Motoyoshi Oda(1910-1973)

An English major who graduated from Waseda University, one of Japan's most prestigious, in 1935, Motoyoshi Oda was promptly accepted into the directors' program at Tokyo's P.C.L. (Photo Chemical Laboratories, a film company later incorporated into Toho Studios). He studied under director Kajiro Yamamoto, as did Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda, and Senkichi Taniguchi. When the latter two trainees were drafted into Japan's war in China, Oda found his career accelerated. He was promoted to director in 1940 with SONG OF KUNYA (Kunya no Uta), after a relatively scant few years of training. Perhaps because of this relative lack of training, and certainly because Oda was not drafted into the army, P.C.L. and Toho kept Oda going as a maker of programmers--trivial pictures that had to be made in order to keep product flowing into the theaters, but which offered little time or room for artistic achievement. Probably his most distinguished credits are LADY FROM HELL (1949, based on a Kurosawa script), TOMEI NINGEN (1954) and the only film he made ever to be shown outside Japan, the second Godzilla film, GOJIRA NO GYAKUSHU (1955). Toho insisted that Oda direct as many as seven movies a year, knowing that he could be trusted to deliver them on time. Over his entire career, Motoyoshi Oda directed fifty movies, not to mention his work as assistant director and second-unit direction on Ishiro Honda's EAGLE OF THE PACIFIC (Taiheiyo no Washi, 1953). No credits are available for Oda after 1957, when he may well have taken an early retirement.