Of all the giants of cinema—King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, etc.—none have had as much of a varied and even strange journey as Godzilla, and none have quite matched his status as a world-renowned cultural icon. In his latest screen appearance, this month’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, he once again adopts the role of the world’s protector and defender against other large monsters collectively called Kaiju. This is the second time in an American production that the big guy has come to the rescue of the entire planet, having acted as the “good Kaiju” in Gareth Edwards’s 2014 franchise-starter Godzilla (Godzilla: King Of The Monsters is this film’s sequel).
But the idea of the giant lizard as a good guy is nothing new in the character’s native Japan. In 2015, Godzilla was named an official ambassador of Shinjuku, a ward of Tokyo. Its mayor, Kenichi Yoshizumi, said during the induction ceremony, “Godzilla is a character that is the pride of Japan.” The Guardian also noted at the time:
Hiroshi Ohnishi, chief executive of the Isetan-Mitsukoshi department store chain, who is head of tourism promotion in the [Shinjuku] area, referred to Godzilla with the very polite honorific sama (used at the end of a name) underlining respect for the creature as a business-drawing landmark for the region.
There’s even a longstanding belief that if Godzilla destroys any part of the country in a movie—intentionally or accidentally—that area will, in reality, have good luck.
And yet, Godzilla wasn’t always a heroic, or at best, an anti-heroic figure. In his very first screen appearance, Ishirō Honda’s 1954 film Gojira, the King is an ancient monster awoken and empowered by nuclear testing, a reckless marauder who unleashes horror indiscriminately. The film begins with a small fishing rig being obliterated by a mysterious force and culminates in a long segment of nightmarish visions—a giant abomination laying waste to Tokyo with his staggering size and atomic breath. The film, retitled Godzilla for American markets, stood as a warning against the rampant proliferation of weapons more powerful than humanity has any right to possess.
More specifically, Honda’s picture was a critique of the United States’s use of atomic force at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the country’s continued test blasts in the Pacific Ocean. The opening scene in Gojira, for instance, took its inspiration from an actual incident that occurred months before the film’s release. As History writer Sarah Pruitt explains:
In March 1954, the United States tested a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb—more than 750 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki—at Bikini Atoll. A massive plume of radioactive dust and debris floated over some 7,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean, and the Japanese fishing trawler Daigo Fukuryu Maru (“Lucky Dragon No. 5” in English) was caught in the fall-out. The 23 crew members, who suffered skin burns and other symptoms of radiation exposure, were quarantined when they reached port. Six months later, the boat’s radio operator developed liver complications and died at the age of 40.
Gojira, 1954
While this sobering message was not lost on even the most casual of viewers (even in America, where much of the story’s nuclear elements were excised), audiences loved the special effects and actions sequences, making Gojira an international hit. Because of this, every Godzilla film released during the Shōwa period (named after Emperor “Shōwa” Hirohito, since all the films were produced during his reign), focused less on socio-political critiques and were more concerned with epic Kaiju battles, starting with Godzilla Raids Again (1955), where the titular creature fights a sort-of armadillo-turtle hybrid named Anguirus, and ending with Terror Of Mechagodzilla (1975), whereby Godzilla fights a mechanized version of himself and another giant lizard, Titanosaurus. Many of the Shōwa films were also aimed at children, with intentionally campy battles and scenarios.
And yet, even if political viewpoints—especially those critical of America’s military presence around the world—weren’t as pointed in these successive films, they were nonetheless present. Even the maligned Terror Of Mechagodzilla—a film so bad it prompted Toho Studios to cease all Godzilla movies for nearly ten years—involved a plot that seems especially rife with criticism toward U.S. military and trade practices, wrapping up a thematic element consistent in Godzilla movies since 1965. Jordan Zakarin, writing for Inverse, elaborates:
Over and over in the ‘60s and ‘70s, in films such as Invasion of the Astro-Monster and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, nefarious visitors from outer space sought to trick and conquer the Japanese. As [Jason] Barr notes in his book [The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters], American pressure on the Japanese to stop trade with China during the Cold War, as well as its use of Okinawa as a base of operations for the Vietnam War, drove a national conversation about self-determination.
The 1973 movie Godzilla vs. Megalon was an expression of both anger with America and expression of Japan’s growing import on the world stage. Nuclear tests in the Pacific cause enough damage to an ancient undersea civilization that it lets loose several monsters bent on destroying the surface of the ocean. It’s only Japan, and its guardian (by the late ‘60s, Godzilla had been temporarily transformed into a protector of Japan) that stops them.
A year later, in 1974’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla hit theaters, frustration had boiled over, and the message was even more explicit. Despite the movie being considered rather cheesy, the plot was a very thinly veiled metaphor: Aliens invade Okinawa with a souped up, more dangerous version of Japan’s favorite monster. The real Godzilla gets help from King Caesar, the kaiju protector of Okinawa, and chases the aliens away. Mechagodzilla, however, came back a year later in Terror of Mechagodzilla, when the aliens blackmailed a scientist to give them an even more powerful weapon that required help from Europe to take down.
