Eiji Tsuburaya

Eiji Tsuburaya (Japanese: 円谷 英二, Hepburn: Tsuburaya Eiji; July 7, 1901 – January 25, 1970) was a Japanese special effects director, filmmaker, and cinematographer. A co-creator of the Godzilla and Ultraman franchises, he is considered one of the most important and influential figures in the history of cinema. Tsuburaya is known as the "Father of Tokusatsu", having pioneered Japan's special effects industry and introduced several technological developments in film productions. In a career spanning five decades, Tsuburaya worked on approximately 250 films—including globally renowned features directed by Ishirō Honda, Hiroshi Inagaki, and Akira Kurosawa—and earned six Japan Technical Awards.

Following a brief stint as an inventor, Tsuburaya was employed by Japanese cinema pioneer Yoshirō Edamasa in 1919 and began his career working as an assistant cinematographer on Edamasa's A Tune of Pity. Thereafter, he worked as an assistant cinematographer on several films, including Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness (1926). At the age of thirty-two, Tsuburaya watched King Kong, which greatly influenced him to work in special effects. Tsuburaya completed the first iron shooting crane in October 1934, and an adaptation of the crane is still in use across the globe today. After filming his directorial debut on the cruiser Asama in the Pacific Ocean, he worked on Princess Kaguya (1935), one of Japan's first major films to incorporate special effects. His first majorly successful film in effects, The Daughter of the Samurai (1937), remarkably featured the first full-scale rear projection.