When Toho Studios introduced the heavy footsteps and terrifying roar of Gojira, the entire world trembled. For those outside Japan, albeit scary, the gargantuan monster was a creature typical of the B-grade horror movies that were starting to make the rounds, especially across the United States. At home, though, it was a reminder of the horror and devastation inflicted by the war less than a decade earlier.

It was 1954, and the nuclear nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still painfully fresh in the minds of Japanese people. The similarities between the terror caused by Godzilla on the silver screen and the effects of an atomic bomb were not coincidental. Admittedly, the monster was created as a metaphor for the “terror of the bomb,” as director Ishirō Honda once said, and to warn people of the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.

The initial sequence alone, showing the crew of a freighter ship hit by the shock wave of a powerful and blinding blast, stood as a direct allusion to an incident that had happened earlier that year. The crew of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, was contaminated by radioactive material propelled by American nuclear detonation tests at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.

Godzilla was born ominous, but the monster gained more lighthearted connotations with every reappearance, captivating audiences across the globe, especially kids. Godzilla became Japan’s first pop export phenomenon, a global merchandise triumph, and the star of the longest-running movie franchise in history. All this before the so-called “cool Japan” was even a thing.

The latest Godzilla film, Godzilla vs. Kong, was released in 2021 as the 36th film in the franchise, marking the 67th anniversary of the monster. With time, Godzilla and its movie franchise developed to define kaiju, the subgenre of tokusatsu that features monsters. In Japanese, kaiju means “monster.” Tokusatsu translates to “special effects.” That’s how we refer to Japanese action movies filled with practical special effects—think actors in suits fighting each other and destroying miniature cities.

Godzilla movies are divided into eras: Showa, from 1954 to about 1975; Heisei, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s; Millennium, around the millennium; and Reiwa, which still lasts until today. The monster didn’t terrorize the world alone for long. Godzilla was joined by countless other kaiju like the giant moth Mothra, the pterodactyl-like Rodan, the three-headed dragon Ghidorah, and even a familiar (and older) character, King Kong, who, not without some controversy, is generally considered kaiju. Godzilla even had to share the kingdom of kaiju with another icon that appeared intending to take some market share: Gamera, a fire-breathing turtle monster.

The list of monsters continues, and it’s seemingly endless. Each one bears an extraordinary power and a set of unique characteristics. These monsters captured the imagination of legions of dedicated aficionados spread across the globe. To them, kaiju and tokusatsu are more than a mere hobby or interest; they’re a way of life.

Ġużè Stagno
Collector, Photographer, and Showa-Era Devotee from Malta

Novelist Ġużè Stagno, aka Shane Piacevoli (a pun with spjaċevoli, meaning unpleasant in Maltese), wrote four very successful pop novels in his native Malta. But “tired of writing in a language spoken only by half a million people, of whom only a fraction was interested in reading books,” he took an extended sabbatical from the craft and moved to Belgium. It’s been ten years, and he has stayed there ever since. Now, Stagno works as an interpreter for European institutions.

In the intermissions of his profession, he collects and photographs kaiju and tokusatsu toys. “It’s part-time work but a full-time passion. Was poetry less important to TS Eliot because he wrote in the evenings after a day at the bank?” he smirks. More than a pastime, his photographs are a way for his art to reach more people. “Visuals are not constrained by language barriers. That, I think, is fantastic.”

Stagno knew about Godzilla growing up. The monster was already a “pop-culture juggernaut,” as he puts it, but it wasn’t an exceedingly popular figure in Malta. Even on Italian television, which Stagno could get from Malta if the weather were clear, Japanese classics like Godzilla and Ultraman were not aired very often. “What they did show was a third-rate Ultraman copy called Megaloman. The hero had this crazy Farrah Fawcett hairdo for some reason,” he laughs. “That was my introduction to tokusatsu.”

