GODZILLA BEATS THEM ALL! Dining with Godzilla Series Actor Hiroyuki Kawase!

Yours truly with former child actor Hiroyuki Kawase, the star of two Godzilla movies from the 1970s. 

The first human character I ever saw in any Godzilla movie was played by Hiroyuki Kawase. As Rokuro in Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), he gave young viewers like myself at the time a character with whom to identify. I would later see Kawase-san in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971), Akira Kurosawa's Dodeskaden (1970), and Kihachi Okamoto's Battle of Okinawa (1971).

The director and his star! Hiroyuki Kawase (left) and Yoshimitsu Banno (right) talked Smog Monster among many other topics. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Tonight I was lucky enough to have dinner with Kawase-san. Joining us for the dinner was Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster director Yoshimitsu Banno. Banno-san had already met Kawase-san a couple of months ago, but it was rather impressive to see the director and his star talking shop 44 years after the film was released!

Hiroyuki Kawase as he appears today. Photo by Brett Homenick.

I finally remembered to ask Banno-san about the older people who watch the concert at the foot of Mt. Fuji just before the final battle between Hedorah and Godzilla. He explained that they were peasant farmers and that they were shown to emphasize the generational gap. The concert in the film was based on a real one (or a series of concerts) that took place at the foot of Mt. Fuji around that time.

Kawase-san was extremly friendly and approachable. Naturally, he doesn't think of himself as a movie star, having left the business altogether in the mid-'70s to focus on his schoolwork. But, given his connection with such icons as Godzilla and Akira Kurosawa, it's hard to see him as anything else.