From Wooden Masks to Stone Statues: The Influence of Traditional Japanese Theater on Daimajin (1966)

Japanese dai kaiju eiga (literally, giant monster films) are frequently seen as low-brow and “cheesy” by Western audiences due, at least in part, to their often “unrealistic” special effects. Although there are likely multiple causes for this perception that “unrealistic” equals low quality including social, cultural, and political one largely overlooked cause, and the one that will be examined in this document, is a lack of understanding of the cultural referents that underlie the text, rather than any inherent lack of quality on the part of the film.