Still, his fascination with the genre didn’t come until he was already an adult, as a toy collector. “Like most working-class children of a certain age, I didn’t have many toys growing up, certainly not when compared to American kids,” he says. “Once I grew up and got a job, I started buying the toys we couldn’t afford back then. It started with Playmobil, then Japanese action figures.”

With time, his focus switched to kaiju and tokusatsu toys. This happened around the same time he began learning Japanese, and not coincidentally. “I was always a proponent of learning languages by consuming media. It’s how I learned Italian as a child, watching all those anime shows dubbed in Italian, and how later I taught myself French,” he says, adding that he learned much of his Japanese by watching the essential kaiju classics on Blu-ray.

Stagno quickly developed a preference for kaiju and tokusatsu shows from the Showa era. “I’ve always yearned for things that were before my time. I don’t know what it is with this nostalgia for a time and place you have never experienced directly. I think they call it ‘anemoia,'” Stagno says. Showa era Godzilla movies, for instance, are less dark than the two movies that came first and the overall look that took over during the Heisei era. They are colorful monster battles filled with wacky special effects. “All I can say is that I love the Showa aesthetics. Some fans prefer more modern versions because they are darker, whatever that means. Give me the dorky 1960s stuff any day, and I’m happy,” he says.

One day, a post on the fansite Kaijuaddicts caught Stagno’s attention. It was about train dioramas and the scale effect they gained when combined with Godzilla toys. The piece featured several photos taken by kaiju collectors as they attempted to recreate what they saw in movies and TV shows. It was a revelation, and he began doing the same.

Stagno’s kaiju and tokusatsu photographs are an homage to the old shows he came to love so much. He attempts to go as close as possible to the Showa look, recreating minor details of the productions—including flaws. He incorporates the desaturated colors, grain effect, and imperfections from analog film into his photographs. Beyond that, he leaves intentional mistakes, such as uncovered bits of scenery, to break the illusion of reality, just as it occasionally happens on TV.

There’s more than pure love for the Showa era in his style, though; his inner rebel also comes out. “When I started kaiju photography, the fashionable thing was to produce these extremely slick shots, where everything’s shiny and bright, all high definition. I was never a fan of that look, and I wanted to do something different. Even nowadays that I work with a 50MP camera, the first thing I do in post is to turn the sharpness way down,” he says.

In his toy room-studio hybrid, Stagno has everything he needs. He shoots monsters like Bemular, Zetton, and Gomora.He also shoots Ultraman—a lot of Ultraman. His monsters look larger than life, but he sets them along with the dioramas on a piece of Ikea furniture in a corner, near a window that provides lots of natural lighting. His miniature buildings are by Tomytec, a Japanese maker of train dioramas. Stagno began shooting his toys with an iPhone 4, but he has upgraded. “I’ve been using a Leica, which gives my pictures a rather distinctive look. There’s nothing like Leica glass, as they say.”

Recently, Stagno began selling his old toys to buy highly detailed kaiju X-Plus figurines based on the suits that kaiju actors wore in the shows. They include little details such as zippers and even holes for the eyes. These are exceptionally niche products, and he has to buy them directly from Japan.

Admittedly, Stagno is a bigger fan of Ultraman than he is of Godzilla. Kaijus from the Godzilla franchise come in second place. “The Godzilla stuff interests me much less, at least from a narrative point of view. I find the average plot in an episode of Ultraman much more interesting than anything the scriptwriters for Godzilla ever came up with,” he says.

Stagno is taking interesting experimental directions with his photography. He’s been incorporating elements of his literary work—marked by irony and dark humor—into his photographs. “It’s a work in progress. How it will turn out, we will have to wait and see,” he says.

John Ruffin
Kaiju Fanatical and Official Godzilla Photographer from the USA

After graduating from a theological seminary in 2008, John Ruffin fulfilled his longtime dream of moving to Japan, where he stayed until 2014. He’s the creator of MyKaiju.com, an online platform for all things kaiju, and MyKaiju magazine, a print fanzine for toy photographers, fans, and collectors. Ruffin is also an official Godzilla photographer, which means his work is approved and recognized by Toho Studios to become box art for licensed products—not bad for someone who grew up obsessed with Godzilla.

