Grant wrote:
It took me forever to know about one thing that's common knowledge, and that's Raymond Burr in the original (followed by so many western actors in other movies) being inserted into the original Godzilla. So I thought that he was in the original from the start, and when this one came out, I thought he was simply being "invited back." Even after I learned about how he was added to the original, I always wondered whether maybe he was in the REMAKE from the start, which makes a kind of flimsy sense. I mean, the Toho people would've known about the American version with Raymond Burr, and might've even become sentimental about it along with THEIR version! So inviting him to be part of the ' 84 version from the START wouldn't have been strange. So I was kind of disappointed to learn that he was added on once again. (How well do Japanese audiences know the American "version," or is that too general a question to answer?)
Actually, they do know.  The 1956 U.S. version was released in Japan under a different title.  The funny thing is, it got them confused when some Japanese dialog was left in, the Japanese subtitles of the U.S. dialog said something else.