Living in a digital age and being surrounded by technology on a daily basis, many of us just laugh when seeing the rather primitive special effects of early Japanese monster movies featuring bizarre creatures such as fire spitting prehistoric flying tortoise Gamera.
Yet in Noriaki Yuasa's Gamera vs. Jiger (1970), there are some architectural moments of futurism that shouldn't be underestimated (this year also marks the tenth anniversary of death of the director, so it seems apt rediscovering this film).
The movie (with many thanks to Kutmusic for providing a copy from its archives for the screenshots in this post) takes place in Japan in 1970. People are working on the preparations for the Expo in Osaka and scientists and researchers are removing an ancient statue called the Devil's Whistle from an island in the Pacific Ocean, to complement one of the displays at the World's Fair.
The removal of the statue enrages Gamera, triggering a series of rather unfortunate events, including a volcano eruption and members of the crew taking the statue away falling ill, being driven insane by a strange sound produced by the statue.
In the meantime, Jiger appears on the island: this female triceratops-like monster can fire projectile quills from her nose and a high frequency super ultra energy beam from her head, not to mention the stinger-like ovipositor which can inject a parasite egg into the body of an opponent. The only weak spot the monster seems to have is the fact that her ears can't stand the whistle emanated by the statue.
Jiger wins the first battle against Gamera, but, disturbed by the noise the statue is emitting, follows the ship transporting it to Osaka.
Another battle follows and Gamera is lethally wounded, but two kids who volunteer twice to enter its body driving a mini-submarine eventually manage to revive the monster. Before the final happy ending there is a very last fight between Jiger and Gamera behind the USSR Pavilion at the Expo.
The site of the World's Fair appears at the very beginning, when young Hiroshi is taken onto a trip on the construction site of the Expo, and at the very end when the two monsters fight for the last time.
At the beginning of the film the shots of the Expo are accompanied by brief dialogues between the main characters about the themes of the event that included the future, science and new space discoveries.
There are plenty of shots of the main site designed by Kenzo Tange in collaboration with 12 other Japanese architects who designed elements within it, plus quick views of another landmark feature, Kiyonari Kikutake's Tower.
The film offers the chance to see a few national pavilions including France, Italy (Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi designed the inflatable housing schemes inside the structure), Australia (designed by architect James MacCormick MBE), Burma and, Switzerland (designed by Willi Walter, with its "Tree of Light" structure that featured 32,000 bulbs that lit up in the evening).
The Tower of the Sun, created by Japanese artist Tarō Okamoto, one of the main symbols of the Expo can also be easily spotted in the film and on a guide Hiroshi is looking at, but there are plenty of other futuristic or unusual buildings.
Architecture students may find interesting the Electric Communication Pavilion or the Hitachi Group Pavilion, but manga fans will probably find the Gas Pavilion more striking for its cartoonish shape.
Sci-fi fans may instead fall in love with the Sumitomo Fairy-Tale Pavilion, a structure consisting in nine flying saucer-like elements surrounded by bare metal stairways where people could hear 50 of the most famous among the world's fairy tales (it was designed by architect Sachio Otani).
The Fuji Group Pavilion - the largest air-inflated membrane in the world, designed by architect Yutaka Murata - was another inspiring structure thanks to its 16 arch shaped air-tubes forming it.
The rainbow-coloured Midori Kan Pavilion remains one of the cutest buildings from a visual point of view: the structure was built by several Japanese technological corporations to show innovations in image-projection. Inside the pavilion visitors could indeed see a spatial-moving image installation.
There is actually an interesting fashion connection with Osaka 70 as fashion designer Rudi Gernreich was invited to curate a show about Future Fashion for the World’s Fair and came up with a rather dystopic and disturbing vision. Will Milan's Expo 2015 appear in any film?
Time will tell, but you can bet that, while we won't see any bizarre monsters fighting around its buildings (and we hope that, if they are ever late in finishing the site, they won't claim Gamera and Jiger disrupted their working schedule...), there will be plenty of battles between fashion houses trying to conquer some of its spaces and use them to gain more visibility...
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