Prolific Twitter user Mulboyne has unearthed a series of 45-year-old images of an official funeral for ‘kaiju‘ movie monsters that battle Ultraman, Japan's most famous superhero.
Mulboyne makes frequent post about japan , covering everything from what is likely the least popular rolled sushi to be sold in Japanese supermarkets totop image search for“gaijin” (“foreigner”, in Japanese) and about tourists in japan.
In this case, Mulboyne is microblogging about Ultraman, a cultural phenomenon similar in many ways to the British television series Dr. Who.
Over the years, the various Ultraman television series and movies have created an unstoppable merchandize juggernaut, selling dozens upon dozens of different models of Ultraman figurines and the space monsters they must defeat.
However, in the early 1970s, the Ultraman franchise was experiencing a bit of a slump, and some changes needed to be made.
Mulbyone Explains:-
" The background to this event is a run of misfortune at Tsuburaya Productions. Filming had also been plagued with accidents. The company decided to hold a memorial service for the kaiju characters killed in its TV shows. to put an end to the run of bad luck."
Similar to some Western practices, yakubarai is a very common folk practice in Japan for preventing or getting rid of bad luck. In this case, Tsuburaya Productions wanted to start fresh, and so burned the life-size costumes of a number of the monsters that make up the Ultraman pantheon.