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Godzilla is one of modern pop culture’s most recognizable monsters, being the trope codified for an entire genre of films. While there have been many stories about how Godzilla was conceived as an idea, Life magazine published a special article about the nuclear menace, detailing how Godzilla was conceived in the mind of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.

A still from Godzilla Minus One/ Toho Studios

The producer was responsible for a film that was being made as a collaboration between Japan and Indonesia. However, due to rising political tensions, the film was dropped from the production schedule as Indonesia decided to back off from the project, which left a very large unallocated budget in the hands of Tomoryuki Tanaka.

Godzilla ended up taking the spot of In the Shadow of Honor Godzilla (2014)/ Legendary Pictures

Termed an ambitious coproduction between Japan and Indonesia, Shadow of Honor was set to be an...

According to the lore of Ishiro Honda's original Godzilla film "Gojira" (1954), the title monster came into being as the direct result of nuclear tests held in out in the Pacific. An unseen ancient sea creature was exposed to radiation from said tests, causing it to mutate into a 130-meter-tall amphibious dinosaur-like behemoth that climbs out of the ocean and lays waste to cities in Japan. It crushed buildings underfoot and can breathe clouds of destructive radiation. Nothing seems to be able to stop it.  

"Gojira" was partially inspired by the real-life Daigo Fukuryu Maru disaster, an even in which a Japanese fishing vessel was exposed to nuclear radiation during the United States' Castle Bravo H-bomb tests. One of the sailors died, the rest of the crew was sick, and the Japanese public became concerned that the fish may have been tainted. Nuclear fears were justifiably high in 1954, making Honda's film incredibly timely.

Japanese film idol Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who was known as Rikoran and symbolized Japan's wartime dreams of Asian conquest, has died at age 94. Known as Shirley Yamaguchi in the U.S. and one of biggest Japanese film stars during and after World War II, Yamaguchi died of heart failure Sept. 7, according to Japanese public broadcaster Nhk. Born to Japanese parents in northern China in 1920 and raised in Japan's wartime puppet state Manchukuo, Yamaguchi was adopted by a Chinese friend of her father and was renamed "Xianglan," or "Fragrant Orchid," when she was 13. She debuted as

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