The Luminous Fairies and Mothra, by Nakamura, Fukunaga, and Hotta

Book 25 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Comfortably ahead with my reading. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there. One of my recent wanderings of my local bookstore uncovered a book that I just had to have: the translated original novelization of the famous kaiju movie Mothra! The book is titled The Luminous Fairies and Mothra: the original appeared in a magazine in January of 1961 and was written by Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga and Yoshie Hotta, though the English translation only came out in January 2026 and was translated by Jeffrey Angles. It should be noted that the original story is a novella that takes up on 44 pages of the 114 page book — the rest are extensive translator’s comments that fill in details of the history and politics underlying the story and its inception. I can happily say that both parts are really fascinating to read! Without delving into too much…