Ishirō Honda was a Japanese director who worked closely with Kurosawa but is arguably most recognised for his main role in the 1950s and 1960s kaijū eiga (“monster movie”) craze.
While not as well-known or recognised as his Japanese contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, Honda had a long successful career — after all, he was the man who first brought Godzilla to the big screen.
Honda intended to give Japan’s first monster movie a feeling of reality and authenticity. Godzilla is a classic cinematic tale of nuclear war and science gone wrong. Throughout his work on the kaijū eiga films, Honda spoke to scientists and academics on how to make his stories more realistic. To be as genuine as possible, he ordered his actors to behave as they would in any circumstance, no matter how absurd.
