'Godzilla' was a metaphor for Hiroshima, and Hollywood whitewashed it

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/godzilla-was-metaphor-hiroshima-hollywood-whitewashed-it-n1236165


The radioactive monster Godzilla stomps through a city and eats a commuter train in a scene from "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!," directed by Ishiro Honda and Terry O. Morse, circa 1956.Embassy Pictures / Getty Images

Aug. 7, 2020, 3:06 PM EDT

By Kimmy Yam

When the monster Godzilla, or “Gojira,” appeared before Japanese movie audiences in 1954, many left the theaters in tears.

The fictional creature, a giant dinosaur once undisturbed in the ocean, was depicted in the original film as having been aggravated by a hydrogen bomb. Its heavily furrowed skin or scales were imagined to resemble the keloid scars of survivors of the two atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Japan nine years earlier to end World War II.

American audiences, however, had the opposite reaction, finding comedic value in what many interpreted as a cheesy monster movie.

“Most Americans think if you left the movie in tears, it was just because you laughed so hard,” William Tsutsui, author of “Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters,” told NBC Asian America.

The stark contrast reflects how Hollywood took the Japanese concept and scrubbed it of its political message before presenting it to American audiences to deflect from the U.S. decision to drop the bombs, critics say.

This month is the 75th anniversary of the U.S. bombings in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki three days later, and while many Americans today think of the film as an almost campy relic of its time, it was intended in Japan to be a metaphor for the ills of atomic testing and the use of nuclear weapons, considering what Japan endured after the bombings. The movie served as a strong political statement, representative of the traumas and anxieties of the Japanese people in an era when censorship was extensive in Japan because of the American occupation of the country after the war ended, Tsutsui said. The screen depicted what many could not explicitly say.

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[mn9driver]

1. The 1954 original was not the release that American audiences saw.

Godzilla was released internationally in 1956 and cut out much of the plot that was a metaphor for the Nuclear attacks and continuing threat that was contained in the Japanese original.

It added English dubbing and Raymond Burr playing an American reporter. His part was added after the original movie was released in Japan, along with the many other plot deletions and changes.

The original movie was not available again until 2014.

[John Fante]

2. The United States is guilty of a lot of rotten shit, but the

Last edited Sun Aug 9, 2020, 01:14 AM - Edit history (1)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs saved millions of lives. Maybe Tojo Studios can create a metaphor for the unspeakable atrocities commited by Imperial Japan during their reign of terror. It rivals what the Nazis did.

[tenderfoot]

3. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs saved millions of lives."

That is such bullshit.

[John Fante]

4. You think Hirohito and Tojo were going to greet us with open arms

in the event that we invaded mainland Japan? It would have been a 1,000 Okinawas.

[tenderfoot]

13. We had them beat and bombed them because we could

eom

[John Fante]

14. Um, Japan refused to surrender. So no, we did not have them beat.

[malaise]

6. You know this how?

It was murder most foul

[Kaleva]

9. We should let the many millions who were victims of Japanese atrocities be the judge.

An example:

" During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000,[7][8] and perpetrated widespread rape and looting.[9][10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre

[malaise]

10. All evil is just that - evil n/t

[Kaleva]

22. Kind of a wash then. Evil destroyed evil.

[roamer65]

21. Some of the atrocities were live vivisections of Chinese and other war prisoners.

Including Americans.

I agree with you, Kaleva.

[John Fante]

15. Japan should have surrendered then, it was their only option. Why are they constantly given

a free pass for this?

The Battle of Okinawa resulted in more than 50,000 U.S. casualties, and a quarter-million Japanese military and civilian dead. That battle was fought over a tiny island 400 miles from Japan.

An invasion of the motherland would have made Okinawa look like a picnic.

[Lancero]

23. Fun fact, but Japan was actively planning bio-weapon attacks on the US when they were nuked.

If they had the military force to launch that kind of attack against the US, then it's kind of hard to claim that they were defeated. Perhaps it was their desire to give the US a middle finger, but still...

By the end of the war, their Navy was going on a deep sea diving expedition, their Airforce was full of planes that oddly lacked the ability to stay in the air, and they were looking at a pile of sticks and thinking 'hmm, that's a fine weapon to arm our soldiers with!'. But given the cult of personality around their 'Glorious Emperor' and the control that the military had over the country, they still firmly believed that they would repel any attack.

