August's Monster Movie of the Month - Mothra [Mosura] (1961)

So the amazing thing I found out about this movie was that it's based on a novel.

(i know! Me too!)

It seems a fellow named Takehiko Fukunaga wrote a book called "The Luminous Fairies and Mothra", which this movie was then taken from.

That is SO interesting! (Really!)

So I Googled it but got nothing on the book - Couldn't find out when it was written or if it was ever translated into English.

I did find a blurb on the author from the "Japanese Literature Publishing Project" website:

Takehiko Fukunaga（1918-1979）

Takehiko Fukunaga was a novelist and poet. In college he was fond of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Lautréamont, and was especially influenced by Baudelaire. With Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Shuichi Kato, and other writers of his generation, he formed a literary coterie called Matinée Poétique. While striving to introduce the latest European literary trends, he wrote experimental novels such as Fudo (Climate) and Meifu (The Nether World). He also wrote detective novels under the pen name Reitaro Kada.

Major Awards：
1961 Mainichi Publishing Culture Prize, for Gogyan no sekai (Gauguin’s World) (critical biography)
1972 Japan Literature Grand Prize, for Shi no shima (Death Island)

So now I totally want to read that book. Or anything else by the guy.

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But anyway. The movie is... well, pretty much everybody knows about Mothra - the big giant moth that attacks Tokyo because the little Barbie-sized faerie twins from it's island have been kidnapped and it's coming to rescue them.

I'd only seen this as a kid and thought it was just okay - you know, give a kid a choice between a radioactive dinosaur and a big moth....

But reading about it now (on Wikipedia), turns out the film (and I presume the novel) was actually a commentary on the evils of western capitalism and there was some pretty interesting stuff hidden under it's surface.

Who knew? Not me as a kid.

So It'd be fun to watch it now to see what I think.

THREE WINDSWEPT BRAINS