Last September, Shinzo Abe stepped down as Japan’s prime minister amid a flurry of problems. His time in office was marked more by nationalistic gestures than by meaningful changes. As The Economist noted, Abe “pursued a dogged passion for the symbols of a Japanese nationhood that he believes has been castrated by the country’s pacifist constitution and abiding war guilt.” But his departure from office suggests that the nation was ready to move beyond such symbolism and consider Japan’s historical responsibility as well as its national pride. This mood is reflected even by Godzilla, a heralded Japanese cultural export, who turned against his country in one of the last films in which he appeared. He was a forerunner to what would yet be.
Critics have long pointed out that Japanese monster movies expressed Japan’s reaction to the atomic bombs dropped on it in 1945. Ishiro Honda’s 1954 monster movie Gojira, as David Kalat describes it in A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series, was conceived as the ultimate statement on nuclear weapons. Honda had seen Hiroshima after the bomb and said in an interview cited by Kalat, “When I returned from the war and passed through Hiroshima, there was a heavy atmosphere — a fear the earth was coming to an end. That became my basis.” The movie showed the rest of the world the horror of nuclear annihilation. It was stark, bleak, and devoid of life. Godzilla would change a great deal over the years, but his genesis was meant to be socially instructive. He was the dread of war personified.
Since the phantom of atomic obliteration and global thermonuclear war has been moved to the sideline — at least for the moment — Godzilla’s allegorical significance needed to be altered for the monster to remain relevant. The last great Godzilla film, Shusuke Kaneko’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) — hereafter referred to as GMK — recognized this. One self-referential scene has the characters wondering why Godzilla always returns to Japan. Kaneko’s answer is embedded in the question: Japan needs to recognize the horrors it has inflicted on others and its own people.
Rather than have Godzilla represent the threat of war directed toward Japan, the movie makes Godzilla a problem emanating from Japan itself. As the film makes plain, Godzilla represents the souls of those killed or wronged by the Japanese during the Pacific conflict; this includes “comfort women”, females who were taken from other countries and coerced into prostitution in war-torn Japan. GMK makes no distinction between crimes committed and crimes perpetuated through sentiment, a distinction Shinzo Abe sought to make as prime minister. All war crimes, be it the killing of civilians in China or the forced prostitution of the “comfort women” are subsumed into Godzilla’s glowering countenance.
GMK goes further than to simply correct nationalistic sentiments. In a show of daring that was only hinted at in the Gamera trilogy, which Kaneko directed as well, the movie seeks to mitigate the love of carnage that seems implicit within the kaiju (monster movie) genre. The Gamera series began as trashy monster movie fun, but later implicated the viewer in the love of violence. The much-discussed Shibuya district scene from Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris has monsters — historically Japanese pop culture symbols — killing citizens en masse. Kaneko’s worm’s-eye-view camera, used previously to make the monsters awe-inspiring, now serves to instill fear of these towering icons. Japan created the monsters to come to grips with the horrors unleashed upon them, but these symbols no longer serve to console old war grievances. Now the message the monsters convey is, Japanese civilian or not, you will be killed; Gamera and Godzilla are dark monsters created from sordid times. The new war is not fun to watch.
In keeping with Kaneko’s iconoclasm, GMK denies and criticizes things thought intrinsic to the monster-movie form. The film mockingly kills off reporters who think to give commentary on a fight between Godzilla and Baragon, a small, dog-like animal, which is at one point is mistakenly called Godzilla. This little joke allows the film to make the point that the old Godzilla’s kindness can be likened to a whimpering cur that is easily blown apart by the real Godzilla — a fierce, war-born monster. Reporters, viewers of the spectacle, would be able to pay tribute to Godzilla if they were allowed to live, so in the film they are destroyed. To glorify the demon crafted from war would give credit to the slaughter that forged him.
Rather than let the film just be a monster movie, Kaneko grounds the movie with the consequences of the destruction these giants wreak; the ruin they cause, his films claim, should not be taken just as spectacle. The monsters, cities, and military personnel, who are told to enter combat without relishing it, are annihilated in an unceasing, terrible rain of destruction. Even when Godzilla and King Ghidorah, the two historic rivals, are set to battle, they are thrown underwater. This prevents the action from being fast-paced and removes aesthetic pleasure that might be garnered from the orgy of destruction.
By presenting Godzilla, the grim phantasm of war, as providing little viewing pleasure GMK addresses the point of former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s comments regarding “comfort women”: that there is a certain nobility to conflict that should not be besmirched due to certain unmentionable happenings. In GMK, “unmentionable” carnage is shown onscreen for all to see with wide lens shots. We are compelled to take in the destruction, not as enjoyable, scripted spectacle, but as indiscriminate violence that Godzilla inflicts upon the populace. Random people, guilty of nothing more than screaming, are killed by a glowering behemoth. There is little laudable about Godzilla’s return and, more important, it is not a noble fight. The wholesale death of innocents in the movie is looked upon with contempt rather than awe.
Appropriately, at the end of GMK, Godzilla kills himself in a fit of blind rage. Weapons could not kill such a potent symbol; an icon like Godzilla, by staying around so long, ultimately is self-negating. Kaneko plays the ominous music from Akira Ifukube’s original score to Gojira at the end to reinforce this point. Godzilla served originally to show the horror of nuclear catastrophe, but through the years his continued appearance reinforced views held by people like Abe. The horrors of war can take on many forms, but one of the cruelest is that of denying one’s own sins (“comfort women,” among other things). By continuously playing the victim through cinema, the denial is perpetuated.
Now, although Godzilla no longer stands tall above the cities screaming banshee wails, his heart still beats. The victory at the end of the film was false(Godzilla was not defeated in GMK); he waits to appear again. Although Abe and Godzilla might have stepped down for a time — the latter has been “retired” by Toho — their views toward the Great War still linger on. Godzilla’s “retirement” is only until 2015; I have a sinking feeling that I know what he’s going to say then.