Movies, Religion

The Catholic Roots of Godzilla

Momoko Kochi was barely a year or two into her acting career when she got her big break playing the female lead in the very first Godzilla movie, which legendary special effects director Eiji Tsubaraya helped create.

Tsubaraya himself later converted to the Catholic faith, and was known for infusing Catholic imagery into his Ultraman series, as well as his 1961 monster movie Mothra, where prop crosses and resurrection themes were used in telling the story of the benevolent Kaiju.

Following her lead role in Godzilla, Momoko was soon typecast in science fiction roles, but later became better known as a stage actress.

In 1995, she was offered the chance to reprise her role as Emiko Yamane in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.
She later recounted in an interview with CNN:

“After the first Godzilla movie people pointed at me saying, ‘Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla.’ As a young woman I hated Godzilla, so I thought, ‘no more Godzilla for me.’ But 41 years later I watched the film again and realized how great it was for its anti-nuclear theme.”

For the last 30 years of her life, she was a voice actress for a Catholic radio program, for which she received two awards from Pope John Paul II in 1996. Kochi read daily scripts on Kokoro no Tomoshibi (light of the heart). It was produced by Yoki Bokusha Undo (from the Good Shepherd movement), a media apostolate founded shortly after World War II by an American priest, Father James Hyatt.

However, her poor health persisted and she was diagnosed with colon cancer later in life. A week before she died, Momoko asked her daughter to arrange for her to be received into the Catholic Church. While still in the hospital, she was baptized, taking the name Maria.

Her funeral at St. Ignatius Church in 1998 was attended by more than a thousand mourners, many of them non-Catholic and from the entertainment industry. Cardinal Peter Seiichi Shirayanagi of Tokyo attended the wake.