Takeshi Kimura(1912-1988)
- Writer
Takeshi Kimura was a studio writer for Toho. Unlike his contemporary,
Shinichi Sekizawa, who thought writing SF films was "lots of fun,"
Kimura could not see it that way. It was serious business to him, and
he exorcised many personal demons while writing. Of the two, it was
said that if a Gojira script was serious or involved politics, it would
go to him, while Sekizawa was given the more lighthearted pieces
(Mosura tai Gojira (1964) excepted). Kimura was well-teamed with
director Ishirô Honda, as the latter was given to do scenes in which
the protagonist is overwhelmed. Kimura's focus was on escape, and often
on the inability to escape, to independence. For example, he wrote of a
woman who refused to allow her criminal husband to support her, and
instead supported herself, in Bijo to Ekitainingen (1958). Finally, in
1963, he was given the opportunity to script Matango (1963), based on a
then well-known 1908 horror tale, "The Voice in the Night," by William
Hope Hodgson. A screen story had been adapted by Shinichiro Hoshi and
Masami Fukushima, but their work was largely ignored when it came time
for him to write the script. Retaining the characters, and grafting
them onto the original story, Kimura created a tale about false
friendships, and the imprisonment and destruction of the honest and
good. Kenji Murai, the protagonist, wound up in a padded cell in Tokyo,
a city Kimura loathed. After the film, which he rightly considered his
magnum opus, was completed, he felt he was writing solely for money,
and so he began writing his scripts under the name Kaoru Mabuchi.
"Kaoru" is a name common to both males and females, so it helped to
create a sense of anonymity for him. Kimura wrote script after script
before finally dropping out of sight entirely, leaving a script titled
something like "Godzilla vs. the Space Monsters" to be used as fodder
for Chikyu Kogeki Meiriei: Gojira tai Gaigan (1972) and Gojira tai
Megaro (1973). He then pretty much disappeared. He never had any close
friendships with his co-workers at Toho, and he reportedly left his
wife and daughter behind. In 1988, fellow writer Toshio Yasumi received
a bizarre telephone call. A voice stuggled to say something, but
failed, and Yasumi eventually hung up. Concerned, the call was traced.
It was traced to Kimura; he was found dead in a Tokyo apartment, alone.
It seemed he had not left his apt. for months, and his death was caused
by a throat obstruction. He had been struggling to breathe, and his
call to Yasumi was his last cry for help. It was too late, and in 1963,
he had already prophesied his own death: shut up alone in Tokyo, his
least favorite city.
