Review: 'The Luminous Fairies and Mothra' by Shin’ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta, trans. by Jeffrey Angles

Godzilla is the king of kaiju, absolutely, but let us not ever forget about Mothra, the giant moth who can be both enemy and companion to Godzilla. When I saw that Jeffrey Angles had also translated her origin story, I knew I wanted to read it, especially because I had no idea fairies were involved. Thanks to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 13/01/2026
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

The original story that hatched Mothra, one of the most beloved monsters in the “kaijuverse”—available in English for the first time

Mystical and benevolent, the colossal lepidopteran Mothra has been one of the most beloved kaiju since 1961, when The Luminous Fairies and Mothra was originally published in Japanese. Commissioned by Tōhō Studios from three of Japan’s most prominent postwar literary writers (Shin’ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta), the novella formed the basis for the now-classic monster film Mothra, with a protagonist second only to Godzilla in number of film appearances by a kaiju. Finally available in its first official English translation, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra will captivate ardent, longtime fans of the films as well as newcomers.

Written just months after the largest political demonstrations Japan had ever seen, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra reflects the rebellious spirit of the time. In this original story, explorers visit a South Pacific island and capture a group of fairies, inciting the fury of the goddess Mothra, who sets out for Japan on a mission of rescue and revenge. Expressing a powerful social stance about Japan’s need to chart its own foreign policy during the Cold War, the novella’s political message was ultimately toned down in the Tōhō Studios film. Through this translation, Anglophone audiences will discover Mothra as a figure of protest fiction intricately reflecting the complex geopolitical situation in early 1960s Japan.

The Luminous Fairies and Mothra is translated into lively prose by Jeffrey Angles, who also wrote an extensive afterword about the novella’s cultural context, the unusual story of its composition, and the development of the 1961 film. Following Angles’s best-selling translation of the original Godzilla novellas, this new work will once again delight kaiju fans everywhere.

After reading the Godzilla novellas by Shigeru Kayama, also translated by Jeffrey Angles, I was naturally also very interested in the Mothra story. My first time seeing Mothra was in the otherwise not great (for me) 2019 film Godzilla II: King of Monsters. The whole film is very dramatic and full of big kaiju and big family problems for humans, but for me it was always Mothra that I liked most. I love her, in part because moths feel so fragile and yet, once you make it huge, it holds an enormous amount of power. Whereas with Godzilla, we initially were dealing with a monster that represents the destructive power of atom and hydrogen bombs, Mothra is something more mythical and other. She is of this earth, yes, but there is a mythology to her, as well as a divinity, which separates her form the other kaiju in my opinion. In this book we do not just get presented with the stories about her, which were the starting point for the 1961 film, but also again with a very detailed commentary essay by Angles. Here, the political and social climate of Japan in the late '50s and early '60s is discussed, much of which was new to me. Again, it is fascinating to see in what kind of cultural, social, and political cauldron a monster is formed.

So The Luminous Fairies and Mothra is fascinating to me because it is told by three different authors, collaborating but writing separately. Angles explains some of the process in his essay at the end, but I think it is super interesting to me that this new monster was created by committee. In many ways this is also true for Godzilla, as Shigeru Kayama wrote a treatment, inspired by a story Ray Bradbury, which was then shaped by script writers, by directors, and by special effects teams. Few monsters are solo projects. But how Nakamura, Fukunaga, and Hotta went about it is just such fun. Nakamura writes the first part of the story, where our protagonist, a linguist, arrives at a mysterious island, used for hydrogen bomb tests, where he encounters not just an indigenous population, but also fairies. Fukunaga takes over and introduces an additional protagonist, a journalist who simply has to know more about this island and therefore sneaks onto it. Not only does he, too, encounter people and fairies there, but he also gets to witness the presence of the enormous Egg and its mythical backstory. Hotta finishes the novella off by giving us the birth of Mothra, a takedown of capitalism, and destruction across two continents. As with Kayama's novellas for Godzilla, you can tell that these were script treatments. Especially the action towards the end is left very vague to allow directors and special effects teams to live out their own dreams. I really liked the fantastical and mythological elements they created for Mothra's origin, however, and how he/it/she is also connected to hydrogen bombs and yet also something entirely different. 

The afterword/commentary essay after the story is again very extensive and, as said above, interesting. Two elements I especially liked were the exploration of Mothra's gender and potential literary inspirations. In the West, Mothra is generally gendered as she and this is, to a certain extent, due to the fact that many European languages, be they Germanic or Romance languages, have gendered grammars. Some languages, however, like Japanese and Chinese, do not grammatically require a strict he-she-it, meaning that these pronouns can be left out entirely. A translator into English, like Angles, naturally has to figure out what to with this so that it makes sense to English readers and reading his thoughts about this, and about the few instances where gender does play a role in the story, is really interesting. He also sets up a comparison to the Doctor Doolittle books form the 1920s, some of which feature an enormous moth. It is a new comparison and one that I think holds solid merit, based on what Angles represents. I haven't read the books for myself, but he traces how their translations into Japanese feasibly could have reached the authors and traces textual and thematic parallels that do suggest these works are in a form of communication with one another. Finally, Angles also carefully but sharply addresses aspects of colonialism and racism in the text, as it takes place on a Pacific island featuring an indigenous population. I think this is generally handled very well by him and provides extra nuance to the story as well as the film.

I give this book...

4 Universes!

Overall, I had another excellent time with Angles' translation and commentary, as well as with the monster and story that Shin’ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta have created. If there are any further kaiju-related books from Angles and/or University of Minnesota Press in the future, I will be all over them.