Japan & Godzilla: Reflecting a Nation's Fears, Concerns and Culture

1954. A large dinosaur creature rises from the depths of the ocean to attack Tokyo, Japan. Actually, it is a man in a rubber monster suit rampaging through scaled down models of this prominent Asian city. He devours toy trains and tramples miniature houses. He breathes atomic fire and sets the likeness of an entire metropolis aflame. Is this just a low-budget film produced by a poor movie company? Is this just another cheesy, meaningless horror story? Many don't think so. There are two main theories concerning the origin of Godzilla. One is that since Godzilla's debut in 1954, the films have always dealt with controversial topics, often with the amusing twist of preposterous plots (Cult hero, 1). It is nearly impossible to keep a straight face when observing the destructive rampages of these outlandish creations. This helps to trivialize the fears of the Japanese and is a way to discuss potentially explosive topics without incurring the wrath or suspicion of the government.

Another theory on the origin of Godzilla is a bit more complicated. According to Jerome Shapiro's, "When a God Awakes,"

"Cold War-era monsters were either reflections of projections of one character's personality, metaphors for some frightening change in American society, or a surrogate for the Soviets, Chinese, or other threatening outside force. Godzilla...continues to develop through the series, responding to the transformation of Japan's social and cultural conditions...the films mirror many aspects of Japanese society that have changed since Godzilla" (1).

In other words, Shapiro's belief is that Godzilla movies not only explain Japan's fear, but also illustrate the cultural beliefs of the nation.
Regardless of if either (or both) of these theories are correct, Godzilla is more than just a man in a rubber suit. Over the years, the Toho Company has produced over 20 Godzilla movies. After seeing this formidable list, one wonders why a man in a rubber suit, destroying model towns, has remained so popular. The answer is that whether he is protecting the people of Japan or representing the threat, Godzilla has become a way to talk about the fears and concerns that Japan does not want to openly acknowledge (McCarthy, 2).

The first Godzilla movie appeared during a time of great turmoil for the Japanese. While a few suggest that this movie represents the Japanese fear of massive destruction (like the Kanto earthquake in 1923), the general conclusion is that the original Godzilla was an emotional outlet for the atomic testing in the Bikini Islands (Regnard, 2). On March 1, 1954, the United States tested its new hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, in the South Pacific. Unfortunately, the spotter planes failed to notice a Japanese fishing boat in the proximity. The fallout from the explosion reached the fishing boat, causing some of the crew to die from radiation (Schaller, 1). Enter Godzilla. The parallelism between this historical event and the opening scene of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, is obvious. A number of Japanese fishing boats are sunk following unexpected explosions in the water around them. The few survivors who are found die of radiation burns within a few hours. A party is assembled to investigate the island where Godzilla was sighted, shortly after the strange occurrences at sea. After returning from the island, and noting the radioactivity of the creature's footprints, one of the researchers states that, "it is my belief that Godzilla was resurrected due to the repeated experiments of H-bombs" (Godzilla 1956). Clearly, the appearance of Godzilla represents Japan's fear of nuclear weapons. At the same time, people watching the movie would have had a hard time taking the plight of the people too seriously. It's more amusing than disturbing to watch a man in a latex suit destroy Tokyo. Also, although this is a protest against the atomic bomb, Japan had to find a way to disguise it, since Japan was still occupied territory.

The idea of the atomic bomb was revisited in the second Godzilla movie: Gigantis, The Fire Monster. Here, Godzilla fights for Japan against Angilas. Angilas is a species of ankylosaurus who was also mutated by an atomic explosion (Plasse). In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Ghidora starts out as a bat, but turns into a monster after exposure to an atom bomb test (Cult-hero, 2). Once again, although the movie is dealing with very real issues (not dinosaurs or bats mutating, but rather atomic testing), the way in which they are presented is farcical.

However, Godzilla's usefulness as a symbol for Japan's collective fears did not end there. Over the next 40 years, Godzilla was used to symbolize other concerns as well. "He was a victim of the terrible dawn of the atomic age, and then of the cold war. In recent years, he has been concerned with protecting Japan from environmental disasters as well as economic competitors" (Sterngold, 1). For example, take the 1962 movie, King Kong vs. Godzilla. In this movie, Godzilla turns upon his homeland and attacks the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. At the time, Japan had an underlying fear that the Soviets might strike this area. When Godzilla attacks, King Kong (a South Pacific monster linked to the United States) appears to help defend Japan. While Japan feared the Soviet Union, trade with the United States was flourishing at this time (Schaller, 2).