Unlike Stagno in Malta, growing up in Philadelphia during the 1970s, Ruffin could lose himself in daily tokusatsu shows. During the week, it was Ultraman, The Space Giants, Giant Robo, Astro Boy, Marine Boy, and many others. “I pretended to be every character: I dreamed of becoming Ultraman with the click of the beta capsule. I wanted to blow a whistle to call for Magma Taishi. I put on my father’s watch to command Giant Robo to fight,” he recalls.

On weekends, his attention turned to Godzilla, a recurring character in programs featuring horror and sci-fi movies. His enthusiasm was such that he would record the movies, first on audio tapes—to listen to them repeatedly while reimagining the plots—then on video cassette tapes. “The mature topics of the stories left a powerful impression on me and shaped my ideas about good and evil, right and wrong,” Ruffin says.

Ruffin’s devotion to kaiju only grew stronger. In the 1990s, he used early graphic software like MacDraw and Adobe PageMaker to create kaiju magazine mock-ups. “I did paste-ups with photocopies and printouts as if I was going to press,” he laughs. He shared his passion with friends, shopping for collectibles, attending conventions, and even taking trips to Japan together. Through the years, he loved seeing Godzilla’s appearance changing and the evolution of the visual effects used in the movies.

However, as some of his friends shelved their old kaiju movies, seduced by the new blockbusters released year after year, Ruffin remained faithful to the Showa era. “Maybe I’m biased by my childhood, but I will always love the Showa movies more, followed by the Heisei series. The charm and appeal of the tokusatsu miniatures are unmatched by later technology,” he says, noting that, from the most recent movies, only Shin Godzilla from 2016 holds a special significance close to the early movies.

Ruffin followed the debate that came with CGI technology replacing the practical effects that defined tokusatsu, such as suit acting and miniature scenarios. To him, suit acting is inextricable to the metaphor of Godzilla. “I see Godzilla and other kaiju monsters as our victims. They’re scapegoats that pay for our sins. Humans are responsible for the monsters we fear and seek to destroy. Godzilla’s human gestures and qualities created by suit actors remind us of the human victims of the atomic bombs,” he says.

Even though the broader public doesn’t know them, Godzilla suit actors are considered legends inside the fandom. As Ruffin explains, there’s more to the job than it seems. Haruo Nakajima, for instance, the first Godzilla suit actor, had to study the motion of elephants and bears before entering his heavy suit. Ruffin also says that each actor left their mark on the character: a careful eye can distinguish their different personalities, mannerisms, and approaches to animating Godzilla.

Ruffin’s first visit to Japan was in 1994. It was a proper Godzilla tour, including everything he wanted to see and buy. His top priority was seeing Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla on the silver screen. “It was an out-of-body experience,” he says. “I watched it three times. The closing track, Echoes of Love, is etched into my memories. This trip changed my life.”

Interestingly, when Ruffin saw the original movie from 1954 as a kid he didn’t like it. “It was too dark and sad. It just wasn’t the ‘Godzilla’ I liked,” he says. It was only in 2014, during his last year living in Japan, that he decided to give it another go, and this time, he was overwhelmed by what he saw. By then, with broader philosophical knowledge, Ruffin could perceive new meanings behind the character, unsurprisingly more apparent in the original movie than in any other. “I was watching Godzilla again for the first time. I could better understand what it means to be a monster, where they come from, and why we need them.”

One thought kept looming in his mind: for Japanese audiences in 1954, to watch Godzilla on the big screen was not a regular lighthearted experience, as you would expect from going to the movies, but a way to relive the horrors of a not-so-distant past. “This new terrifying monster reminded them of what had happened earlier that year,” he says, referring to the incident with Daigo Fukuryū Maru. “Godzilla was also the embodiment of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nine years before. Moviegoers would leave the theater with a dire warning against nuclear proliferation and the creation of new weapons of war.”