For a modern comparison, WWII Japan was pretty much what 'modern' North Korea is today.

[PCIntern]

24. I hate to say this but I agree with you

My father was a four year veteran of the Pacific Theater and survived via a sequence of miracles. He was no fan of violence but he said that his division was being prepped for the Invasion of Japan and there was tacit agreement that the first two waves of the expeditionary force were going to be annihilated. He and everyone else knew they were going to die.

[marie999]

27. We did not have to drop the bombs. Japan was willing to surrender unconditionally

with one exception, Japan wanted to keep its emperor. Truman refused. He then had the 2 bombs dropped. He then let Japan surrender unconditionally but allowed them to keep its emperor. He dropped the first bomb to show Russia that we had the bomb and then dropped the second bomb to show Russia that we had more than one.

[sanatanadharma]

5. Post WW2 Japan had an entire genra of nuclear problem monster movies

A entire genre of nuclear monster problems developed in which the new nuclear world births monsters and in the end it is science that saves the citizens; oh, and some spunky kid(s).

[JHB]

7. Don't know that I fully agree with the framing of the article, but here's both trailers

[RhodeIslandOne]

8. The American release was a very simple money grab

Raymond Burr’s character was inserted as essentially exposition. Even back then Americans weren’t into reading subtitles.

One can debate what the results were artistically, but attributing some deeper motive to B-movie execs in hindsight is a stretch.

“King of the Monsters” is still a hell of a lot darker than it gets credit for. The powerful scene of a weeping mother holding her hysterical child as Godzilla stomps towards them is still in there.

[Vivid Lizard]

11. I Still Love the Original Japanese Version

Yes, the Japanese themselves still whitewash their historical WWII war crimes and atrocities. And the debate continues as to whether or not the A-bombs should have been "demonstrated" off-shore or in a less populated area, and whether that would have had any effect in changing the Japanese War Ministry's mind about continuing the war. Also, we had been, in a certain way, dropping A-bombs for quite a while onto Japan anyway through massive fire bombings of population centers... hundreds of thousands of civilians dying of horrific burns and suffocation. The A-bomb just made that much more efficient and cost-effective as far as delivery was concerned.

That all said, the original Japanese version of Gojira (yes, I'm back to that!), was a great film IMHO. Darker, moodier, and with a better back story of the romantic triangle than in the Americanized version. I've seen two versions of the original cut slightly different. One was shown at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood with the man who wore the rubber suit for many of movies, including the original, as a special guest. In that full cut of the film, I remember a scene most people haven't seen. It's of a woman passenger in a train heading to Tokyo through the countryside. She is asked by another passenger why she was heading to Tokyo, and she replies to get away from the memories of her home town... Nagasaki. Ironically, she is also the first person to see Gojira in Tokyo bay while dancing on a party boat at night. The party boat scene is still in the Raymond Burr cut.

When the film was in pre-production, it was undecided what Gojira would look like... a giant ape maybe? But when they got to the giant reptile decision they made a strong attempt to design it to push the atomic destruction aspect... radiation scars and such. There is even a sketch of the head design where they wanted to make it look more like an actual mushroom cloud.

Way more than anyone wanted to know! Thanks for slogging through this.

[edhopper]

12. While I agree Godzilla

was a Hiroshima metaphor in the original Japanese version,

It was also a rip off of Harryhausen's Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

[JI7]

17. where does King Kong fit into it all

[Hekate]

18. Not so sure Gojira is actually a metaphor for the Bomb, but a lot of Japanese movies of that era...

...featured monsters hatched in the ocean depths (Japan is all islands, after all) that were irradiated. The effects of radiation would have been an active concern in everyone’s mind, conscious and subconscious — these scary concerns were incorporated into popular entertainment, I think.

I think you have to look elsewhere in Japanese movies and literature for the heavy stuff; the symbolism, metaphor, and allegory. It’s there, all right.

[Initech]

19. Well the Godzilla reboot wasn't bad. But the sequel King Of The Monsters, holy shit.

God that was one of worst and dumbest movies I've ever seen.

[PCIntern]

25. Ever see the film Dinosaurus?

Awakened t-Rex and brontosaurus and a bonus caveman! So bad it’s GREAT!!

[Codeine]

20. I hate August. nt

[jmg257]

26. Yep - starting a war you cant win is a silly move. Underestimating your enemy's

Capability and resolve is sillier.