Productions. Four episodes were completed before copyright was approved for the show's title, which

20480-449: The success of space-themed science fiction shows such as Ultraman , Captain Ultra , and the Japanese broadcast of Lost in Space , Tokyo Broadcasting System pursued Tsuburaya Productions to produce another sci-fi series. This led Eiji Tsuburaya to assemble Hajime Tsuburaya , Akio Jissoji , Tetsuo Kinjo, Masami Sueyasu, and Shoji Otomo to brainstorm ideas. Eiji Tsuburaya proposed

20640-494: The television shows Ultra Q , Ultraman (both 1966), Ultraseven (1967–1968), and Mighty Jack (1968). Ultra Q and Ultraman were extremely successful upon their 1966 broadcast, with Ultra Q making him a household name in Japan and gaining him more attention from the media who dubbed him the "God of Tokusatsu ". While he spent his late years working on several Toho films and operating his company, Tsuburaya's health began to decline, and he died in 1970. Eiji Tsuburaya

20800-479: The time slot, while the "MonsterVision" broadcasts were the full-length Cinar adaptations. Episodes 3 and 5-7 were missing or mislabeled and were never broadcast. Clips from the series were later used in the "Messages from Space" and "Vacation Spots Around the Universe" segments on the animated variety show Cartoon Planet , which aired on TBS and Cartoon Network . When the contract expired in 2001, Turner returned all

20960-454: The title Invisible Man . This tokusatsu production was directed by Motoyoshi Oda and featured special effects and photography by Tsuburaya. For the movie, he inherited and expanded the technology used in his first film to feature an invisible character, The Invisible Man Appears (1949). Tsuburaya instructed his crew to portray the title character's invisibility in various ways throughout the film, including optical synthesis, and suggested that

21120-535: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Ultraseven In

21280-456: The tsunami sequence in the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck 's 1948 novel The Big Wave . Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within

21440-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,

21600-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of

21760-472: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It

21920-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending

22080-593: The war epic Eagle of the Pacific (1953), was his first significant partnership with Ishirō Honda. As the film featured many effects sequences from The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya , Tsuburaya used only a small crew to shoot its new effects. Upon its release, the film reportedly became Toho's first post-war production to gross over ¥100 million ( $ 278,000 ). The ensuing year, he and Honda collaborated on another war film, Farewell Rabaul , released to Japanese theaters in February 1954, to moderate box office success. His effects for this assignment were more advanced than

22240-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or

22400-638: The year and their second-highest-grossing film altogether. He won the Japan Technical Award for Special Skill and was presented with the Special Achievement Award at Movie Day. While he was pleased with the success of The Three Treasures , Tsuburaya became disappointed after seeing a picture of the heads of the Yamata no Orochi prop held up by piano wires in a newspaper article concerning its special effects. Accordingly, he declined an interview with

22560-556: Was purged from Toho by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers because of his involvement in propaganda films during World War II. The U.S. occupation officials reportedly expelled him assuming he had access to classified documents when creating the comprehensive miniatures featured in The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya , which led them to inaccurately conclude that he was a spy. Consequently, Toho disbanded their special effects division and Tsuburaya, together with his son Hajime, founded

22720-471: Was Tanaka's debut as a film producer. Tanaka stated that he did not develop a serious connection with Tsuburaya during the film's production. The following year, the special effects director collaborated with Tanaka for the second time on Kiyoshi Saeki's Three People of the North  [ ja ] . On March 10, 1945, Tsuburaya and his family sought refuge for two hours in their residence's bomb shelter during

22880-481: Was also Toho's first film to require the use of the "Big Pool", which had been completed in February 1960. The pool would later be used in the production of every Godzilla film, before being demolished at the end of the filming process for Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). Storm Over the Pacific obtained critical acclaim upon its release, with numerous of Tsuburaya's effects sequences being later featured in Midway (1976),

23040-564: Was banned due to Alien Spell (which had keloid scars) being labeled as "Hibaku Seijin" (A-Bomb Survivor Alien) which was lifted from the term "hibakusha", referring to the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The issue was featured on an article of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which sparked public outrage and forced Tsuburaya Productions to change the name to "Kyuketsu Seijin" (Vampire Alien). Despite this, Tsuburaya Productions still received negative public opinion and as

23200-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular

23360-442: Was believed to be lost for over sixty years, until an unfinished copy of the film was discovered and screened in 2006. In September 1940, Yutaka Abe 's The Burning Sky , was released to Japanese cinemas. Tsuburaya was in charge of effects for the film and received his first accolade from the Japan Motion Picture Cinematographers Association. His next undertaking, Son Gokū , was released on November 6, 1940. During an interview for

