Mothra

As a youth I enjoyed the various Japanese monster films that showed up on late night television. We didn't then know to call the monsters kaiju. Godzilla was most frequently encountered, but the monster and film that intrigued me the most was Mothra, because of its very surreal nature. I mean: an island in a radiation zone near Japan is found to be inhabited by savages, overseen by a pair of diminutive women who speak and sing in unison. After the women are taken away from the island by an unscrupulous businessman, in order to exploit them in a carnival-type show, they sing for rescue by Mothra, who, back on the island, hatches from a large egg, and as a larva swims gallantly over the sea, cocoons itself in Tokyo, and emerges as a very large moth with very slow-moving wings, which nonetheless compel hugely destructive winds. That is the kernel of the plot of the film Mosura, released in July 1961, with an English version released the following year as Mothra. 

I learned recently that the original novella (three connected stories by three different writers), made as a preliminary film treatment, was published in January 1961 in a periodical whose title translates to Asian Weekly Supplement. The story was titled "Hakko yosei to Mosura," the three parts written successively by Shin'ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukanaga, and Yoshie Hotta. It has now been translated into English for the first time, as The Luminous Fairies and Mothra. The slim book, published by the University of Minnesota Press, contains the translation (42 pages) and a Translator's Afterword, by Jeffrey Angles, which is almost twice as long as the original story. 

I picked this up to see if the original novella might have made more sense plot-wise, especially curious about the small singing women (played by twin sisters in the film). And there are interesting differences from the film. In the novella, the small singing women are two foot high, and four in number; in the film they are one foot high and two in number. In translation they are designated "luminous fairies" though no such terms are used in the film. An interesting back-story of the island savages ("dirt people") and their worship of the Mothra egg is given, but overall the plot of the novella follows the same trajectory as the plot of the film. 

The "Translator's Afterword: Hatching Mothra" tells much about the composition and cultural background to the novella and film, including the political aspects. It reveals an unexpected but fascinating relation to one of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Doolittle books. There is also a discussion of Mothra's shifting gender. 

In 2023, Angles published a volume Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, including new translations (the first into English) of the first two Godzilla novellas, coincident with the first two films.  Both are by Shiguru Kayama.  This looks as much fun as the Mothra book. I look forward to reading it.