“When we were younger, good camera technology didn't exist, so we assumed that strange things existed but just weren't caught on camera. So for us, UFOs were real.”
Kojima said he was born in 1963 in the UFO era, when mysterious discs shifted from being called flying saucers to UFOs, and that his childhood was full of aliens, Roswell greys, cattle mutilations and abductions. He recalled Japanese directors such as Junichi Yaoi putting out UFO specials every few months to frighten people. Kojima described how they faked photographs by pasting cutouts of UFOs onto glass and photographing through it — he even used the ship from Space Battleship Yamato — and that it was easy to fool people because nobody carried cameras. He added that because good camera technology did not exist, they assumed strange things existed even if they did not appear in photos, so for them UFOs were real. He said Japan did not have its own UFOs but did have folklore such as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, which includes a character from the Moon, and Ultraman, although referring to "people from the Moon" makes the idea less impressive.
“I was born in 1963. […] We pasted photos of UFOs onto glass and taped pictures of them. It was pretty easy to trick people that way. […] So for us, UFOs were real. […] In Japan, there weren't any UFOs though, but there are old folklores like the tale of the bamboo Cutter. There was a character from the moon in that.”