Now that I’ve recovered from my embarrassment of flirting with a happily married woman, I’ve collected my notes and Nathan’s assigned research mini-projects for our latest episode. Let’s get into it.
- Tomoyuki Tanaka started producing films for Toho in 1945. His first was Three Women of the North.
- Yell at you, Nathan, for mispronouncing a tiny robot dragon’s name? Nah.
- It’s “Enter the Fist,” not, “Legend of the Fist,” Bex. (Even writing that sentence makes my eye twitch!)
- The name of this film’s director is Okihiro Yoneda.
- I should’ve reminded you it was a bulldozer, Nathan. Oops.
- You want me to rant on Twitter about you boring me with your many theories about everything on the Island? Nah. I have better things to do with my Twitter. Like retweet stuff for Space Force.
- It’s Yakushima, not Yukushima, Bex.
- What? If Mothra’s powder can be an artificial sweetener, why can’t her webbing be used to season popcorn? It only makes sense. That’s what Dr. Chujo told me.
- There were two Mothra props built for this film: one for close-ups and one for action shots. There were two Mothra Leo larva props (one of which was repurposed for GMK) and two for his Imago form. There was one Desghidorah suit and a flying prop near as I can tell.
- The Godzilla film with a silhouette against the sun is Godzilla vs. Hedorah. Nathan neglected to mention for some reason.
- Both of you call the Elias “twins” when they aren’t. Heck, Nathan even points out they aren’t twins! Consistency, man!
Nathan’s Leftover Notes – The Film
- Mothra…appears right off the bat. Glitter and sparkles!
- Title actually appears in English with her glyph as the O.
- Within four minutes we see the Elias (fairies). They say, “Goodbye!” together, too.
- Sadly, these are dubtitles.
- The seal looks like Mothra’s glyph.
- Classic wing problem. They don’t flap enough.
- The beam attacks (for Fairy and Garugaru) sound like gunshots sometimes.
- How’d Belvera tie up the Mom? (Magic. –Jimmy)
- How does Belvera stay on Garugaru with how much he crashes? (Glue? Velcro? Static cling? –Jimmy)
- They try to use a kite to fly the Elias to Belvera. Definitely child logic.
- Did they need the seal to cure Fairy? (The answer is apparently, “Yes.” –Jimmy)
- I gotta say: Desghidorah looks great. His emergence from the mountain is particularly good. He sounds like an angry elephant, though.
- There was a line that didn’t get subtitled. No dub? Belvera ordering Garugaru.
- Mothra has a Canary Cry? (What superpower doesn’t she have at this point? –Jimmy)
- Now Mothra is in full-tilt mama bear mode!
- Why didn’t you whip out the laser cannon the first time?!
- There’s an image you don’t see every day: Mothra carrying the larva in flight.
- Check out the OG cell phones. (I think I still have mine…. –Jimmy)
- As usual, Mothra’s cocoon looks like a peanut. Selecting a cedar tree is significant because it is connected with Shinto and used as backdrops for No theatre. National identity, traditional values, and conversation.
- I’m not sure Taiki’s bee stings and snake bites analogy is applicable here.
- Belvera, I don’t think “mutated” is the right word.
- What?! Post-credit?! Oh. No. What a tease. (This isn’t a Marvel movie, Nathan. Or a Masaaki Tezuka Godzilla film. –Jimmy)
- The child characters have insights into a kind of “magic of nature.” They show the world through their eyes, and it shows the audience what the “post-bubble family life” is like. (Rhodes and McCorkle)
Nathan’s Leftover Notes – Toku Topic: Deforestation in Japan
- “The situation started to change around 1570. By then, Japan’s population had increased to ten million people, and villagers’ needs for subsistence forest products had increased correspondingly. Large-scale military conflict during the 1500s required large quantities of timber for the armies. With the advent of the Tokugawa shogunate and peace, followed by rapid growth of cities and monumental construction projects for castles, temples, and shrines, logging increased during 1600s to a scale never before experienced in Japan. Conflict between villagers and rulers over the use of forest lands – subsistence products for the villagers vs. timber for the rulers – became more intense. By 1670 the population had increased to nearly thirty million, and with the exception of Hokkaido, the old growth forests had been completely logged. The supply of timber and other forest products was running out. Soil erosion, floods, landslides, and barren lands (genya) were becoming ever more common. Japan was headed for ecological disaster.” (Marten)
- A “positive tip” came in 1670: “the central role of catalytic actions and mutually reinforcing positive feedback loops, local community, outside stimulation and facilitation, letting nature and natural social processes do the work, demonstration effects, social/ecological coadaptation, and using social/ecological diversity and memory as resources. It is difficult to single out the initial tipping point with certainty, but it seems to have derived from the centuries-old tradition of cooperation among villagers for protection against bandits, allotting rice fields and irrigation water, and storing rice. Until then, village cooperation had not extended to forest management, but villages started responding to the forest crisis by refining the management of satoyama secondary forests for subsistence needs (McKean 1982, 1986), and for the first time, planting sugi and hinoki plantations to help satisfy timber demands of the rulers.” (Marten)
- Something that helped was the development of silviculture technology, which better managed the tree populations. “Itinerant scholars wrote silviculture manuals, and silviculture “missionaries” traveled around the country, spreading the new technology from village to village. The creation of managed tree plantations stimulated new social institutions for the ruling elite and villagers to cooperate on timber production in a way that provided villagers incentives to produce timber: yamawari (dividing use rights of village forest land among families), nenkiyama (long term leases of forest land to villagers by the government), and buwakibayashi (villagers producing timber on government land and sharing the harvest with the government).” (Marten)
- People in the lumber industry called this the “buna massacre.” Artificial forests that once accounted for only 27% of Japan’s total forest land grew to over 44% by 1985. An estimated 17 million buna trees were cut down.
- “Japan’s switch to imported wood, fossil-fuel energy, and chemical fertilizers for agriculture, in full swing by the 1980s, eliminated the demand for forest products from satoyama secondary forest and greatly reduced the demand for sugi and hinoki.” (Marten)
- Other countries have had the same problems planting one or two species of trees: China, Brazil, Pakistan.
- “It is using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) to map forestland and determine where to harvest trees, where to preserve landscapes and where to build resilience against landslides and runoff.” (Coca)
- “Most of the cultivated pasture land (in Hokkaido) was abandoned and returned to the Japanese government from 1966-1977, as climate conditions in the area were not conducive to good crop yield. The shift from old growth forest to pasture left large areas of reduced soil fertility that trees were unable to recolonize. Due to a lack of a seed bank and competition with dwarf bamboo, human involvement was necessary to reforest the area. From 1978-2005 native trees with high growth rates were planted in plantations. It was mostly conifers that were planted in the area, but it has aided in the recovery of a conifer-broadleaf mixed forest.” (Wikipedia)
Dangit, Nathan, I’m an engineer, not an ecologist! Even as a man of science this was a bit of a slog to get through. No offense to ecologists, though. We have a few here on the Island studying the local plant life, and they’re good people. Although, they do have a weird fascination with Biollante.
Join us next week when Nathan discusses a very different film: The Last War (1961). Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!
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