Tadaaki Watanabe, Toho's Gunpowder Guru, Passes Away at 81

Tadaaki Watanabe in April 2015. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Veteran Toho special effects crew member Tadaaki Watanabe passed away on September 16 after a long illness. He was 81. Mr. Watanabe, known affectionately as Nabe-san to his colleagues, was born on August 9, 1940, in Fukushima Prefecture. As a 14-year-old boy, he was impressed by Godzilla (1954) and would eventually join Toho in 1959.

Tadaaki Watanabe holds a photo of himself in the Angilas suit on the set of Destroy All Monsters (1968). Photo by Brett Homenick.

In the beginning of his career, Mr. Watanabe wanted to become a cameraman, but due to his background in pyrotechnics, he ultimately would work on the special effects side of films, specializing in explosions. His first works at Toho were the all-star epic The Three Treasures (1959) and the war film Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959). Mr. Watanabe would work continuously on Toho tokusatsu films all the way through Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000). 

SFX director Teruyoshi Nakano (left) and Tadaaki Watanabe. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Mr. Watanabe would even don the Angilas suit for Destroy All Monsters (1968) during the climactic kaiju battle in the shadow of Mount Fuji. However, there is some dispute about whether he actually appears in the film as Angilas. According to special effects director Teruyoshi Nakano, Mr. Watanabe wouldn't have appeared in the film as a suit actor because he wasn't a professional in that capacity; he simply would have been a stand-in who wore the suit during a camera test.

For what it's worth, though, Mr. Watanabe's Japanese Wikipedia page does mention that he plays Angilas in some scenes in the movie, and it should be noted that Mr. Nakano doesn't have any firsthand knowledge about whether Mr. Watanabe wore the Angilas suit at any point in the film.

I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Watanabe in April 2015, an event which Mr. Nakano joined. Mr. Watanabe, like most Toho tokusatsu veterans was quite friendly, and I was quite surprised that he never turned up at another event. I'd been pursuing an interview with him for a while but was told that he was unavailable to his illness. 

Rest in peace, Mr. Watanabe.