The History of Godzilla

The History of ゴジラ

The year is 1932, and a movie production company called Toho was founded. In 1943, Toho released their first movie, Ramayana. Not much came out of it though. Then, in 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States in World War II after two atomic bombs, called Fat Man and Little Boy, were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Over sixty-six thousand innocent people were killed. But this led to Toho making their biggest movie ever.

In the 1950s, Toho started work on a romance about a Japanese soldier and an Indonesian love interest. However, when the crew arrived in Indonesia, they were denied access into the country, so they scrapped it. On the way back, Tomoyuki Tanaka got an idea. Fears of nuclear warfare were high, and so was the revenue of the 1953 movie, The Best From 20,000 Fathoms, and even more so was the revenue of the 1952 re-release of King Kong, which all snowballed into a new movie, known as Gojira, or in the U.S., Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

It made 2,000,000$, and a sequel was released in 1955. The movie was called Godzilla Raids Again and the name Godzilla had been used in the last movie, yet interestingly enough, the U.S. title was Gigantis, the Fire Monster. Then there was nothing. The American version was released in 1959, and then there was absolutely nothing in terms of Godzilla movies. Until 1962, when a trailer was released.