When Does "Rodan" (1956) Take Place?
"Sora no Daikaijū Radon" is an adventure horror (kaiju) film written by Takeshi Kimura with Ken Kuronuma and Takeo Murata that released December 26th, 1956. So when is "Rodan" set?
It takes place in the year:
We know this because near the end of the story an Iwataya building appears. The first Iwataya Department Store was founded in 1936 AD. So it must be during or after 1936 AD.
1955 AD or 1956 AD
We know this because near the end of the story an Iwataya building appears. The first Iwataya Department Store was founded in 1936 AD. So it must be during or after 1936 AD.
More specifically, about one-third into the movie Doctor Kyoichiro Kashiwagi says, "You may remember how 3 or 4 years ago a lotus seed, thousands of years old, began to flower." Though this has happened on different occasions, each seed was only dated to around a potential 400 years to around a potential 1,600 years old until 1951 AD. The first successful flowering of an ancient viable lotus seed after being dated more conclusively to an age in the thousands was done in the United States of America by real-world botanist Horace V. Wester on June 12th, 1952. These seeds, previous to germanization in 1951 AD, were carbon dated to the more precise around 800 years old to around 1,200 years old. The real-world Japanese botanist who discovered the seeds in China in 1923 AD, Doctor Ichiro Ohga, had even guessed their age was twice as old, around 2,000 years old. "LIFE" magazine covered all of this with a short article titled "The Oldest Flower" in an issue dated for November 3rd, 1952 AD in the real world.
This is most likely the remarkable "seed, thousands of years old" and the moment they surprisingly "began to flower" that Dr. Kashiwagi is referring to.
1952 + 3 = 1955
or
1952 + 4 = 1956.
It has been retroactively absorbed into the MonsterVerse Universe at a chronologically early spot.
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