A Favorite Godzilla Place

8.10.2024 (Updated 8.18)

I have really made a thing out of going to Godzilla live locations in Japan. I’m not the first to do so nor will I be the last. It’s a personal journey that brings much joy and excitement being in the spaces of my favorite monster and movie actors. Since 2016 I’ve planned visits to as many locations as possible regardless of distance, time and cost it takes to find them. What locations I choose depend on which Godzilla movies I’m enjoying most at the time of travel. After seeing the Shin Godzilla trailer in 2016, I had to visit Kamakura shopping street before seeing the movie opening night in Shinjuku. In the following years I visited roughly 20 Shin Godzilla movie locations. Discovering, finding and researching Godzilla locations is a big part of the fun in preparing to visiting them. Figuring out the subway lines, trains, buses and walking distances required to visit them can be daunting and discouraging. But the journey is exhilarating and unforgettable.

For the past year, I’ve been playing the audio from my favorite Godzilla movie while I sleep. Growing up in the 70s before the advent of VCRs, all I had were audio cassette tape recordings to relive Godzilla movies between his next appearance. I’ve become so familiar with the Japanese dialogue, bgm, and flow of these movies. In the morning I turn on PlutoTV eager to complete the cycle through the Showa years. Now at my age as a Godzilla fan and collector, Godzilla’s Revenge (aka All Monsters Attack ゴジラ・ミニラ・ガバラ オール怪獣大進撃, 1969) has become my go-to movie. Just a couple of years ago this would have been unthinkable. But it’s so nostalgic and captured the life of older fans growing up in the 70s watching and collecting Godzilla. I can identify with the latchkey boy Ichiro who faced bullies and dreamed of escaping to Monster Island where he learned to stand up to the bully Sanko and his gang like his friend Minya takes on Gabara.

The movie opens with Ichiro and his girl friend Sachiko walking together over a highway overpass and along a dust road in Kawasaki, a polluted industrial district of Tokyo. Each school day he comes home to an empty house but his neighbor and toy maker Shinpei looks out for him until his parents return home from work. Ichiro’s life reminds me of my school days in the late 70s walking home from school and avoiding bullies.  When I got home I watched my favorite Japanese cartoons and live-action shows until dinner was ready when my dad got home from work.

I’ve grown attached to that dust old road in Kawasaki where Ichiro cried out to his dad on his train while he fled from the billboard painter he pranked. I found the Kawasaki location on Google Maps in 2021. This is the former Shiohama Marshalling Yard that went away at the end of the Showa era. Today it is Kawasaki Freight Station. And I just had to visit there in 2024. The trip is a little over an hour ride from my hotel on the Asakusa Line from the Kuramae Station to the Keikyu Daishi Line from the Keikyu-Kawasaki Station followed by a 18-minute walk over stairs and along the industrial park very similar Ichiro’s walk. The location on Google Maps is Takatori Park (4 Chome-9 Shiohama, Kawasaki Ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa 210-0826, Japan). Little did I know that the Keikyu Daishi Line is the train tossed into the air by Shin Godzilla 3rd Form after evolving from its 2nd form at Kitashinagawa Station. I visited and photographed these locations in 2018. When I saw the station, I realized I was on that train line and I quickly snapped a photo.

It was a beautiful day to go to Kawasaki. When I arrived I put on the All Monsters Attack soundtrack. As I walked up and across the steps of a train-track overpass I became Ichiro marching to school. The sound of the industrial city was noticeable and could not be ignored filling the air just like the movie in 1969. The path winded through local manufacturing plants where workers used torches to assemble parts and forklifts and trucks were on the move. Most of the walk is along the main industrial road. As I researched the location I was nervous because the movie location appeared to be a restricted area. But Takatori Park is not. I made my last turn down the small narrow road to Takatori Park, where I dodged a truck headed back to the main road. And there it was the railroad crossing I was longing to see.

I took pictures and video standing there as long as I could to take it all in. I could see Ichiro and the gang heading off into the sunset with that wonderful ending track from All Monsters Attack. For a few moments I was living like Ichiro.