Three years before, as he was living in Karuizawa, Ruffin himself had experienced a fury similar to Godzilla’s. “It was the first time I experienced an earthquake, and I pray it will be my last. That day the metaphor of Godzilla made sense and became real,” he says.

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 pm, with a magnitude of 9.1, the Tōhoku earthquake struck near the East coast of Japan. It caused a tsunami with waves up to 40 meters, a nuclear disaster unleashing toxic and radioactive materials into the environment, widespread destruction, and a death toll of nearly 20,000 people. Ruffin remembers everything vividly: the school building he was at shaking violently with the tremor, the evacuation that ensued with other school teachers and students. “It was the day I met Godzilla. Later, watching the tsunami’s waves on TV was like watching Godzilla coming ashore,” he says.

Such an experience explains his regard for Shin Godzilla, released in the earthquake’s aftermath. Once more, Ruffin was in Japan for the release in 2016. “I squirmed in my seat as I watched. It was like reliving all the pinned-up fears and anxiety I had from March 11,” he says. To him, the monster developing in shape and size was like the danger of Fukushima growing, and the frozen Godzilla in the middle of Tokyo represented how nuclear reactors remain a threat. “Just as Godzilla 1954 did for postwar Japan, Shin Godzilla has done for post-3/11. Godzilla continues to function as a vehicle to revisit, relive, and reckon with tragedy,” Ruffin says.

Still, Ruffin doesn’t see Godzilla as a source of evil. He believes that the symbolism behind the monster needs to be carefully unpacked. “Godzilla is a mirror of what we as humans do. Our societies and cultures have many forms of harm and violence, creating our’ monsters.’ We have to get better at finding the real sources of evil. If we pay close attention, watching Godzilla and tokusatsu can help us do that,” he says. In the end, Godzilla might very well be our savior.

Benjapol Parosin
Kaiju  Sculptor and a Friend of Godzilla from Thailand

Born in 1993, Benjapol Parosin grew up in Chonburi, a seaside town about an hour’s drive from Bangkok, where he’s still based. His dream was to work on special effects for monster movies, but he worked as a makeup artist for the same repetitive romantic productions, mostly making scars and aging actors. About five years ago, he took a leap of faith and quit his job to become a professional monster sculptor.

Benjapol’s fondness for monsters started when he was only a boy as he watched tokusatsu shows such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider, both popular in Thailand in the late 1990s. But to him, the monsters always stole the show from the heroes. “I liked Ultraman only because of the monsters,” he says.

Growing up, he had a cousin who worked in a movie rental shop, letting him pick whichever title he wanted from the shelves. “What always caught my attention was the cover art of horror movies and monster movies. You can say I grew up watching B-grade American monster productions,” he says. Benjapol would not only watch but also draw posters inspired by the VHS covers he picked; Some notable ones were Alien, from 1986, Lake Placid, and Deep Blue Sea, both from 1999.

A particular cover that caught his attention was the 1998 version of Godzilla, the first American movie of the franchise, produced by TriStar Pictures. “That’s when it all started,” he says. “I was crazy about it, and I even began imitating Godzilla. His walking, breathing, and eye movements. Although it was more of a mix between him and the velociraptor from Jurassic Park,” he laughs. It was only in 2000 that Benjapol watched his first Japanese-made Godzilla movie, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. “I was like, hey, is there a Japanese Godzilla, too?”

To this day, Benjapol still remembers where he sat in the movies to watch Godzilla vs. Megaguirus and the hair-raising roaring of the monster. He also remembers how, near the cinema, there was a toy store selling several types of tokusatsu toys. He went there with his aunt but could only eyeball the toys. Most were very expensive.

