Yoshio Irie

Yoshio Irie Born January 19, 1928 Tokyo, Japan Died 2013 Occupation Art director, modelmaker First work Battleship Yamato (1953) Notable work Godzilla (1954)

Yoshio Irie (入江 義夫,   Irie Yoshio) was a Japanese production designer, specializing in special effects miniatures.

Biography

After graduating from the Nihon University College of Art in 1952, Irie took up a part-time job at Shintoho, working as an assistant art director on their films Battleship Yamato and Submarine Ro Has Not Surfaced. He joined Toho's art staff shortly thereafter in the summer of 1953, creating 10:1 scale models of the aircraft carriers Akagi and Hiryu for their film Eagle of the Pacific. By 1954, under the supervision of Akira Watanabe, Irie and colleague Yasuyuki Inoue were tasked with designing miniature sets and models for the company's next film, Godzilla. He continued to work on tokusatsu kaiju and war films for Toho until his departure in the mid-1960's. After participating in P-Productions' 1966 and 1967 series Ambassador Magma and Kaiju Prince, Irie formed "Irie Productions" (入江プロダクション,   Irie Purodakushon), with which he produced diorama models for various exhibitions and television commercials. He continued to work as a modelmaker for the remainder of his career, until his death in 2013.

In a 2011 interview conducted for The Criterion Collection's Godzilla (1954) video releases, Irie named Eiji Tsuburaya's work on the 1942 film The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya as a major influence on his decision to work in special effects: "I'd seen the film [Tsuburaya had] made during the war about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I too was impressed. That made me want to do special effects, though there are many genres in that field. I didn't just want to make war movies. As long as it was fun, I was game — that's what I told him."

Selected filmography

Assistant special effects art director

• Godzilla (1954) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Godzilla Raids Again [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Half Human (1955) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• The Mysterians (1956) [with Yasuyuki Inoue, Shun Suganuma, Takeharu Ikebuchi]
• Rodan (1956) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• The Three Treasures (1959) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Battle in Outer Space (1959) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• The Last War (1961) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Gorath (1962) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Atragon (1963) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965) [with Yasuyuki Inoue]
• The War of the Gargantuas (1966) [with Shun Suganuma, Takeharu Ikebuchi, Toshiro Aoki, Matsumi Toshima, Hiroshi Komura, Jiro Shirasaki]

Interviewee

• "The World of Miniature Work" Toho Video Rodan Blu-ray special feature (2009)
• "Exquisite Special Effects" The Criterion Collection Godzilla DVD/Blu-ray special feature (2012) [with Eizo Kaimai]
• "Exquisite Special Effects" Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975 special feature (2019) [with Eizo Kaimai; archival]

See also

• Yasuyuki Inoue
• Akira Watanabe

References

This is a list of references for Yoshio Irie. 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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