TEHRAN-In 1945, at the end of World War II, the United States sent two ambassadors of peace to Japan: “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”. These not-so-harsh names belong to the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bombings killed about 220,000 people, mostly civilians.

In 1954, less than 10 years after this crime, Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda and special effects designer Eiji Tsuburaya dreamed up a giant dinosaur-like creature that came from the depths of the ocean, mutated by nuclear radiation, a “kaiju” named Godzilla.

It was at that time that "Godzilla" entered the field of cinema and literature as a metaphor and symbol of these two terrible bombs.

How Japanese survivors felt

Some 70 years later, Toho's 33rd Godzilla film, “Godzilla Minus One”, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, entered the 2024 Oscars alongside a biopic about the father of the atomic bomb; "Oppenheimer" written and directed by Christopher Nolan. 

In an interview with Tehran Times, William Tsutsui, Japanese author of “Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters,” shared his thoughts on the significance of Godzilla in relation to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He emphasized that such films present a unique opportunity for audiences worldwide to revisit and contemplate the devastating impact of nuclear weapons, as well as our ongoing concerns about a potential nuclear apocalypse.

Set in the immediate post-war period of 1945, "Godzilla Minus One" goes beyond the war's monstrous nuclear fallout and considers its devastating human emotional toll.

Yamazaki once said in an interview with The Verge that he wanted “audiences to gain an understanding of how Japanese survivors felt after WWII.”

The film follows kamikaze pilot, Koichi who fails to follow through on a suicide mission yet, while returning from the battlefield, manages to miraculously survive the monster. But after returning home, he finds that his parents and neighbors are dead. While Godzilla is still wreaking havoc among civilians, Koichi struggles with his guilt and tries to save himself from this feeling by confronting the monster.

Black and white, like the ancestors

"Godzilla Minus One" is a film that, according to critics, was able to return the franchise to its original Japanese roots.

“‘Godzilla Minus One’ is a fascinating film that reframes the origin story from ‘Gojira’ (1954) in fresh and creative ways,” said Tsutsui about this similarity.

He explained that in the movie, the monster is (once again) created from U.S. nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll and attacks Tokyo in ways that clearly echo Godzilla’s rampages in the first Toho film, including the famous destruction of the Ginza.

The author believed that the fact that “Godzilla Minus One” was released not just in color but also in a black-and-white version seems like a further acknowledgement of the original 1954 movie.

 “Perhaps most importantly, ‘Godzilla Minus One’ hinges on human drama and the Japanese struggle to find redemption and closure for defeat in World War II, just as the pioneering film ‘Gojira’ did almost 70 years earlier,” Tsutsui added.

Yamazaki’s film took home the prize for best visual effects, the first Academy Award in the franchise’s 70-year history.

 “Oppenheimer” bears all the blame

Tsutsui believed that both “Godzilla Minus One” and “Oppenheimer” can be important in helping us understand what happened in 1945 and what legacies we still are experiencing today from the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, in his opinion, the two films did not move equally in the direction of expressing a warning about nuclear war.

 “Whereas ‘Godzilla Minus One’ is a powerful reminder of the American role in the birth of nuclear warfare and nuclear fear, ‘Oppenheimer’ seems to focus responsibility for the horror of nuclear weapons squarely on one man, thus absolving the American people of culpability in the atomic attacks on Japan.”

Nolan’s drama, which picked up 13 Oscar nominations, received serious criticism. He does not depict the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in any way and does not show the Japanese victims. In fact, in one scene, when Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, is giving a speech, he visualizes the members of his predominantly white audience as victims of the bomb.

That was intentional, Nolan once said, as he wanted to document Oppenheimer’s “experience subjectively.” The director said he chose not to illustrate the aftermath of the bombings or the victims because “to depart from Oppenheimer’s experience would betray the terms of the storytelling.”

Critics have pointed out that while Nolan intended to depict Oppenheimer's perspective in his film, the omission of the actual destruction caused by atomic bombs, particularly the impact on Japanese civilians, aligns the narrative with historical propaganda and potentially glorifies the existence of nuclear weapons.

This is the factor that distanced “Oppenheimer” from real historical sources and caused critics to not consider a white director to be the right person to narrate the suffering of Japanese civilians.

A metaphor for painful memories

Tsutsui mentioned how Godzilla was created and told the Tehran Times that after World War II, the American military occupiers of Japan (who administered the defeated nation from 1945 to 1952) systematically censored public discussion of the atomic bombings in the Japanese media.

“The goal was to prevent public backlash against American use of such devastating weapons, which might undermine American authority in Japan.”

He explained that as a result, discussion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became a taboo subject in Japan following the war. although a few films took on issues related to the bombs (and their survivors), “Gojira” (1954) was the first to address the traumas of 1945 in such a direct and moving manner.

The author has previously stated that Godzilla’s heavily furrowed skin or scales were imagined to resemble the keloid scars of survivors of the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. David Kalat also mentions the same issue in an essay for “Turner Classic Movies.”

“As such, the Godzilla franchise became an important, cathartic means for Japanese audiences to confront their painful memories and ongoing anxieties,” Tsutsui said.

He highlighted that over time, more open discussion of the atomic bombs and their legacies has become more accepted and widespread in Japan, but Godzilla remains an important symbol of how the Japanese people dealt collectively with the horrors of World War II.

 White Americans are whitewashing

The author noted that at the core of the Godzilla films made by Toho in Japan (30 live-action pictures from 1954 to 2023) has been a simple and powerful origin story: the creature was a surviving dinosaur that was rendered monstrous by American hydrogen bomb testing in the South Pacific.  

“Although the force of the series’ anti-nuclear and pacifist message has been diluted over the decades, the films from Japan stay true to this basic premise that Godzilla is a creation of the nuclear age with important lessons for the contemporary world.” 

Tsutsui pointed out the fact that the American Godzilla films (now five made by TriStar and Legendary Pictures between 1998 and 2024) have largely been big-budget Hollywood special-effects movies, lacking in a consistent and meaningful political message.  

“Strikingly, the American films have sought to deflect responsibility for the creation of the monster away from the United States: the 1998 Godzilla, for instance, blames French nuclear testing in Polynesia, while the recent MonsterVerse films from Legendary suggest that giant monsters like Godzilla were naturally occurring within a vast ‘hollow Earth’,” he added.

Tsutsui mentioned that the American desire to whitewash the pointed political messages of “Gojira” was particularly evident when the film was first brought to the United States. 

Atomic bomb for salvation or slaughter?

“American distributors edited out about 20 minutes of the original Japanese movie, removing all references to U.S. nuclear testing and World War II, as well as all its political messages. As a result, the American version of the film, ‘Godzilla, King of the Monsters’ (released in 1956) was rendered into a simple action picture, with an optimistic Hollywood happy ending,” the author said.

He stated that in the Legendary movies, the filmmakers have gone even further to protect the sensibilities of American audiences. “In these films, Godzilla (and other giant monsters) are naturally occurring creatures and the U.S. military tries to control them and protect humanity by using nuclear weapons against them.”

Tsutsui continued, in this light, American nuclear power is rendered benevolent and positive, rather than aggressive and inhumane.

AH/SAB