As fate would have it, his aunt suggested he’d pick something more affordable instead, and his eye got caught in a book, again because of the cover art. “It had the picture of a Godzilla model by Yuji Sakai,” he says, referring to the renowned artist who helped to design the monster in Godzilla 2000: Millennium. “I was not disappointed. The book was filled with pictures of collectible models from Godzilla, Gamera, and other kaiju.”

Many years later, already in university, when Benjapol began modeling his own monsters, he realized he had a talent. In 2016, he made his first professional model, a 30 centimeters tall bust of Shin Godzilla. Even though it wasn’t a highly profitable project, he sold a few copies and that alone was enough motivation to continue. It showed him that, whatever he was into, there was a niche for it.

Benjapol creates his kaiju monsters with garage kit modeling techniques. As he explains, they first surged in the 1980s as a hobby for people who couldn’t find the figurines of the characters they wanted for sale, so they sculpted their own models in their workshops, which were, more often than not, their garages.

To Benjapol, what’s poignant about these DIY statues is that the makers’ passion shows in the result. “This kind of work is made by people who are huge fans of those characters and use their imagination to the fullest, and this makes these pieces much more attractive than the work of a typical model toy company,” he says.

With time, these independent toy makers became better at their craft and began showing and exchanging models at kaiju meet-ups, fairs, and conventions. Eventually, the popularity of garage kits caught the attention of the big players in the industry, toy makers such as X-Plus, Kaiyodo, Billiken Shokai, and Aurora. They also began selling DIY kits of special characters for fans to assemble at home.

Whatever is made by the big companies is called resin kits to distinguish from the independently made garage kits. They are not to be confused with model kits either. Model kits are usually pre-colored models of tanks and warships, sold more widely. You always need to paint and glue a resin kit and a garage kit, and that’s where the magic comes out; makers can choose to add anything they want to their models and paint in unexpected colors.

Today, under the label Beninside Studios, Benjapol produces kaiju collectibles. He sells them in resin kits that fans can assemble and paint themselves or as fully completed sculptures. “Depending on the size, the complexity of the structure, and the level of detail, it can take up to two months to create a prototype,” he says, referring to the model he uses to cast his characters. “When the prototype is ready comes the hardest part: disassembling it into different parts to create silicone molds and then casting them with resin. It’s a complex process of mixing and measuring ingredients; if you make a mistake, it’s hard to correct. Painting is the last part.”

Benjapol customers are a diverse group, from seventeen years old to about sixty, primarily men. He doesn’t know much about them. “The only thing I can confirm is that they are kaiju fans and love these big monsters,” he says. He also knows that their favorite monsters are Godzilla and Gamera, the sculptures he works on more often. “Monsters always have some spell and charm that keeps people interested. I grew up with this feeling. The power of monsters is not really because they are scary and strange but because they are unique,” Benjapol says.

When it comes to the king of monsters, Godzilla, he thinks its allure is universal and that it develops with time to become more relevant. “Godzilla will always remind us of how deadly war is, but modern films bring new reinterpretations for the monsters. Like in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla from 2014, Godzilla takes the meaning of a natural force that balances existence. Likewise, Godzilla VS Kong from 2021 shows humans trying to play God at the top of the food chain, but they end up being destroyed by Godzilla. That teaches us something about our human-centric arrogance to think we can prevail over nature.”

Soon, Benjapol plans to open a monster sculpture course for children and teenagers. “They are in a confusing transitional age. They might need a door, a way into their future,” he says. He reflects on everything Godzilla means to him and how it stirred his life into exciting directions. “Godzilla is my religion,” he laughs. Then, he says that the monster gave him something to hold on to in his life and a career he loves. Godzilla still casts the same spell on him as it did when he was a boy. “He’s my friend,” he says candidly. “That’s the thing with monsters. Once you get to know them, they’re not scary anymore.”

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Contributors: Tomas Pinheiro, Lucas Tinoco
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
Images Courtesy of Benjapol Parosin, Guze Stagno, and John Ruffin