Although Godzilla’s role as Japan’s defender was more or less revoked at the beginning of the Heisei Period (again, named for the reigning emperor at the time), criticism of America continued unabated. This is most notable in Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (1991), in which the titular Kaiju, in his pre-mutated form “Godzillasaurus,” actually assists Japanese soldiers in killing Americans during World War II. It is then explained that, while Godzilla was sympathetic toward Japan during the war, his radiation from the U.S.’s atomic explosions turned him into a biological threat to Japan. Moreover, American time travelers create King Ghidorah in order to further ensure Japan’s destruction (and of course, while he might not be an official ambassador, Godzilla must battle King Ghidorah, thus saving his native country from ruin).
Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah, 1991
These plot elements angered some American viewers at the time, and it is perhaps for this reason—as well as personal reflections on Japan’s history on the part of the filmmakers—that the next period of films combined critiques of both America and Japan. Dubbed the Millennium period due to the title and 1999 release date of the first film in the series, Godzilla 2000, these six films grappled with “the consequences of militarization,” as the aforementioned Zakarin puts it. He goes on to once again quote Jason Barr’s book on Kaiju films, specifically Barr’s comments on the 2001 film Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack:
Godzilla…is the living embodiment of the Japanese war dead, and the Japanese are really trying to figure out what to do with the knowledge that even though they were victimized by the atomic bombs, they were also very a legitimate aggressor, committed numerous war crimes, and so on.
In this film, Godzilla once again becomes a threat to Japan’s future, but interestingly, he is also depicted as the primary aggressor, and he must be defeated by three “guardian monsters,” Baragon, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. This dynamic wasn’t often seen in Godzilla films, though there are exceptions, most prominently in the Shōwa era classic Godzilla Vs. Mothra (1964).
After Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), Toho Studios once again put their most famous monster on hiatus, even going so far as to demolish their water tank soundstage, called the “Big Pool,” where numerous aquatic-based Kaiju scenes and battles were filmed. With the release of the American-made Godzilla ten years later—a film that, as stated previously, recast the big guy as a protector of Earth with no specific allegiances to any one country—it seemed the days of Godzilla representing the “pride of Japan” were over.
Shin Godzilla, 2016
And this remained true even when Toho, in 2016, entirely rebooted the franchise (another first; all other periods acknowledged the first film but ignored every other successive entry). Called Shin Godzilla (Godzilla: Resurgence in America), not only did co-directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi bring the character back to his thoroughly monstrous roots, they also changed his origin story for the very first time in the franchise’s history. While still radioactive, Godzilla was not born of atomic bomb energy, but rather he is the product of a nuclear disaster not unlike the Fukushima meltdown of 2011, an event that devastated Japan environmentally and scarred its global image, given that many criticized government officials for mishandling cleanup and reconstruction efforts. In this way, Japan and Japan alone is to blame for the horrifying creature in Shin Godzilla, and thus it is their responsibility to handle the problem. As Zarakin notes:
[The film’s] true focus is on those laying the foundation for a new Japan. As Japan considers its place next to a bulked-up China and increasingly belligerent North Korea, Shin Godzilla seems designed to radiate a confidence in [the] country’s future. The blockbuster…calls for change in the face of outsized and frankly frightening obstacles. Incompetent bureaucrats are replaced by clear-eyed, young defenders of the realm, and the message is clear: The monsters of the past and present can be defeated by heroes of the future.
Shin Godzilla isn’t entirely focused on Japan’s mistakes, however, and some light criticism of America is still present. Japan Times critic Mark Schilling dissects the film’s Japanese-American character, Kayoko Ann Patterson, a special envoy for the President of the United States, played by Satomi Ishihara:
Arrogant, condescending and flaunting her sexuality while the other female characters have all but obliterated theirs, she is the “Ugly American” personified. But, as Ishihara says in a program interview, ‘the blood of her ancestor’s country stirs within her,’ and Kayoko starts to side with her Japanese counterparts, becoming more sympathetic in the process.
Considering this subtly nationalistic message—one that current prime minister Shinzō Abe, labelled a “right wing nationalist,” endorsed—it may not be surprising the film didn’t perform as well in English-speaking markets as Toho had hoped. The studio scrapped plans for a sequel, while also three animated films that, while not expressly tied to the American Godzilla and its sequel, does utilize the creature design of those films. Toho also plans to produce another series of films featuring Godzilla and other Kaiju inspired by the Marvel cinematic universe.
This seems to indicate that the studio, and perhaps the country at large, wishes to maintain Godzilla’s heroic status on the global stage. But even if the subtle and not-so-subtle political messages of his films go by the wayside, and even if more American films are eventually made, Godzilla will always and forever be a Japanese export. He may belong to the world going forward, but let’s always remember and acknowledge his roots.
