Japanese anime has become a global worldwide culture for many reasons. Becoming popular in Japan after the second world war, anime provided an alternative format for storytelling. The common misconception in the west is that animation is primarily aimed towards the children, but this is not the case in Japan.
When a new era of Asian horror films entered mainstream Western cinema with Hideo Nakata’s ‘The Ring’, Asian horror movies were soon perceived to be chasing Hollywood’s more hackneyed horror efforts into the shadows.
“As I watched the World Trade towers collapse on September 11, I felt guilty. The scene looked similar to those that had entertained me in many Godzilla films. But it wasn’t a fantasy, the people were real, and their fear and suffering were heartbreaking.”
Over the years Godzilla has changed roles significantly from once being the ultimate threat to Japan, to now being Japan’s protector. One could believe that this change was made to make the monster appeal to a broader audience resulting in much larger profits for the studio or perhaps it is the result of the fears Japan once had post-war becoming less and less significant?
How can we understand Japan’s mindset after World War II? How did they really feel after the atomic bombings and their subsequent defeat? Was any blame placed upon a particular nation, including their own, for how the war ended?
Every culture has it’s fears… Godzilla itself is a creation born from the fears of another future nuclear disaster. Modern technology of the time created nuclear weapons and from these nuclear weapons came Godzilla! Tom Miller believes however that through the film’s inherent symbolism Godzilla represents more than just the atomic bombing of Japan. In his article “Struggling With Godzilla: Unraveling the Symbolism in Toho’s Sci/Fi Films” Tom states: “In the movie they made, Godzilla represents more than the A-Bomb; Godzilla is the United States itself”, but didn’t the United States have a motive for the atomic bombings? Godzilla needed no motive… Just the animalistic desire to survive.
William Tsutsui is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas, an author of many books on Japanese history and a life-long fan of the mutant lizard having authored “Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters” (First published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004).
Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Godzilla “Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters” discusses how it grew into a global phenomenon thus exploring the monster’s lasting cultural impact on Japan, the United States and the rest of the world whilst a video entitled “Godzilla and Post-War Japan” uploaded onto the web for UCTV (University of California Television) presented Professor William Tsutsui arguing that the evolution of Godzilla, throughout it’s many films, reflects the social and political changes of post-war Japan and Godzilla’s lasting cultural impact on the world.
After World War II Japan’s economy made one of the most remarkable recoveries in the history of the modern world.
Arguably one of their most vital post war recoveries was that of their film industry and by 1953, the industry had entered its Golden Age.
This study of Japanese culture looks at the fascination Japanese audiences have for the symbolism found in these science fiction Kaiju movies. Are they just presented as brainless entertainment or are they born from an ingrained fear that their could perhaps be another disaster like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the future?
