Ishirō Honda

because his parents only used the letter I from the kanji character for }}. He is also known by the nicknames }} and in Japan. Additionally, some Japanese sources have erroneously written his surname as 本田, instead of 本多.}}|本多 |Honda Ishirō| 7 May 1911 – 28 February 1993|lead=yes}} was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 46 feature films in a career spanning five decades. He is acknowledged as the most internationally successful Japanese filmmaker prior to Hayao Miyazaki and one of the founders of modern disaster film, with his films having a significant influence on the film industry. Despite directing many drama, war, documentary, and comedy films, Honda is best remembered for directing and co-creating the ''kaiju'' genre with special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya.

Honda entered the Japanese film industry in 1934, working as the third assistant director on Sotoji Kimura's ''The Elderly Commoner's Life Study''. After 15 years of working on numerous films as an assistant director, he made his directorial debut with the short documentary film ''Ise-Shima'' (1949). Honda's first feature film, ''The Blue Pearl'' (1952), was a critical success in Japan at the time and would lead him to direct three subsequent drama films.

In 1954, Honda directed and co-wrote ''Godzilla'', which became a box office success in Japan and was nominated for two Japanese Movie Association awards. Because of the film's commercial success in Japan, it spawned a multimedia franchise, recognized by ''Guinness World Records'' as the longest-running film franchise in history, that established the ''kaiju'' and ''tokusatsu'' genres. It helped Honda gain international recognition and led him to direct numerous ''tokusatsu'' films that are still studied and watched today.

After directing his eighth and final ''Godzilla'' film in 1975, Honda retired from filmmaking. However, Honda's former colleague and friend, Akira Kurosawa, would persuade him to come out of retirement in the late 1970s and act as his right-hand man for his last five films. Provided by Wikipedia