I often go down rabbit holes. Recently, I’ve been trying to collect all of the iconic Godzilla CD soundtracks because I clearly need more physical media taking up space in my office.
Knowing very little about composer Akira Ifukube himself, I went on a hunt for a good biography. After doing a little bit of looking, I was surprised that I couldn’t find any books on Ifukube in English. Then I came across a post on the TohoKingdom forum from 2025 in which someone claimed to be working on just such a book. Jackpot!
It looks like the official title is“Scoring Godzilla: An Analysis of Akira Ifukube’s Musical Narratives” and planned for publication by McFarland & Company.
The book is described as deep dive into Akira Ifukube’s “nationalist” and “anti-modern” worldviews, and how those ideas can be read through the musical storytelling narratives in his Godzilla scores.
According to the author’s post in the forum, “The book contains a good amount of biography of Ifukube and a few rare photographs, some of those supplied by the late composer’s family.”
It appears that the book is still in the early production stages, no cover art, and not yet listed on McFarland’s website for pre-order. I will keep an eye out for it though. I’m really looking forward to this and will post any updates I find.
If you have any updates, please leave me a comment below.
Cinematic Point Of View 
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