“Each time I did my best, so for that I have no regret. But when I see my films later, there is always a spot where I feel like I should have done it this way, or I should have stood up for myself against the company. I do regret that.
“[However] it was definitely my pleasure that I was able to make something that people can remember … If I had not made Godzilla or The Mysterians, even if I would have received some kind of [critical] prize, it wouldn’t be the same. There is nothing like the happiness I get from those things.”21
NOTES ON THE TEXT
For familiarity and ease of reading, Japanese names are printed in the Western manner, with the subject’s given name followed by the surname, e.g., “Ishiro Honda” rather than “Honda Ishiro.” Macrons (diacritical marks) are not utilized in the text.
Foreign films are referenced by their official English-language title at the time of this book’s publication. This may be different from the title under which a film was originally released in English-language territories. For films with no official English title, a translation of the Japanese title is given.
For Ishiro Honda’s films, the original Japanese-language titles and their translations, if different from the English titles, are provided in the filmography following the text. For other films, the English title or translation is followed by the native-language title in parentheses on first reference in the text.
Japanese terms are presented in italics, followed by their English meaning in parentheses. Terms familiar to Western readers, such as anime, kabuki, manga, and samurai, are not italicized.
ISHIRO HONDA
I
DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES
1911–45
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
— George Santayana
Ishiro Honda is running.
Chinese resistance fighters are approaching fast. An ambush. His ears fill with the cacophony of gunfire and the screams of flying bombs. All around him, fellow Japanese soldiers dive for cover.
He is no longer a young man, but his body remains fit from years of marching, walking, hiking, climbing over the hills and through the valleys of China’s interior. And he is not ready to die. He has endured too much, made too many sacrifices not to return home. So he runs.
Then it happens. Right in front of him a mortar hits the earth, scattering soil. And in that instant, he knows: within milliseconds, thousands of iron fragments will tear him to shreds.
Time freezes. An eternity. Then, as if a miracle, no explosion comes.
Cheating death, he runs on.
1
A BOY FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Ishiro Honda’s birthplace no longer appears on the map. It was a tiny rural mountain village called Asahi, the meaning of which, “morning sun,” attests to the vivid natural beauty that appeared with each new day. Asahi was located within the Higashitagawa District of Yamagata Prefecture, a densely forested province of rolling mountains and deep valleys on Japan’s main island of Honshu. Spanning 9,300 square kilometers and situated about 375 kilometers north of Tokyo, Yamagata is a world apart, a place of thousand-year-old cedars, ageless shrines, and rich agricultural land. Its abundant, unspoiled wonders have inspired poets, novelists, and artists: the fragrant rainbows of spring foliage; the serenade of cicadas and frogs cascading over rice fields during humid summers; the autumns that turn the mountains into a kaleidoscope of yellows, reds, and oranges; and the snow sparkling under winter moonlight. Located one hundred kilometers northwest of Yamagata City, the provincial capital, Asahi village was home to just a few hundred residents in the early twentieth century, when Honda spent his formative years there; it has since been annexed into Tsuruoka, a modern town of more than one hundred thousand. Indeed, signs of progress are evident throughout the entire region, which today is accessible by car, plane, or bullet train. And yet, it is not so completely different now than it was back then, when people lived off the land, were in harmony with their natural surroundings, and had little contact with the outside world. In this idyllic, remote setting, Ishiro Honda was born on May 7, 1911.
Honda was the fifth and youngest child of Hokan and Miho Honda. He was close to his brothers, Takamoto, Ryokichi, and Ryuzo, and he also had a sister, Tomi, who passed away in childhood. As was tradition, the kanji characters of Honda’s given name, Ishiro, indicated his place in the family order. As Honda explained: “‘I’ stands for inoshishi, the boar, the astrological symbol of my birth year. ‘Shi’ stands for the number four, the fourth son.1 And ‘ro’ indicates a boy’s name. Literally, it means the fourth son, born in the year of the boar.”2
Honda’s father, like his father before him, was a Buddhist monk at Churen-ji, a temple located on Mount Yudono, the holiest of the three sacred mountains that lord over central Yamagata. This majestic trio, which also includes Mount Gassan and Mount Haguro, is the epicenter of Shugendo, a feudal-era folk religion of mountain worship and extreme ascetic rites. In centuries past, Shugendo’s most dedicated practitioners would mummify themselves, a ritual involving a long, slow demise. Today, Churen-ji temple still houses the mummy of Tetsumonkai Shonin, a revered monk who underwent this process in the early 1800s.
Hokan, however, had no such aspirations. He studied more traditional Buddhist teachings and was content with the simple life of a monk. The Hondas lived in a dwelling on temple property with a chestnut grove, rice field, and gardens on the grounds. They grew rice, potatoes, daikon radishes, and carrots, and made and sold miso (fermented soybean seasoning) and soy sauce; they also received income from a silk moth farm run by one of Honda’s brothers. Hokan earned money during the summers, taking long trips north to Iwate, Akita, and Hokkaido prefectures to sell devotions and visit temples. He would return home before the beginning of winter, when the village might be snowed in. Honda would liken his father to Koya Hijiri, lower-caste monks from Mount Koya south of Osaka, traveling peddlers who preached Buddhism across Japan.
Honda remembered his father as “a living Buddha,” a gentle soul with a long, white beard and an ever-cheerful disposition. Hokan led by quiet example, rarely lecturing his children and never raising a hand to discipline them, and the boy was strongly influenced by the man’s patient, peaceful ways. Later, as a film director, Honda would be described by colleagues as patient almost to a fault, and his hushed assurance was a product of Hokan’s serenity and the Japanese cultural qualities of muga (selflessness) and kokoro (mind and heart). When asked, however, Honda would say he believed his own personality was closer to that of his mother, whom he also remembered as “a very patient person, never scary, and always nice.”
———
Honda was born one year before the death of Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1868 to 1912 and oversaw Japan’s transformation from a feudal society under the Shogunate into a modern, highly centralized, Western-style state. During the Meiji era, most every aspect of the nation was reformed: government, politics, military, economy, industry, transportation, agriculture, and education. The formerly isolated Japan embraced ideas from Europe and the United States and became the dominant economic and military power