23520-554: Was born Eiichi Tsumuraya ( 圓谷 英一 , Tsumuraya Eiichi ) on July 7, 1901, at a merchant house called Ōtsukaya in Sukagawa , Iwase , Fukushima Prefecture , where his family ran a malted rice business. He was the first son of Isamu Shiraishi and Sei Tsumuraya, with a large extended family. When Tsuburaya was three years old, his mother Sei died of illness at the age of nineteen, shortly after giving birth to her second son. Bereaved by Sei's death, Shiraishi divorced her posthumously and left

23680-528: Was changed to Ultraseven . The show was filmed silent, a common practice for Japanese shows at the time, and post-production, including editing and voice dubbing, began in September 1967. Toru Fuyuki was hired to compose the soundtrack, gearing towards a more classical direction as opposed to the jazz-inspired direction Kunio Miyauchi took for the Ultraman soundtrack. Ultraseven aired on October 1, 1967 and earned

23840-517: Was disappointed with his lack of competence on the project and gave up his ambition to become a Daiei employee after The Invisible Man Appears was finished. In 1950, Tsuburaya relocated some equipment and employees at Tsuburaya Special Technology Laboratory to Toho's headquarters; his independent company was merely the size of six tatami mats inside Toho Studios. In the same year, he continued to direct special effects for films from other companies, including Toyoko Eiga 's anti-war film Listen to

24000-409: Was given more assignments and a master's certificate during his almost three years at the academy. In November 1939, while Tsuburaya was still at the flight school and undertaking assignments at Toho, he was appointed head of Toho's Special Arts Department. A month after that, he was commissioned to shoot a science film for Toho's then-recently assembled educational section. Under governance demands, Toho

24160-668: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,

24320-402: Was inferior in scope, but the art and gunpowder technology had enhanced. Additionally, Tsuburaya expressed dissatisfaction with the size of the shooting stage, the art materials, the method of performance, etc. Shortly before Toho distributed General Kato's Falcon Fighters in cinemas, Masano and Tsuburaya's third son and last child, Akira , was born on February 12, 1944. Akira was the first of

24480-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )

24640-503: Was mandated to maintain the creation of propaganda films. Accordingly, in May 1940, Tsuburaya began directing the documentary The Imperial Way of Japan for Toho Education Films' branch, the Toho National Policy Film Association. He was given his first ever credits for special effects for his work on Sotoji Kimura's Navy Bomber Squadron , which featured a bombing scene with a miniature airplane. Navy Bomber Squadron

24800-492: Was spent on Tsuburaya's effects, which included optical animation, matte paintings, and extremely elaborate miniature sets created to be destroyed or flown over by its namesake monster (played by original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima ). Rodan required a large number of model sets in a variety of sizes, including 1/10, 1/20, 1/25, and 1/30, to be developed and assembled by Tsuburaya's division. The film premiered in Japanese theaters in December 1956 and, upon its release in

24960-599: Was the first entry in the "Transforming Human Series". He next directed the effects for Honda's Varan the Unbelievable , a film about a giant monster awakened in the Tōhoku mountains that surfaces in Tokyo Bay . Initially planned as a made-for-television film, co-produced between Toho and the American company AB-PT Pictures , the production was plagued by numerous difficulties: AB-PT collapsed during production, leading Toho to alter

25120-488: Was the first successful Japanese science fiction film, as well as the country's first adaption of H. G. Wells ' novel The Invisible Man . Created by studying the eponymous 1933 film adaptation of Wells' novel, Daiei had intended this film to be Tsuburaya's full-scale post-war recovery, featuring special effects superior in quality to those in Universal Pictures ' The Invisible Man film series . Tsuburaya, however,

25280-412: Was the second film to ever star popular geisha singer Ichimaru , while also featuring actor Kenji Susukida. Soon after its completion, Tsuburaya began working on Arnold Fanck 's The Daughter of the Samurai (released in 1937). The Daughter of the Samurai was the first German-Japanese co-production, and is considered to be Tsuburaya's first major success as a special effects director, since it featured

25440-472: Was titled Ultra Eye and featured Dan Moroboshi being the son of a human and an alien, with Dan coming to Earth in search of his mother. This version also featured Capsule Monsters that Dan would have used when he could not transform. Originally, monsters from Ultra Q and Ultraman were going to be used as the Capsule Monsters in order to cut down production costs. Tohru Narita was assigned to design

25600-426: Was wasting the company's money. After the argument, Tsuburaya resigned from his job at Nikkatsu. Shortly after leaving Nikkatsu, he accepted an offer from Kyoto entrepreneur Yoshio Osawa to work at his company, J.O. Talkies, and research optical printing and screen projection. In October 1934, Tsuburaya and his colleagues completed the first iron shooting crane model and used it to shoot Atsuo Tomioka's The Chorus of

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