Christmas with Tokusatsu Legends!

Eiichi Asada (left) and Sadao Iizuka. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Earlier tonight, I attended a special Christmas event with two luminaries of the tokusatsu world. I couldn't think of a better way to spend Christmas Day.

The event wasn't just about Christmas, of course. It also served as a special birthday event for optical effects wizard Sadao Iizuka, who turns 88 on December 26. I gave Iizuka-san a birthday card in honor of his upcoming milestone.

Iizuka-san held court and shared many stories of his relationship with Eiji Tsuburaya and his work at Toho. I was familiar with just about all of them from my two interviews with him from about two years ago. 

Eiichi Asada. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Eiichi Asada was just as fun as ever to talk with. I followed up with him on something he mentioned in our interview last year. Asada-san talked about how he would go to Ginza and buy making-of books (usually translated into Japanese) about Hollywood blockbusters made in the late 1970s and '80s. He cited the book on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as one book that was particularly enlightening.

Asada-san also mentioned that he read in one of the books that the American SFX crews could blow up miniature buildings and rebuild them, which Asada-san was surprised to read, as that was something Toho SFX crews couldn't do.

After that, I showed Asada-san a picture of the pro wrestling tag team Demolition, but he wasn't familiar with them. In fact, he thought they were the band KISS, so I told him they were a team of Road Warrior imitators. Since Asada-san once compared the wrestler Sting to the members of KISS, I wanted to show him wrestlers who looked a lot more like the band!

As you can no doubt see, it was a lot of fun, and a perfect way to spend Christmas Day. January promises to be a busy month for me, so I'm enjoying the slower pace of December. See you next year!