Ultraman Actors Q&A: Susumu Kurobe, Hiroko Sakurai, and Bin Furuya at Monsterpalooza 2013

Susumu Kurobe (Shin Hayata), Hiroko Sakurai (Akiko Fuji), and Bin Furuya (suit actor for Ultraman, and for Amagi in Ultraseven) took audience questions at a packed panel during Monsterpalooza 2013 in Burbank, California, held April 12–14.

Kurobe said he was approached directly by staff at Toho and Tsuburaya to play Hayata, while Sakurai auditioned for Ultra Q twice before landing the second role that led into Ultraman. Furuya, the longest-tenured of the three at Toho and Tsuburaya, described extensive physical training for the suit role, including tap dancing and karate, and said he practiced the character’s signature Beam pose and “Shuwatch” stance hundreds of times at home. Asked about favorite monsters, Furuya named Red King; asked where the original Ultraman suit ended up, he said it was likely destroyed, “probably melted,” though a later Ultraman suit was reportedly auctioned for close to a million yen.

On the physical toll of the role, Furuya explained that the monster-suit actors he fought typically wore more padding than he did as Ultraman, meaning he absorbed most impacts directly through a comparatively thin suit, a problem compounded by hazards like exposed nails on set floors. He also described three distinct Ultraman suit variants used during filming: an “A-suit” made specifically for him that fit poorly enough to force a hunched posture, and a better-fitting, more muscular-looking “B-suit,” a detail that explains why Ultraman’s on-screen posture changes partway through the original series.

Asked about favorite episodes, Sakurai named the “Jamila” episode, in which an astronaut-turned-kaiju returns to Earth; Furuya, who performed the fight as Ultraman in that episode, said it was emotional enough that he was crying under the mask when Jamila was destroyed. All three recalled that Ultraman-era production recorded picture without sound, requiring the entire cast to loop dialogue afterward, and that a typical two-episode block took seven to ten days to shoot given equipment and budget constraints.

On Ultraman’s international legacy, Kurobe reflected that the show is now 47 years old, noting a period where its popularity seemed to be fading before resurging. Furuya, asked to compare fighting as Ultraman to acting unmasked as Amagi in Ultraseven, said Ultraman was more fun, but that playing Amagi let his face be seen, a trade-off he weighed genuinely rather than favoring one over the other outright.