In 1989, Toho Productions made Godzilla vs. Biollante. Biollante was genetically engineered. The scientist who created him spliced together the cells from a rose, genetic material from his own daughter, Erica, and DNA from the monster, Godzilla. Biollante was the result. He could appear as both a huge Venus fly trap or a grossly mutated plant monster. (Once again, Toho Productions purposely created a tormentor who was difficult to take seriously.) Regardless of the form in which the creature appeared, this particular movie was made at a time when we were first starting to hear of the possibility of genetic engineering. This production symbolized the fear the Japanese had of such a possibility. Now, in the year 2001, we can see that the Japanese were right in fearing such an atrocity. The fear of bioengineering and cloning is a real one.

1991 saw the release of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Aside from being a mutated bat, Ghidorah was "a beast at the service of time travelers from the future whose aim was to force Japan to buy foreign computers" (Sterngold, 4). Here, King Ghidorah is obviously representative of the United States, while Godzilla is once again on the side of the Japanese. In the movie, Godzilla travels back in time to help Japanese troops defeat the US Marines in the Pacific in 1944 (McCarthy, 3). Mutated bats selling computers to unwilling Japanese? Yet again, the viewers find this laughable, rather than realistic.

Godzilla also had a way of destroying symbols of the Japanese political establishment, including the national parliament, the Diet (Sterngold, 4). This can be seen in the 1992 release of Godzilla vs. Mothra. Here, the larva of the giant moth, Mothra, spins a cocoon around the country's parliament building (McCarthy, 3). Giant moths? No, they aren't terribly believable, either. Rather, Mothra was a comical insect created to do what Japan could never achieve single-handedly: stop a one party government that frustrated the nation.

Foreign nations often wonder what the appeal of a giant latex dinosaur could possibly be, but I think the answer is simple.

"Godzilla is, after all, the reverse of every Japanese stereotype. He is huge, in a country where, until recently, people were relatively small. He is clumsy and rude in a country where people tend to be graceful and polite. He is spontaneous in a place that values the impassive, studied response. He is confrontational where conciliation is considered proper behavior. He is, in essence, a nuclear bomb in a country that is emphatically opposed to nuclear weapons" (Easton, 2).

Godzilla was Toho Productions' devious way of protesting the atrocities of war among other concerns. Since public discussion of the bombs was discouraged by Japanese officials, fearful of upsetting the treaty ending the occupation (Schaller, 1), this movie was a catharsis for the war and horror-stricken people of Japan. Kenji Sato, a Tokyo based author, notes that many studios were making anti-war films at the time, but they were generally earnest and just too pacifist.

"Most of the anti-war films were anti-aggression and anti-violence. But because Godzilla was not completely serious, it was actually more successful in exploring Japanese fears of war and destruction. There's a sort of morbid fascination with the destruction in those movies. You couldn't explore that side to people's feelings in the serious movies" (Sterngold 3-4).

He has a point. Certainly it's very hard to take a puffy latex monster seriously. Possibly, this is why Toho Productions has never let the creature evolve into a computer generated image. Having him remain as a man in a rubber suit kept the seriousness of the material from becoming evident. This was perhaps Toho Production's intent. They didn't want to take any direct punches at the Americans (since they were the military power) and they certainly couldn't openly protest the workings of their parliament, but they felt they had to have some outlet for their emotions. Godzilla was this outlet.

Another interpretation of Godzilla movies is that they actually represent Japan's social and cultural ideals. Some of the most significant ones deal with attitudes toward family structure, values and responsibilities, the importance of tradition, the dangers of modernity, and harmony with nature (Shapiro-God Awakes, 1-2). Jerome Shapiro has labeled Godzilla movies as Apocalyptic narratives and claims that they address issues such as persecution, culture shock, political powerlessness, social change, "the dismal fate of humanity, and death" (Shapiro-Atomic Bomb, 4). Many of these issues can be observed in the first Godzilla production.

An example of political powerlessness is evident in this movie. One of the main characters, Serizawa, is always seen wearing an eyepatch, but at no point in the movie does it establish the reason for this. According to an interview with movie director, Inoshiro Honda, "Serizawa's missing eye symbolized-at least to 1950's Japanese audiences-an emblem of his wartime experience and suffering" (Awakes, 2). This suggests a number of ideas. The first one is that Japan was politically powerless to stop the war. It also suggests that the world is no longer in harmony with the natural order of things, and is dangerously imbalanced.

