Tomoyuki Tanaka, creator of the fearsome giant lizard Godzilla and a pioneer in Japan's in-flu-en-tial monster movie industry, died of a stroke Wednesday. He was 86.
Tanaka, a prolific movie producer and chairman of the movie house Toho Co., was a groundbreaker in Japan's monster movie scene, one of the few homegrown movie genres to make it big overseas.He went on to produce movies with Academy Award winning director Akira Kurosawa, including "Akahige" (Red Beard) and "Kagemusha" (The Shadow Warrior).
Many of the 221 movies he produced or collaborated on were beloved by science fiction and special-effects fans.
Tanaka's name was made with Godzilla, known at home as Gojira - a combination of "gorilla" and "kujira," the Japanese word for whale. The original 1954 movie depicted the lizard awakened from its long slumber by hydrogen bomb testing in the South Pacific.
The last movie Tanaka directed was "Godzilla vs. Destroyer" in 1995.