Yoshimitsu Banno

Yoshimitsu Banno Born March 30, 1931 Sakurai, Ochi, Ehime, Japan Died May 7, 2017 (aged 86) Occupation Director, writer, producer First work Throne of Blood (1957) Notable work Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)

Yoshimitsu Banno (坂野 義光,   Banno Yoshimitsu) was a Japanese director, writer, and producer best known for Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), which he directed and co-wrote. Banno was a special guest at G-Fest XII in 2005 and an executive producer for Legendary Pictures' Godzilla (2014). He passed away on May 7, 2017, at the age of 86. Legendary's next three Godzilla films, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024), credit him posthumously as an executive producer, with a dedication to him included in the credits of the former.

His memoir, The Man Who Made Godzilla Fly, was first published in 2014, with an expanded and refined version published two years later in 2016.

Biography

Godzillamovie.com

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YOSHIMITSU BANNO (Executive Producer) is the veteran Japanese filmmaker best known for the cult-classic “Godzilla vs. Hedorah” (1971, a.k.a. “Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster”), directing and co-writing the 11th film in Toho Company’s long-lived franchise, which began in 1954 with the eponymous original directed by Ishiro Honda. Banno joined the Toho Company shortly after graduating from Tokyo University in 1955, studying at Toho under such directors as Hiromichi Horikawa, Mikio Naruse, Kengo Furusawa and Seiji Maruyama. He began his career as an assistant director, first working with the legendary Akira Kurosawa on four consecutive features—“Throne of Blood” and “The Lower Depths” (1957), “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) and “The Bad Sleep Well” (1960). He continued as an assistant director on ten more features (many for filmmaker Furusawa) before making his own directorial debut on the 1970 feature, “Japanese Nature and Dream,” which played at Osaka's Expo 70 at the Mitsubishi Future Pavilion. Banno created a true audiovisual experience in the film, using mirrors to simulate the effects of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, attracting record-breaking crowds. The huge success and unique vision of Banno’s directorial debut led “Godzilla” series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to enlist the filmmaker to help revitalize the series. The result, “Godzilla vs. Hedorah,” was a passionately avant-garde film born out of Banno’s visit to a severely polluted beach near the industrial area of Yokkaichi. Banno called his new monster Hedorah, taking its name from the Japanese word Hedoro, which means “mud.” Critics cited the film as one of the most unusual and unique in the series, mixing a blend of social satire, fighting monsters, animation, psychedelic imagery, split screens and musical sequences with death and violence. After “Godzilla vs. Hedorah,” Banno realized the documentary “Starving Sahara” (1972), co-writing the screenplay for the film which depicted the severity of the drought in Africa. He next returned to the assistant director ranks with “Prophecies of Nostradamus” (Nosutodoramusu no Dayogen, 1974), adapted from the novel by Tsutomu Goto. Over the next four years, Banno made a series of documentaries for the television program “Wonderful World.” In the early 1980s, he produced the Toho telefilm “Tokyo Earthquake M8” before writing and producing several animated films such as “The Story of Shigeo Nagashima,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “Techno Police” (Tekuno porisu 21C). Banno also worked on the development of Japax, a shooting format and 70mm projection system similar to IMAX. He produced the first Japax film, “Breathe,” for the Tsukuba Expo in 1985. Further evolution led to Opax (70mm format projection screen dome), Cubic (3-D 70mm format) and Twin Cubic, which used dual Japax projectors. Several films in various formats were presented at festivals and exhibitions throughout Japan. Those projects produced by Banno include “Magma Adventure” (1988), “Hurry Up Children of Earth” (1988) and “Eagle Fly” (1989). He also designed for the amusement park Space World, located in the city of Kitakyushu. In 1989, Banno became an executive director in TOHO E・B Co. Ltd. and established Advanced Audiovisual Productions Inc., and became its President in 2001.

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Selected filmography

Director

• The Nature of Japan and the Dreams of Japanese (1970)
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
• Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974) [associate]

Executive producer

• Godzilla (2014)
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) [posthumous]
• Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) [posthumous]
• Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) [posthumous]

Miscellaneous

• Throne of Blood (1957) - Assistant director [uncredited]
• Monkey Sun (1959) - Assistant director [uncredited]
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) - Screenwriter [with Takeshi Kimura] / underwater stunt double for Akira Yamauchi / lyricist ("Return the Sun!")
• Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974) - Adaptation [with Toshio Masuda]
• Tokyo Earthquake Magnitude 8.1 (1980) - Producer [with Shunji Okamoto, Norio Komata]
• Die Monsterinsel (2002) - Interviewee
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (TV 2023-2024) - Producer [posthumous; with Brian Rogers, Kenji Okuhira]

Unfilmed projects

• Godzilla vs. the Mutant Starfish
• Godzilla vs. Hedorah 2
• Godzilla 3-D - Director [with Keith Melton] / screenwriter
• Gamera 3-D
• Hedorah vs. Midora
• Shin Hedorah (2017)

Gallery

• 

  Banno with the Hedorah suit

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  Banno, interviewed by Jörg Buttgereit for Die Monsterinsel (2002)

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  Yoshimitsu Banno with Gareth Edwards

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  Dedication to Yoshimitsu Banno and Haruo Nakajima in Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Video

SciFi Japan TV interview #1 SciFi Japan TV interview #2 Yoshimitsu Banno interviews Ishiro Honda in 1990

External links

• Sake-Drenched Postcards interview with Banno, published January 15, 2006

References

This is a list of references for Yoshimitsu Banno. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]

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