The Japanese ideals of responsibility and harmony with nature can both be seen in Emiko, the dominant female character in King of the Monsters. First, Emiko is torn between her love for Ogata (a man she meets on the boat as she travels to the island where Godzilla was sighted), and her responsibility to Serizawa as his fiancée. She is also forced to choose between her father, who wants to save Godzilla and study him, and Ogata, who wants to destroy Godzilla. Furthermore, she is aware that Serizawa possesses a weapon that could kill Godzilla. Unfortunately, he does not want anyone to know of it, because he fears that it will be used improperly. In the end, Emiko persuades Serizawa to utilize his weapon while also informing him that she has chosen to marry Ogata. Serizawa and Ogata work together to plant the weapon on the ocean floor, but only Ogata returns to the surface. Serizawa cuts his air tube and rope and he and Godzilla perish together. "Thus, only when the feminine aspect asserts itself is balance achieved and harmony with nature restored" (Awakes, 2).
This episode with Serizawa also deals with another important aspect of Japanese culture, honor. Like many scientists, Serizawa fears that his invention will not be used for good. Indeed, in a later Godzilla production, it is discovered that another monster, Destroyah, is a by-product of his Oxygen-Destroyer Bomb. Because he feels he has brought dishonor to Japan by using this weapon and making it available, Serizawa sacrifices his own life.

The aspect of women restoring the natural balance is seen again in Godzilla vs. The Thing (released in the U.S. as Godzilla vs. Mothra). After a violent storm, an enormous egg is found floating in the ocean. (It actually contains Mothra's offspring). An entrepreneur decides to buy it and make it a tourist attraction by building a glass dome around it. Symbolically, this man is Westernized in his hope to control and contain nature rather than live in harmony with it (Awakes, 3). So, a women reporter, two tiny women (who are in a symbiotic and telepathic relationship with Mothra), and Mothra, herself, attempt to rescue the egg. This represents their attempt to restore the natural balance. Unfortunately, Godzilla also threatens the well being of the egg and Mothra dies attempting to protect it. Eventually, though, two larvae hatch from the egg and envelope Godzilla in a chrysalis. He falls back into the water from which he came. Again, it is the women (whether of the human or moth species) who struggle and sacrifice themselves to resolve the film's crises in favor of balance and harmony (Atomic, 10-11).

Concrete or abstract, social or cultural, most people will agree that there was some deeper meaning to the giant, radioactive, latex monster that emerged from the ocean near Japan. For almost 50 years, Godzilla has been addressing the issues that Japan finds important or threatening, from the atomic bomb, to the dawn of cloning. Whether these symbols respresented the nation's international concerns or cultural mores, Godzilla represented a way to discuss them humorously, without any seriousness that might have aroused the suspicion of the government. Perhaps there was method if the madness of the man who produced over 20 Godzilla flicks. Either way, we should "never underestimate the subliminal and overt power of film and television" (Atomic, 1).

WORKS CITED

Shapiro, Jerome. "When a God Awakes: Symbolism in Japan's Mysterious Creature Movies." World and I. May 1998.

Sterngold, James. "Does Japan Still Need Its Scary Monster?" The New York Times. 23 July 1995.

McCarthy, Terry. "In Godzilla They Trust; A Mutant Dinosaur Holds the Key to Japan's Hopes and Fears." The Independent. 31 July 1994.

Eastoon, Thomas. "The Nightmares Change but Godzilla Still Reigns." The Baltimore Sun. 27 July 1994.

"Cult-hero Monster Mutates With the Times." The Chicago Sun-Times. 9 February 199 Schalle

ller, Michael. "Godzilla Nuclear Genesis: The Monster Was Born After U.S. Hydrogen Bomb Tests on Bikini Atoll." The Plain Dealer. 22 May 1998.

Shapiro, Jerome. "Atomic Bomb Cinema: Illness, Suffering, and the Apocalyptic Narrative." Literature and Medicine. 17.1 (1998) 126- Regnar

egnard, Jean-Francois. "Godzilla, More Than a Japanese Monster." 1997: 4 pp. On-line. Internet. 23 February 2001. Available WWW: http://www.hhs.se/eijs/anomaly/Godzilla.htm