Godzilla: The Birth of Kaiju
On 6th August 1945, residents around Hiroshima awoke to the sight of a mushroom cloud rising over what was once a fully populated city. It towered at a height of 20,000 feet in a matter of minutes had cast a long, dark shadow over what was a bright morning in Japan. The blast, which was estimated to have a force of up to 15,000 tonnes of TNT, destroyed 60% of the city and the final death toll recorded that 140,000 were killed. Three days later the United States launched an even bigger nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. The scale of the attack’s destruction was unprecedented in human history and Japan was the first witness to the full extent of our capacity for war. Little wonder then that the country’s culture has become dominated with tales of gigantic forces and devastating consequences.
Nowhere is this more visible than Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla, released by Toho on November 3rd 1954, just nine years after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both the creature and the film were products of the Atomic Age, with Godzilla waging destruction on a similar scale to a nuclear holocaust. The opening scene, which sees the destruction of a Japanese fishing boat, was inspired by the Lucky Dragon 5, a tuna boat that was caught in the fallout of a nuclear test on Bikini Atoll. This incident drew particular notoriety as the crewman, along with several military personnel and island natives, were believed to be a safe distance from the test sight. With this the Japanese fears were confirmed that the dangers of nuclear devices were something that man could not control.
And yet Godzilla is not introduced as a creation of radioactive fallout but nature’s response to it. In Honda’s film, Godzilla is believed to be an ancient sea creature of Japanese myth awakened by nuclear tests. His rampages are the physical manifestation of the natural world desperately trying to save itself from humanity’s hubris. This is probably the reason why something so gigantic and uncontrollable has proved surprisingly malleable to film writers.
While 1954’s Godzilla was a grim, straight-faced allegory for Hiroshima, the series lightened in tone significantly over the years. Subsequent films have cast Godzilla as an antihero, starting with Gidorah, The Three-Headed Monster (1964) where he teams up with his previous nemesis Mothra. This is when the franchise began to take on a much lighter tone, transforming a monstrous titan into something that had huge appeal among children.
of fear at our own smallness and inadequacy to an ally who empowers us. The question then becomes have we lost the lessons that Godzilla was trying to drive home in 1954? That our drive towards greater destruction will only lead to our own doom.
This transformation reached its peak in Son of Godzilla (1967), which cast the King of the Monsters as a struggling single father (no really). Since then Godzilla has become a globally recognised icon along with Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man. All of which came to a head with Gareth Edwards’ film earlier this year in which Godzilla was the hero, aiding humanity in the battle against the MUTOs. This is the legacy of Toho’s 1954 film. Sixty years on it has spawned over thirty films and influenced countless more. It has arguably created the most recognisable monster in modern culture and turned him from our enemy into our hero. From a source
The world has changed in the sixty years since Godzilla, we have travelled to the brink of nuclear annihilation and pulled ourselves back just in time. The warheads which might wake the King of the Monsters sit unused in silos across the world. Wars have become smaller, contained far away, inspiring just enough fear to make humanity docile, not panicked. Instead the biggest threat we face is that we may be destroying our planet slowly; engine by engine. The new man-made threat to our survival is the rising tides, global temperatures and devastating natural disasters. But if the evolution of Godzilla teaches us anything it is that the forces of nature need not be our enemy. Humanity and the natural world can benefit from each other if we are only willing to recognise our hubris and change. If not then at least we have the wrath of Godzilla to look forward to.
by Liam Macloed
