Biography

Hisashi Shimonaga was one of the Toho Studios' most accomplished and important technicians of sound. Though many Japanese movies were filmed without sound, then dubbed after the fact, Shimonaga was one of the few who specialized in recording live sound, and editing it to the performances on screen. He received one of the first Japanese Film Technique Awards for Sound Recording for Yama no Oto (1954). That same year, Shimonaga recorded Gojira (1954). Though a favorite sound recordist of directors Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda and Mikio Naruse, after Gojira (on which he collaborated with composer Akira Ifukube), Shimonaga started a new career of supervising the sound effects for movies produced by Toho. This often involved creating the roars of Toho's famous giant monsters.
- IMDb mini biography by: Guy Mariner Tucker