Congratulating a Kaiju Movie Veteran for His Special Award!

Keizo Murase poses with a congratulatory bouquet. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Today (Wednesday, February 7), I paid a visit to legendary kaiju suitmaker Keizo Murase at Twenty, where many kaiju and other such characters are created. Murase-san will be presented with a special award at the Japanese Academy Film Prize on March 8 for his contributions to Japanese cinema.

The journey out to Murase-san's office was a long one. Even though it's technically based in Tokyo, it's about as far from central Tokyo as you can get without actually entering a different prefecture! But the trip was well worth the effort, as it's always a joy to spend time in the company of one of Japan's suitmaking pioneers.

Overall, I was at the office was a little over two hours. I also got to meet Murase-san's son, Naoto, who also works at the company. Naoto-san told me that his first work was on Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983) and talked about working on Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992). It was fascinating stuff!

While we were taking the above photos, Murase-san grabbed his phone and asked Naoto-san to take a photo of the two of us together. I've said it before, but it's always cool when a VIP asks to take a photo with you! In addition, since I no longer have any business cards to give out, I wrote my contact info in Murase-san's address book. It's the small things like that that really leave an impression on me.

Congratulations to Murase-san's much-deserved Japanese Academy Film Prize award!