Actor who wore monster suit to play first Godzilla dies aged 88

Toho Co (Tokyo)

08/08/2017 08:27

TOKYO, Aug 8 (Reuters) - The man who dressed in a rubber 
suit to play the original Godzilla, crashing through Japanese 
cities and destroying them with swipes of his massive tail, has 
died at the age of 88, film company Toho said on Tuesday. 
    Haruo Nakajima, who donned the cumbersome suit to play the 
monster who rose from the depths after a hydrogen bomb test in 
the original 1954 "Godzilla", died on Monday of pneumonia, a 
Toho spokesman said. 
    The first suit weighed 100 kg (220 lb) and was so hard to 
breathe in that an oxygen tube was attached, Nakajima reminisced 
in later years. He played the monster in a dozen films in total, 
running through to 1972. 
    The first "Godzilla" - his name a combination of "gorilla" 
and the Japanese word for whale - crashed ashore as a symbol of 
atomic weapons less than a decade after the Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki bombings, as well as of frustrations with the United 
States, which had just held a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini atoll 
that irradiated a boat full of Japanese fishermen. 
    The most recent film in the franchise, which has included 
both Japanese and U.S.-made films, came out from Toho in 2016. 
 
 (Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Nick Macfie) 
 ((elaine.lies@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: 
elaine.lies@thomsonreuters.com)) 
 
Keywords: JAPAN GODZILLA/