Book Review: The Luminous Fairies and Mothra

Cody reads the novella that birthed Mothra.

THE LUMINOUS FAIRIES AND MOTHRA by Shin'ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga and Yoshie Hotta, translated by Jeffrey Angles

In 1954, the Japanese entertainment company Toho had great success with their kaiju (or giant monster) movie Godzilla, so they quickly rushed a sequel – Godzilla Raids Again – into production, and followed that with more movies featuring giant monsters: Rodan, The Mysterians, Varan the Unbelievable, The Three Treasures. In the summer of 1960, they hired author Shin'ichirō Nakamura to come up with an idea for their next kaiju movie – the idea being that this writer of poetry and high-brow fiction could concoct something that would be appealing to both children and adults. Nakamura was interested, and he brought in two fellow authors, Takehiko Fukunaga and Yoshie Hotta, to help him craft the story. They then wrote it out in relay fashion, with Nakamura writing the opening stretch, Fukunaga handling the middle of the story, and Hotta coming in to wrap things up.

Their work formed the basis of the film Mothra, with Shinichi Sekizawa writing the screenplay based on the three authors’ story and director Ishiro Honda bringing the action to the screen. Mothra was released in July of 1961 – but at the start of the year, the novella Nakamura, Fukunaga, and Hotta had written together was published in the pages of the Asahi Weekly Supplement magazine. More than sixty years later, the novella has finally been given an English translation, thanks to University of Minnesota Press and Jeffrey Angles, who is a professor of Japanese at Western Michigan University. (Angles previously brought us English translations of the Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again novelizations.)

The novella The Luminous Fairies and Mothra tells of the discovery that Infant Island, a location in the Japan area that was believed to be uninhabited (and therefore the nation of Rosilica has been using it as a testing ground for their hydrogen bombs), is actually home to a tribe of people, small fairies that communicate through song, and the unhatched egg of a giant creature called Mothra. When unscrupulous Rosilican agent Nelson abducts fairies so he can profit off of them within public appearances, they call upon Mothra to help. The egg hatches and a larva makes its way over to Japan to cause destruction while seeking out the fairies. Eventually, the creature will build a cocoon and emerge as a giant moth to cause even more destruction.

Although Sekizawa made changes during the scripting process, the novella is still recognizable as the story of Mothra – and it’s interesting to see that Nakamura, Fukunaga, and Hotta were keeping in mind throughout that their story was going to be translated by others on its way to the screen, because there are times when it comes off like a screen treatment that was written in broad strokes. This is especially apparent in the end, where Hotta quickly wrapped things up with as few words as possible, knowing that Sekizawa would fill in the blanks and the special effects Honda would be working on with Eiji Tsuburaya would be the real star of the show. He didn’t even bother to try to write out his own version of the events.

The novella comes to an underwhelming conclusion, but it’s interesting to see where everything began for Mothra.

This book has a page count of 120, but before you purchase it you should be aware that the novella only takes up 41 of those pages. The rest of the pages are filled with an afterword by Angles that gives a whole lot of information on the authors, the Mothra development process, and what was going on in Japan at the time Mothra was being devised. Much of this background information was appreciated, although it did eventually start to feel excessive. 70+ pages is a lot for an afterword.

Still, if you’re a fan of Toho’s kaiju movies and of Mothra in particular, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra is worth adding to your collection. Copies are available on Amazon.