Ken Kuronuma

Who was Ken Kuronuma?

Ken Kuronuma; was the pen-name of a novelist, science fiction writer, and mystery writer in Showa period Japan. His real name was Soda Michio. His father, Soda Kiichiro, was an economist and a banker.

Kuronuma was the writer of the Kaiju classic Giant Monster of the Sky: Rodan, a 1956 tokusatsu film produced by Tōhō Studios. The film followed in the footsteps of Godzilla and was also popular in the United States.

He followed on the tremendous success of Rodan with Varan the Unbelievable in 1958. It proved to be one of the least popular of the Tōhō movies of all time, and nearly destroyed his career.

Kuronuma turned his attention to television drama, writing the scripts for one of Japan's first science fiction series, Undersea Man 8823, which ran for 26 episodes from 3 January 1960 to 28 June 1960. In addition to writing the scripts for the series, he also helped to compose the music.