Draft:Kenji Okuhira

Kenji Okuhira is a Japanese writer, photographer, translator and filmmaker. He is the executive producer of Godzilla (2014).

Career
Okuhira' first assignment in the U.S, was in 1989 when he was the Los Angeles representative of the Japanese independent film studio, Gaga. After this, he worked as a freelance writer covering the Los Angeles area for various Japanese publications. The Japanese edition of Playboy published his translation of the Los Angeles Times Magazine article G-Dog & the Homeboys which was about Latino teenage gangs and the priest who was trying to save them. This assignment led to his participation as one of the producers for Pups (1999), an award-winning teen crime film shot on location in L.A.

Kenji Okuhira's next project was the tribute to Route 66 and cross-country trips soon became part of Okuhira's passion as well as photography. In addition he helped coordinate traveling photo-exhibitions for Japanese galleries and during this time he met fine art photographer James Fee whose Photographs of America included images of abandonment -- motels, factories, ships, airplanes. Eventually Okuhira joined the photographer's journey to the island of Peleliu] in the South Pacific to document rusted tanks and ships in the forgotten jungles and lagoons of the Republic of Palau, where Fee's father served as a medic for the Marines during one of the fiercest battles of World War II. These haunting experiences sharpened Kenji Okuhira's eye and opened his mind to his next project, Godzilla, a subject of lifetime fascination. At the same time he co-edited the book Floating Stone: 21 Thoughts of Kenji Miyazawa with editor [[Gerald Hausman. Using his gifts as photographer, translator and writer, Kenji Okuhira has created a tribute to the greatest Zen poet of modern Japan.