Godzilla is one of modern pop culture’s most recognizable monsters, being the trope codified for an entire genre of films. While there have been many stories about how Godzilla was conceived as an idea, LIFE magazine published a special article about the nuclear menace, detailing how Godzilla was conceived in the mind of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.
The producer was responsible for a film that was being made as a collaboration between Japan and Indonesia. However, due to rising political tensions, the film was dropped from the production schedule as Indonesia decided to back off from the project, which left a very large unallocated budget in the hands of Tomoryuki Tanaka.
Godzilla ended up taking the spot of In the Shadow of Honor
Termed an ambitious coproduction between Japan and Indonesia, Shadow of Honor was set to be an epic romance story that was set in Japan-occupied Indonesia during the Second World War. The film was set to be pretty expensive, with Tanaka having to fly between Japan and Jakarta multiple times to get the production off the ground.
It was set to star Ryo Ikebe and singer Yoshiko Yamaguchi. However, given that the Indonesian War for Independence from the Dutch Empire had just concluded, which began right after Japan’s unconditional surrender in the Second World War, tensions were still raw between the two countries, which caused Indonesia to pull out of the deal.
To fill the hole that turn of events had left behind, Tomoruyki Tanaka allegedly came up with the idea of Godzilla, not only to get his production schedule back on track but also to allocate a massive budget.
Tomoryuki Tanaka allegedly conceived the idea of Godzilla on his flight from Jakarta to Japan
The idea that Tanaka conceived Godzilla on his own on his journey back to Japan is heavily contested by multiple sources that claim differently. However, the Tanaka reported that he conceived the idea as such:
The thesis was very simple. […] What if a dinosaur sleeping in the Southern Hemisphere had been awakened and transformed into a giant by the Bomb? What if it attacked Tokyo?
The idea was one that was formed out of desperation because as mentioned, Tanaka had a lot on the line if his production schedule was not adequately busy. He said:
It was easy to say that the film was just canceled. But now I had to come up with something big enough to replace it. […] On the plane ride back to Tokyo I was so desperate and was sweating the whole time.
While Tanaka’s story could be a fun bit of trivia in cinema history, there is a lot that refutes the claims that it makes. To begin with, Ishiro Honda’s biography, states that the idea of the film had been passed on multiple times before it got made, with Honda coming on board as the only director who could do it justice.
