Kaiju-dom, Gojira. . . and a Project--pt. 1

By way of introduction, though perhaps entirely unnecessary, kaijū (Japanese: "strange beast") is a film genre that features monsters, usually attacking a major [Japanese] city or engaging other monsters in battle. As a film genre, its roots can be traced practically to the advent of "talkies" (King Kong, 1933), but it wasn't until the mid-50s that the modern phenomenon was born.

Gojira, bka as Godzilla, was born in 1954. It is an allegorical cautionary tale re: the horrors, literally and figuratively, of a nuclear age: 

Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka stated that, "The theme of the film, from the begin- ning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind." Director Ishirō Honda filmed Godzilla's rampage on Tokyo with the mentality that the monster's onslaught was a parallel to, and a physical manifestation of, an Atom bomb attack. He stated, "If Godzilla had been a dinosaur or some other animal, he would have been killed by just one can- nonball. But if he were equal to an atomic bomb, we wouldn't know what to do. So, I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla."^[Themes]

Tanaka-san's concept of a "zoological 'bomb'" was influenced by the radioactive contamination of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū Maru and its crew from the fallout from the US' H-bomb detonation on Bikini Atoll, on March 1, 1954--eight months to the day before Gojira roared his way onto movie screens in Japan. . .

For Japanese audiences sitting in theatres that November 1, the message was clear: "this isn't science fiction, it isn't even fiction. These are recent events, recapitulated as a modern fairy tale, a contemporary folk myth for the nuclear age."^[2] The war was over; the Occupation was over; but the nuclear age--and the memories of events as recent as 8 months past--were anything but.

This is not a film essay, so I will leave the background information at that. Having said that, I truly wish they would show this classic at the opening and closing of every Non-Proliferation Confer- ence. . .

We will delve into the ultimate daikaijū in our next installment. . .

“When the cost of a hobby exceeds the fun and doesn't attract new people, the game is over.” -
Oscar Koveleski, August 2003